Information Services Committee
10th March 2010
Departmental Materials Fund 2010/11
Purpose
This paper informs Information Services Committee of the challenges that we are currently
experiencing with the Departmental Materials Fund and updates colleagues on future
activity to manage the Fund as we move into a more difficult financial climate.
Background
The Departmental Materials Fund provides information resources to support the teaching,
learning and research of the University. It is predicated on a Needs Analysis undertaken
annually between Liaison Librarians and Academic Schools. This process identifies predicted
spend in four main areas - periodicals, datasets, document delivery and books with the
occasional addition by some Schools of other priority areas for spending such as to support
NSS outcomes or the Widening Participation agenda. In addition library staff estimate likely
inflationary charges, exchange rate fluctuations, student number variations and other
matters with the potential to impact on costs in order to reach a total amount necessary to
continue to support the resources identified by Schools.
The final amount identified as required by each School forms part of budget negotiations
with the Finance department by Information Services.
Context for 2010/11
For a number of years the level of funding of the DMF at Kent has been falling behind that
provided by our competitor institutions.
See appendix A
For the financial year 2010/11 it was estimated by Information Services that an additional
£357,990 would be required in order to meet the demands of a range of pressures on
expenditure including the increase in VAT to 20% and this data was presented at two budget
meetings in May 2010.
The subsequent decision to apply a 0% increase to the DMF has had serious implications for
the purchasing power for a number of Schools, particularly those already carrying a deficit
on their DMF.
Information Services has been able to mitigate £80,000 of the shortfall in the current
financial year by using some temporary funding provided by the Finance department to
support all of the funding bids made by the department in May 2010 and a further £50,000
is being held to support further mitigation.
Gill Woodhams – Assistant Director – Planning and Administrations, Information Services
Feb 2011
Current Situation
The shortfall in the DMF for 2010/11 has given rise to purchasing problems with both
bundled journal/dataset packages and some individual titles. There have been a number of
cancellations and the termination of the Springer deal, in particular, has given rise to
concerns in academic Schools.
Liaison Librarians have been tasked, since August 2010, with negotiating with their Schools
to define which journals are of most importance and which are no longer affordable.
Although we have good journal access information aggregated at University level we are
currently unable to identify use at School level. We are aware that there are inconsistencies
in the way Schools currently underwrite the costs of bundled packages and cross-School use
is not currently well reflected in the charging mechanism.
Unfortunately the deadline for the Springer deal, negotiated by JISC Collections, arrived
before we were able to reach a conclusion on the overall value of the package to the
University with those Schools who had been bearing the most significant costs unable to
contribute at previous levels. We are now in discussion with Springer to re-establish access
to those titles of most importance to the University.
Ideally there would have been no break in service for access to the Springer titles and we
intend to avoid a recurrence of this situation in the future.
Future Planning
The Needs Analysis for 2011/12 is underway with most Schools having submitted
requirements through their Liaison Librarian and a bid for the university to support the DMF
will be made during the budget planning round.
A number of other activities will also be taking place to ensure that value for money is
achieved with the available funding.
a) Schools with an interest in journals currently available through the Science Direct
deal will be asked to review their requirements as this deal is due to be renegotiated
in Summer 2011.
b) Information Services will be reviewing the outcome of RAPTOR, a JISC funded project
due to report in March 2011, intended to enable universities to identify journal
usage in such a way as to allow us to apportion costs to Schools based on usage of
titles.
c) Other costly deals/titles will be identified with a view to assessing the value for
money of direct access compared to document delivery of needed volumes/articles
Gill Woodhams – Assistant Director – Planning and Administrations, Information Services
Feb 2011