Getting comfortable with change: a new budget model for libraries in transition - Library Finance: New Needs, New Models

Library Trends, Wntr, 1994 by Jerry D. Campbell

Abstract

The present budget model for libraries is not serving libraries well during this time of transition to an increasingly electronic knowledge environment. The existing model inhibits organizational flexibility and exacerbates the staff's sense that they are losing control of their own professional destinies. A new transitional budget model is recommended. The transitional model emphasizes staff education, organizational flexibility, and experimentation. Its goal is to make libraries adept at and comfortable with change.

Introduction

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. (Yeats, 1952, p. 489)

This article will describe a new budget model for libraries. What follows, however, is not just a budget, for a budget is the expression of some organizational reality. This discussion will be an effort to propose both an organization and the budget that flows from, and sustains, it.

At the outset of writing this article, this author was wary of some large pitfalls surrounding the idea of creating a new budget model for libraries. When the present model began to emerge about a century ago, the process for the distribution of knowledge by means of print-on-paper was established and understood. Today, however, the future of the distribution of knowledge is unresolved. The trend is toward electronic distribution but certain aspects remain to be settled including setting standards and solving copyright/licensing problems. Meanwhile, print-on-paper appears to be unconcerned about its new competition as large numbers of books and journals continue to be produced. The dimensions of the new information environment, therefore, are not yet clear, and proposing a model for the library of the future still requires a great deal of guesswork. In other words, it is too soon to present a full-blown new model of library organization and finances.

Another pitfall concerned the stakes of the game. Talk of new models and new paradigms is easy. It pervades our generation. It is intellectually stimulating and exciting to contemplate radically new ways of approaching our work, especially if there is little or no likelihood that these contemplations will actually have an impact on our libraries. But suggesting a new financial model that might be taken seriously seemed a different matter. This author could just as easily - perhaps more easily - construct a flawed model that would, if taken seriously, unleash a calamity upon the library world.

To be sure, libraries are not prone to respond quickly to any stimulus, so it was decided that risk of calamity was modest. In addition, it was decided that tweaking a budget here and there does not constitute a paradigm change, and most of our efforts at new models fall within the parameters of tweaking. It is not certain where the dividing line falls between merely adjusting one paradigm and actually introducing another. Allocating more money to collections and less to staff does not constitute a paradigm shift. Selling the library to a commercial agency and buying back library services does constitute such a shift. Whether the model suggested later constitutes a paradigm shift is doubtful. But it is certain that it requires fundamental shifts in our priorities and in our approach to librarianship, and such shifts are needed today.

As an academic librarian, my efforts here may inadvertently be more directly applicable to academic libraries than to others. Some of the themes that appear are common to all libraries, and it is hoped that the model will be of interest beyond the academic library community.

Why a New Model

Pitfalls not withstanding, the invitation to propose a new budget model was accepted because this author is convinced that such a model is a necessity if libraries are to thrive in these last years of the twentieth century. This necessity arises from an inter-related set of circumstances familiar to every librarian. The most prominent of these is the paradoxically terrible and wonderful assault of computer technology on the information world (for the best recent and comprehensive assessment of technology and libraries, see Cummings, et al., 1992). Everywhere within libraries appears the signs of this ongoing assault. From public access catalogs to paperless cataloging, little remains unaffected. The signs of computer technology also saturate our professional world, pervading the programs of our professional associations as well as the library literature. It is simply clear that libraries and librarians are undergoing a transformation. The degree to which they will eventually be changed is often debated, but the fact that they are in the process of transformation is beyond question.

While the positive implications of this technological transformation for the dissemination of knowledge are truly monumental, to libraries under financial duress the costs appear monumental as well. In the first generation of library automation, libraries were generally successful at finding incremental support for the cost of technology, including new staffing capabilities. Now, however, as the technological remaking of libraries proceeds, it is increasingly difficult to secure new support. Thus the costs of new technology compete with existing budgetary obligations, requiring the reallocation of funds. Such reallocation within most library budgets is a difficult process that often damages the morale of staff and reduces services to users.