While a cut down in budgets is inevitable, however, libraries should also try to increase their revenues. This can be achieved by promoting more subscriptions and grants through increasing dependency on technology (Budd 2005). A library might be able to attract grants if it goes digital. The director or management can make a presentation to convince the relevant authorities about how their grant will increase the library's productivity. This will in turn also attract more members as the accessibility to libraries resources will become easier. Subscription to electronic resources may also help in reducing expenditures such as postage. This will make circumstances even easier if the respective library has an institutional affiliation, as the internet costs are generally incurred by the institution.
Merits and Limitations
When the economic situation is not ideal, the library management is left with little choice. However, as allocation of scarce resource involves opportunity cost, the ideal budget cut would be one that incurs minimum opportunity cost. However, since a budget is an estimate of future fiscal environment, it needs to be more pragmatic then ideal
Firstly, the proposed budget should be clear enough so that all the relevant stakeholders can understand what is being represented. Secondly, accuracy of budget is very important. Discrepancies in reported figures and too much variation between budgeted and actual figures may lead to severe financial mismanagement. As budgetary records are used for comparing trends in different periods, consistency in the budget format must be ensured. Lastly, the proposed budget should be comprehensive and detailed enough to cover all necessary fiscal areas. Again, failure to do so may result in misleading the decision makers.
As mentioned earlier, a practical budget should be balanced to justify the yield of resources invested. Although,...
For example, a library may decide to unsubscribe a certain journal that has lesser demand as compared to other resources. This will result in reducing the subscription expenditure, however it may result in the loss of consumers who demand that respective journal even if that number is low. This means that library should compare the savings it will make from unsubscribing the journal with the loss of subscription revenue, which may result from this decision. If the loss of revenue is more than money saved from the budgetary cut, then a cut in that area should not be considered. If no factors effecting a certain decision will be considered, then the administration may fail to achieve its targets.
Conclusion
Creating budgets is the most important, yet the most critical task for the library management. Since economic recessions effects all libraries, more or less in the same manner, however the fiscal environment of all libraries may be different. The proposed cuts in this paper have taken generic considerations. However, each library should take into account its own objectives, stakeholders and internal and external factors influencing its fiscal environment. A budget that may be successful in the case of one library may not necessarily be applied to another.
References
Farmer, L. (1993). When your library budget is zero. Libraries Unlimited Inc. United States of America.
Budd, J. (2005). The changing academic library: operations, culture, environments. ACRL Publications in Librarianship, United States of America.
Reeves, F. & Russell, J. (1932). The administration of library budget. The Library Quarterly, 2(32).
Wisconsin Department of Public Administration. (2009). Developing the library budget. Retrieved from http://dpi.state.wi.us/pld/ae13.html
