We were faced last year with trying to do an allocation formula for serials.
 We had an older article by Charles Lowry but it seemed an impossible task to
 come up with decimal weightings as he suggested was necessary so you aren't
 adding "apples and oranges."

 We finally decided not to allocate funds TO each department, but to decide
 on a fair amount for each department to drop.  We were helped because we
 already had a status quo allocation by department which told us how much
 each department does spend of the total budget.

 So, we figured what percentage of the serials budget each department was
 taking up and arrived at the following formula

              CURRENT DEPT.           PERCENTAGE OF CURRENT DEPT.
              PERCENT OF TOTAL        ALLOCATION REQUESTED
              PER. BUDGET             TO DROP

               over 10%               15% to drop

               5.0%-9.9%             7.5% to drop

               2.5-4.9%              5% to drop

               0.6-2.49%             2.5% to drop

               0.5% and below          0

 We held an open meeting for departments to come and discuss their concerns
 about the formula.  Biology came in force and was extremely unhappy, since
 they had the highest percent of the periodicals budget (16.5%).  Chemistry
 (13.2% of the budget) accepted the inevitable and didn't even come to the
 meeting.

 If there is a recent article by Charles Lowry, I would be interested in
 receiving the citation.

 Christina McCawley
 West Chester University, West Chester, PA
 cmccawle@wcu
 cmccawle@mainvm.wcupa.edu