MIT Libraries Budget Information  

For questions about this page or to request updates, contact Ann Adelsberger.

Welcome to the MIT Libraries Budget Information Site.  This site has been created to help facilitate communication about the impact of the current economic downturn on the Libraries’ budget and operations.  It is intended to provide easy access to key communications from the Institute’s senior leaders, to articulate the principles which are guiding the Libraries through this fiscal challenge, and to offer all library staff an opportunity to share their suggestions with others.

Guiding principles and features of overall budget planning in the MIT Libraries

1. The Libraries will be guided by mission, experience, data, and feedback received from recent surveys of students and faculty.
2. We will benefit from insights provided by the Faculty Committee on the Library System, and the ideas that have started to flow from the strategic planning process begun earlier this year.
3. Reductions will be taken on a programmatic basis to the degree possible, to reduce the need for across-the-board cuts.
4. Conservation of resources will play an essential role in the Libraries’ strategy, but we recognize that it alone will not achieve the scale of budget reductions required.
5. Library staff will be encouraged and provided with the means to contribute their ideas.
6. Budget planning will be as open and transparent as possible.

Collections budgets
The MIT Libraries seek to employ a strategy for building collections and providing access to information resources, both electronic and print, that maintains the strongest possible support for MIT research and teaching. To do this we are guided by principles and approaches that allow us to make difficult decisions when faced with fiscal constraints and to focus on current and near-future needs of the MIT community.

At the same time, we are proactively monitoring initiatives that may expand our notion of collections and access to information resources. The landscape is changing in a variety of arenas that affect the collections work we do, in particular in the areas of publishing, archiving, and partnerships. Open access publishing models, new author rights initiatives, the Google book settlement, and the HathiTrust are some areas we will continue to monitor and engage in as appropriate. Collaborations and partnerships that extend collections and services to our community such as direct patron borrowing will also be reviewed.

The MIT Libraries' overall approach for developing collections and  providing access to a wide range of information resources is:

• To collect, secure access, organize, and disseminate all forms of recorded information, which are pertinent to existing MIT research and  educational programs.
• After current research and educational needs are met, strive to collect, secure access, organize, and disseminate a broad range of materials in new and emerging areas to support cutting edge research and teaching.

We are guided by these principles and approaches in doing our work and especially to address budget reductions:

• Continually monitor changes in academic programs in order to be responsive to needs of the Institute.
• Retain as much unique content as possible.
• Prefer e-content over physical materials for most journal literature and reference content.
• Continually evaluate indexing/abstracting services and database content for overlap, usability, and current need.
• Consider long-term access for future generations in decision making when possible.
• Maintain, affirm, and continue to develop reciprocal library agreements to broaden the scope of resources we are able to provide our community and for which we lack local depth.
• Maintain and expand interlibrary borrowing relationships that have proven track records for timeliness and effective reciprocal policies.
• Maintain and foster constructive consortial purchasing partnerships to contain costs.
• Negotiate aggressively for satisfactory prices by leveraging MIT reputation and stature in the research arena.
• Contribute to resource development efforts to expand our base of support for collections.
• Utilize appropriate usage metrics in decision making.