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

X. Housing 163
not be housed in existing facilities. For this purpose, quotations
on the cost of such conversion were obtained from commercial firms.
Because the cost of filming serials is much more than the cost of
filming monographs, separate figures were obtained, and a weighted
average was then calculated, based upon the estimated proportion of
each type of material to be filmed. The resulting figure was $34.63
per volume. The cost of the space required by the full-size volume,
at .08 asf per volume and an average construction cost of approximately
$110 per asf, is only $8.80, however, so that even if the
resulting microform occupied no space, the cost of this alternative
is much greater than the cost of new construction.
A second alternative that was considered is acquiring those
materials that are already in microform and commercially available,
and substituting these for their bound-volume equivalents. To explore
this possibility, a sampling of 9,000 titles was checked by
the largest commercial vendor of library microforms, and a report
was furnished by the vendor on those titles that could be supplied,
with their costs. Virtually no monographs were available, so the
calculation of possible savings was based solely on periodical titles.
Table 29 indicates the results of the calculation. Savings in space
would indeed result, but the savings in construction costs would be
more than offset by the combined cost of the microfilm, the additional
microfilm readers required, and the space required for both the film
and the readers.
The third microform alternative considered was subscription to
microform copies of current journals (if microform copies are commercially
available) in addition to subscriptions to the full-size
originals. The originals would still be needed, because most titles
for which microform copies are available are high-use journals, but
the full-size copies would be discarded after two or three years and
the microform retained as the permanent copy, instead of binding the
original issues.
The analysis of this alternative is shown in Table 30. Again,
samples were taken and availability of titles was ascertained, then
projected on a systemwide basis. The experience of UC libraries to