The University of California Libraries: A Plan for Development (1977)

CHAPTER VIII
ACQUISITION AND PROCESSING OF MATERIALS
Chapter III discussed the traditional approach to meeting the
needs of users for information, and pointed out that the heavy emphasis
on acquisitions has become both unrealistic and undesirable.
Continued growth of collections at an annual compounded rate of over
10 percent, as during the 1960's, is no longer financially feasible,
and the consequences of such growth rates--the increased difficulties
in processing the materials and actually making them available to
users, when and where needed--have prevented any demonstrable increase
in the usefulness of the collections.
As pointed out in Chapter IV, however, some materials must continue
to be acquired if the principal objective--provision of needed
material within the needed time span--is to be met. At each of the
levels defined earlier, adequate acquisition rates must therefore be
maintained, or the performance of the entire system is endangered.
At present, the funds available for purchase of library materials
are approximately 14 percent below what is needed to maintain
an adequate response at each of these levels; for the total system,
funds for purchase of approximately 609,000 volumes per year are
needed, whereas the current budget allows for only 523,000 volumes.
The plan calls for increases in the acquisition portion of the library
budget to the 609,000-volume level by 1978/79, after which,
assuming no major increases in enrollment or programs, it is anticipated
that the acquisition level can be held relatively constant
because of improved methods for sharing resources throughout the
system.
The derivation of these figures is given later in the chapter,
but the need for an increase in the level of acquisitions should
first be explained. There are several contributing factors: