Document Type
Article
Date
10-2015
Keywords
Acquisitions, Collections Budget, Library Economics
Language
English
Disciplines
Library and Information Science
Description/Abstract
The difficulty for a library to spend their collections budget efficiently is a timeless problem. The diversity of a typical budget, with its mix of one-time and continuing funds, for an array of resources that have both regular and sometimes irregular frequencies, provides great challenges. Approval plans, usually expending one-time funds, generate expenditures that contain high variability on a weekly basis. Standing orders for serials fall into the same category. With some effort, it is possible to expend all continuing funds. But it is the commitments that do not result in expenditures, with funds remaining in cash balances that can determine what university administrators call “efficient results.” Acquisitions personnel must take an aggressive approach to commitments with the goal of turning as many possible into expenditures. New expenditures will compensate for the orders that remain committed. Based on the assumption that efficient spending focuses on a library budget’s final cash balance, this article presents a method to consistently achieve a zero or negative cash balance.
Recommended Citation
Cleary, Robert M., "“The Commitment Problem”: Spending to Zero to Maximize the Efficiency of the Collections Budget" (2015). Libraries' and Librarians' Publications. 144.
https://surface.syr.edu/sul/144
Source
Submission http://dx.doi.org/10.5860/lrts.59n4.162
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Rights
this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
