About

UCLA Library 2009-10 Budget

The UCLA Library depends on state funding for almost ninety percent of its budget, and for the 2009-10 fiscal year, its allocation of state funds has been cut by five percent, or $1.8 million. In addition, the Library must cover more than $1 million in charges for energy, deferred maintenance, increases in fringe benefits costs, and employer contributions to retirement.

That brings the total reduction the Library must plan for to just under $3 million, or about eight percent of the overall budget. Note that these figures do not reflect the salary reductions mandated by the UC Office of the President; those reductions are being taken centrally.

In planning the cuts necessitated by this reduction, the Library’s primary concern is to sustain the excellence of the Library’s collections, services, and staff in support of UCLA’s students, faculty, and staff. Actions in the following areas are being taken with that goal paramount.

• Collections
• Facilities
• Staff

Collections

Twenty-five percent of the Library’s acquisitions budget coming from state funds is being held back, for a potential savings of nearly $2 million. The cuts are being applied differentially across collections and disciplines to preserve the Library’s ability to provide essential resources for instruction and to respond to urgent research needs of faculty, researchers, and graduate students.

Guiding principles:

• Preserve access to highly used and unique print and electronic resources by retaining and creating joint purchases and licenses committed to with other UC libraries
• Reflect campus priorities
• Minimize impact on teaching and research
• Work with campus partners to identify and implement solutions to related problems
• Eliminate unnecessary duplication of print and electronic journals

Collection managers are developing plans for how to implement the cuts in the collections they manage. Further details on their plans and actions will be added to this page as they are finalized.

Acquisitions are also funded by interest from collection endowments, gifts to the Honor with Books program, and discretionary funds given by members of Library Associates; although those amounts have been affected by the global economic downturn, they are not affected by the cut in state funds.   

What faculty and students can do:

• Submit purchase recommendations for items urgently needed for teaching or research; processing of these items will be expedited to make them available to users as quickly as possible 
• Borrow items from other UC libraries via Request in the Next-Generation Melvyl Catalog
• Request items not owned by a UC library via interlibrary loan
• Use electronic rather than print reserves 
• Modify author agreements to retain educational re-use rights 
• Utilize open-access options including journals, textbooks, and repositories such as UC eScholarship 
• Refer possible donors interested in funding one-time purchases or establishing a collection endowment to support acquisitions in perpetuity to the Library Development office

Facilities

To ensure broad access to collections, services, and research and study spaces and to correspond with instructional schedules and usage patterns, as of the fall quarter, the following hours will be in effect:

• The Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, College Library, Charles E. Young Research Library, and Science and Engineering Library (SEL)/ Engineering and Mathematical Sciences will be open Monday through Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday from 1 to 6 p.m., and closed on Saturday.
• The Arts and Music libraries will be open Monday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Tuesday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m., and closed on Saturday.
• SEL/Chemistry and SEL/Geology-Geophysics will be open from Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• The hours of the Eugene and Maxine Rosenfeld Management Library remain unchanged from last year.
• UCLA Chancellor Gene Block has secured funding to restore the opening hours of Night Powell, the extended-hours reading room located in the Powell Library Building, as of Monday, November 2. [Background on Night Powell]

To address the current reductions and plan for possible future cuts, administrators have begun to examine how the Library can meet its campus commitments with fewer physical locations. Study teams have been appointed to examine the service and collection issues associated with shifting the collections, services, and staff of the Arts and SEL/Chemistry libraries to one of the large libraries. The process will also include consultation with affected constituencies and discussion of the options. Further details will be added to this page as the process moves forward.

In order to ensure the broadest possible access, during the fall quarter print reserves materials in the visual and performing arts will be housed in the College Library, and those in science and engineering will be housed in SEL/Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. Electronic reserves will be available 24/7 as always, along with electronic resources, online reference assistance, and user self-services.

Staffing

The Library has not filled vacancies for some time, and recruitments have been limited to a very few critical positions. That will continue.