Correction Appended

In the wake of substantial budget cuts for Cornell’s libraries, the University signed a deal this past weekend to sell a 95,000 volume duplicative collection in Uris Library to Tsinghua University in Beijing, according to Anne Kenney, University librarian for the Carl A. Kroch Library.

Cornell has been collaborating with Tsinghua on research projects, faculty exchanges and student work and study options for the past decade. In 2004, former Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman '77 visited Tsinghua to initiate a “strategic partnership,” which laid the groundwork for future cooperation in the fields of engineering and physical sciences, according to the Cornell website.

Last Thursday, representatives from Tsinghua, including the university’s vice president and library director, came to Cornell to discuss the terms of the book sale. By Friday, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by representatives from both universities in front of Provost Kent Fuchs, according to Kenney.

The MOU will give Tsinghua the means to expand its own library system in the form of a new humanities and social sciences library scheduled to open in the spring of 2011. It will also provide Cornell’s libraries with the financial means to alleviate some of the pressures caused by a 5-percent decrease in funding this year, Kenney said.

Kenney could not comment on the total amount Tsinghua agreed to pay for the collection because specifics like the cost of shipping and relocation have yet to be calculated.

“I am hesitant to say what the amount is, but suffice it to say, it was an attractive offer and the funds will help us compensate in part for the deep cut we took this year,” Kenney said.

Since last semester, the library has had to make sacrifices as a result of this decrease in funding. Although it is still too early to say what the long-term effects will be on the school, the library’s budget cut has resulted in layoffs, cancellation of journal subscriptions and the closing of the Physical Sciences Library at the end of the semester, said John Saylor, the associate University librarian for scholarly resources and special collections.

The library’s budget for the 2009-10 school year will be $51.8 million including endowments and sponsored funds, which is much smaller in comparison to previous years, as the library spent $56.7 million in 2008 and $53.6 million in 2007, according to the library’s annual reports.

Cornell is not the only university whose libraries have been affected by the recession. Harvard and Yale experienced larger budget cuts than Cornell this year, since 50 percent of their funding comes from outside donations, whereas only 18 percent of Cornell’s library funding comes in the form of such gifts, according to Saylor.

In contrast, schools like NYU and Columbia saw a 5 to 6 percent budget increase this year for library materials, as these universities decided to subtract funding from other sources rather than from their library collections budget, Saylor said.

With the budget information Cornell librarians receive in the spring semester, representative committees decide how much money each academic subject area on campus will receive based on their particular needs, Saylor said.

This year, $14 million of the budget will go towards collections and $30 million will go toward non-materials such as operating costs and employee salaries. Because of the overall cut in funds, the collections budget, which is used to purchase books and subscribe to journals, decreased by about seven percent this year and the University is asking the library to cut back by 10 percent next year, Kenney said.

The biggest concern about the budget cut is the effect it will have on the size and inclusiveness of Cornell’s total collections. Six years ago, Cornell was ranked ninth among North American research libraries, however, this year it was rated 20th, according to the Association of Research Libraries website.

“In the 37 years that I’ve worked at Cornell, I’ve never experienced a negative budget allocation. They’ve always been positive,” Saylor said, explaining that, before this year, he could usually expect anywhere between a 2 to 7 percent increase in the library’s budget.

To add to the library’s financial issues, an overall increase in the cost of books and journal subscriptions over the years has caused the number of materials available to students and faculty to decrease. It has also forced selectors, the people who buy the books and journals for the libraries, to make difficult decisions about which resources are most important, Saylor said.

According to Saylor, the cost of journal subscriptions increases every year based on how long the journal has been in publication. In order to keep old subscriptions and also find new ones that might be beneficial to students, the library has to utilize a large portion of its budget.

To compensate for these rising costs and a lower budget, the library cancelled over 1,100 journal subscriptions this past year. Certain well-known titles like the Journal of Brain Research costs the library $24,000 a year, which is not surprising, Saylor said, since the science-related books and journals typically cost more than the humanities and social-science resources.

“I have a double pressure,” Kenney said. “Some institutions have gutted their humanities budget to support their science budget because of the strangle hold that the large commercial publishers have on colleges and universities, but I’m trying to avoid that.”

In 2009, the library purchased “big deal” packages from Elsevier and Wiley, two of the largest scientific publishers in the world, costing around $3.13 million, according to Kenney. She said this decision privileged the science collections at the expense of the social sciences, impeding the library’s ability to draw together a more diverse range of materials or make innovations in how these materials were accessed and used.

The University’s librarians are making efforts to combat these problems, however, such as eliminating print copies of journals when electronic versions are available and getting rid of duplicate copies of books, as was done in this recent large-scale book sale with Tsinghua, Saylor said.

“In this budget climate anything can be considered,” said Saylor, “but nothing will be done without the consultation of the community.”

The original article incorrectly excluded the Medical College and Adelson Library budgets when reporting the library’s budget. In fact, all funding sources including endowments and sponsored funds is estimated to be $51.8 million.

Additionally, the number of cancelled journal subscriptions this past year is 1,100. The Sun regrets these errors.