Change: Watch For The Right Time

Collection budgets are an essential tool for building collections yet the amounts of allocations can ebb and flow over the years. Modifying the budget structure is an intimidating, exhausting exercise with administrative and political ramifications that affect the workload of collections librarians as well as the workflows in acquisitions departments. External and internal forces such as impending budget cuts and serials reviews, a new library system, new department heads, newly minted librarians’ learning curves, and the creation or demolition of big deals seem like roadblocks to a budget revision process. They can also be seized as opportunities to look at new models. Libraries get by with the allocations provided in any given year, but would it be better for the collections if the approach to allocations was more flexible from the beginning, more of a proactive allocation instead of reactive? At Binghamton University Libraries, the hiring of a new Head of Collection Development and migrating to a new library system necessitated collaborative conversations concerning structures and roles for the two departments. This paper presents scenarios and recommendations for determining when and how to collaboratively evaluate a legacy budget structure, redefine allocations, and review staff roles.