Pricing Policies in Academic Libraries

ECONOMICPRESSURE ON LIBRARIES in the United States is approaching a critical stage.’ Academic libraries in particular are vulnerable to this pressure because of tightened budgets coupled with rapidly increasing costs. Academic institutions have been hurt economically by the need to increase tuition, while enrollment is decreasing due to lower birthrates in the 1950s and early 1960s, less interest from youth and reduced pressure to attend college. These trends should continue over the next ten years,2 so there is little relief in sight. In universities and colleges, some costs, such as those for facilities and tenured faculty, are relatively fixed compared to enrollment, necessitating budget cuts in other areas, such as libraries. Evidence suggests that academic library budgets are rising more slowly than the overall university budgets.s For example, in 1973-76, most academic libraries’ budgets increased at a rate of about 8-10 percent per year.* Publishers of scientific and technical journals increased prices to libraries nearly 12 percent annually from 1975 to 1977.6 Even though the difference from year to year is not great, it must ultimately force some drastic changes in library operations. As a result of these economic pressures, libraries have sought ways to reduce costs through such means as not subscribing to new periodicals, not renewing subscriptions, canceling duplicate subscriptions, reducing book purchases, automating cataloging, and participating in consortia and networks.E Further reduction in periodical subscriptions is likely to result in increased interlibrary lending and photocopying, which shifts some of the cost burden from the borrowing library to the lending library. Obvi-