Excellent translation. - barbara fister

Even shorter: "Phil Davis channels Elsevier on serials costs." Except this time he did it so clumsily that even one of the SK Brigade broke ranks briefly (when he basically says academic libraries are just used for naps between classes). Still, the Brigade Stands Strong in fighting off any comments... - walt crawford

Unlike. - Back to just Joe

Funny thing is, librarians are THE major readership on SK as far as I can tell. Wonder if THEY just introduced the revolver to their foot. One can hope... - RepoRat

Sigh. On that one, I'm not so optimistic. Librarians blaming themselves for [whatever] is a pretty popular game. - walt crawford

There was an article awhile back that showed that the shrinking bit of the budget pie has been going on awhile. Never heard a whole lot about how libraries were fighting back during the budget process to get it back and show outcomes/assessments to justify it, though. - ωαřмaiden ❤Bassetmom❤

Sure we should. But not for the reasons Phil's suggesting -- plus, Phil's subtext is pretty nakedly BLAME ANYBODY BUT PUBLISHERS. Which is not cool; it's not *all* our fault by any means. - RepoRat

Absolutely - I didnt mean that the declining share of the budget pie absolved librarians of blame. but in addition to blame for the serials crisis, putting a foot down and saying "We cannot do X [where X=something other than serials] if you're also going to keep hamstringing us in terms of budget" is also something we don't see a lot of. We "make do" and we "do more with less" and we go along like we're proud of that instead of ashamed that we can't successfully demonstrate our value enough to take what resources we need to get the job done. But this is a different issue than the serials-specific one, though I'd posit it's related to the same any-service-is-better-than-no-service attitude that got us into the serials mess. - ωαřмaiden ❤Bassetmom❤

Totally agreed on that one. - RepoRat

The whole percent of E&G is kind of silly anyway - we have seen happening this forever. It's not that libraries get less, necessarily, but that Increasing costs in student aid and increases in medical insurance for our institutions along with other new expenses take a bigger piece of the pie. That is not necessarily a sign that libraries have failed to demonstrate their value or that institutions don't care about libraries. The pie has more ingredients and has to fed more people. And my metaphor died of exhaustion. - barbara fister

Well, and if we're looking for documentation that what we fund has been the serials crisis, there's always the Ithaka report... - Hedgehog

The gut reaction is "Why are you comparing library spending all the way back to 1982?" I would have guessed that the expenditures would be higher because it was a pre-digital delivery era; you were buying print, microfilm or microfiche and other things that need storage. I'd be more interested in the 1996 (the early internet days, as I reckon) and onward spending, specifically what happened between 2000 and 2001 to mark that steep decline. I'm guessing you could find the same trends if you compared horse related expenditures from 1910-1930 during the rise of the car. Would the answer to be to reverse the trend to be 'buy more horses'? - Andy

Or, buy the same number of horses, and they go up in price. What is an OA horse? - Back to just Joe