The total LIS Budget for 2007/08 is £2,310,003, broken down into the following elements:
Pay allocation of £1,108,493 for a complement of 35.70 full-time equivalent (fte) staff.
Non-pay allocation of £1,355,865. This includes the costs of all Library Information Resources (LIR), plus furniture, equipment and other running costs. The allocation for LIR and related budgets (e.g. binding) is £1,116,370. The equipment and running costs allocation (excluding lighting, heating and other building costs incurred by Estates) is £239,495.
Income target of £154,355. This includes income from printing and photocopying, the sale of obsolete books, advertising and sponsorship, fines from overdue items, and hire charges for the Information Skills Suite.
Library Information Resources Model
During session 2001/02, a Library Information Resources Task Force was convened to look at the way funding for library information resources (LIR) (books, periodicals and other information resources) are allocated across the four Schools of Study. The aim of this exercise was two-fold:
- To determine if the distribution of LIR between Schools was equitable and, if not, how it should be changed
- To determine if the distribution of LIR within Schools was optimal and, if not, how it should be changed
Our thinking was that, once the first question has been addressed and an equitable distribution of resources achieved between Schools, each School could then make its own decisions about the optimal distribution of the LIR budget within that School; first of all between subject groups in the School, and then within each subject group, between the various different elements of its LIR budget (e.g. expenditure upon books versus expenditure on periodicals, and so on).
By using this approach, we hoped that we would be able to move away from an historic LIR budget that was very opaque, effectively static for all Schools, and so entangled between Schools that there was no flexibility for manoeuvre to meet changing demands.
The new model would provide much more transparency in the costs of library materials for Schools, enable more dynamic allocation of resources, and give individual Schools more flexibility in deciding how the available funds should be distributed within the School and between different types of information resource, based upon academic need.
The Senior Pro-Vice Chancellor chaired the LIR Task Force, which included academic staff representing teaching and research interests from all four Schools, as well as the Library School Team Leaders, the LIS Planning & Resources Officer and the LIS Director.
After three meetings, a model was agreed that allocates the Library Resources Budget as follows -
- 10% of the LIR funds equally to all four Schools,
- 20% dependent on the Schools’ RAE results and
- 70% based on differential resource prices in relevant disciplines and staff/student numbers in those disciplines.
- A core funding (currently about 8% of the total LIR budget) is retained by LIS for general resources of interest to all four Schools and for pump-priming new initiatives. This model was subsequently adopted as a working model for session 2002/03 and beyond.
The model is updated every two years to take account of changes in staff and student numbers and book and periodical prices, as well as usage of electronic journals and databases.
Once the overall LIR budget has been determined at the beginning of each session, Schools are informed of the total LIR budget available to them and each School uses a slightly different method to distribute its LIR budget between its subject groups.
Each subject group then determines how to allocate its LIR funds between books, standing orders, printed and electronic journals, electronic databases and inter-library loans.
LIS staff provide ongoing input and advice to this process to ensure that subject groups make informed decisions about the distribution of their LIR funds, and we also monitor expenditure throughout the year to ensure that funds are spent as necessary.
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