Re: Allocation policy?

Scott Allen (allens@nexus.mwsu.edu)
Thu, 5 Feb 1998 12:54:57 -0600

>Greetings, all. The Media Center director here at Wabash has asked that I
>send out
>a query about budget allocations for video purchases. It is directed,
>especially,
>to those of you who make acquisition decisions for college & university
>media collections.
>
>We are a small liberal arts school with a fairly tight budget. For us, I
>find that,
>while our theatre & English dept. profs make the largest NUMBER of
>requests, their
>selections are frequently in the $20 to $30 range. Requests from a
>philosophy,
>biology, or education prof are fewer in number, but each video may cost
>$150 to
>$200. Our concern is, of course, equity. How do you decide on
>allocations for each
>department or division? Do you have a set policy? If you do, would you
>be willing
>to share it?

Our library allocates each department a certain amount of monies for total
library expenditures. We do not break funds down into different formats.
How the various departments wish to use that money is entirely up to the
individual departments. The biggest problem that I have seen with this
approach is when the business department wants a video costing $800-1,000,
which is a big chunk of their overall materials budget.

As far as deciding upon the amounts allocated to the various dept., that is
done by the number of students within that particular major. The big 3 at
our school are education, business, and health sciences - they get the
lions share of materials funding with health sciences spending the most on
media.

Scott Allen allens@nexus.mwsu.edu
Media Librarian "Trying to stay afloat
Midwestern State University in the seas of technology"