Balancing the Books

A plunge in state funding for UC Berkeley's library could jeopardize its top-notch standing, after two years of heavy cuts has lead to tight staffing, shorter reference hours and slower service.

Assistants are up to their necks in unshelved books, and fewer staff members are available to assist students in navigating library resources.

The library's operating budget was slashed $1.4 million this year, leaving the budgeted $4 million behind its funding level two years ago.

"We've had to tighten our belts everywhere," said Tom Leonard, the university librarian.

The cuts imperil both the library's collections and staff.

Publishing price inflation in the 90s and decreased state support prompted Chancellor Robert Berdahl to allocate $5.5 million to restore the library's slumping collections and operations.

The extra cash led the library to three years of stability. But that cushion started wearing down in 2002.

"Where we are today is getting back to close to where we were in 1998 when we needed help," said Mike Rancer, library chief administrative officer.

While the collections budget traditionally receives support from private donors, extra hands in the library are usually dependent on state support.

In order to keep library services steady, staff members have been taking the brunt of the budget cuts, Rancer said.

Twenty-four staff members voluntarily left their positions with early retirement incentives this month. The exodus of staff members rounds out an 18-month hiring freeze that eliminated 60 staff members, including language and computer specialists, cataloguers and administrative staff.

"The workloads are enormous right now throughout the library in almost every department," Rancer said. "There are times when we just say we can't do it."

Declining staff support means more than just longer lines and slower processing speeds for library users.

Specialty libraries such as the Physics and East Asian libraries have been left temporarily without librarians after several senior staff members retired early this year, leaving researchers without experts to help navigate reference materials.

The East Asian Library has stopped expanding its Chinese collection altogether, said library Director Peter Zhou. And with two Chinese librarians retiring early in the last five months, the library is left without a Chinese specialist qualified to select books.

Shifting staff members into different positions could be a solution, but it is sometimes impossible when working with specialists, Zhou said. The library plans to hire two replacement librarians, but the searches could take as long as a year, he said.

As cash declines on the operational side, the university's esteemed library collection has been able to hold state funding levels steady.

But with a $600,000 deficit this year, campus libraries can no longer afford to meet the escalating costs of maintaining collections.

With subscription rates for academic journals rising rapidly, libraries have been forced to reduce their paper collections for the past two years.

More than 700 printed academic journal titles have been slashed or reduced this year.

This cut in journal offerings leaves faculty questioning whether the library can maintain its ranking among leading top universities.

"It's easy to understand that if every year we are buying a smaller percentage of important scholarly works, that is not a good trend," Leonard said.

The Association of Resource Libraries-the most respected organization that issues library rankings-gives marks according to a library's collection size and staff, Leonard said.

Though the library's paper collection may falter in comparison to those of private universities, Leonard said UC Berkeley is a leader in modernization of library resources, something unaccounted for when it comes to ranking.

UC Berkeley libraries are ranked third in the nation, only trailing behind Harvard and Yale, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. But as the library moves into the digital age with declining state support, keeping that slot will be a challenge.

Digitizing the library's journal and other scholarly publishing collections remains a top priority because researchers prefer looking through online databases, Leonard said.

"Berkeley faculty is a pretty sophisticated group, and they don't want us to be a book museum," he said.

The trouble of shuffling through rolls of newspaper microfilm can be eliminated as newspaper collections are converted to searchable online databases, Leonard said.

Yet the conversion to digitized media brings with it more costs: constantly updating outdated technology to access older publications and converting to a staff that is specialized in computer skills.

The staffing crunch doesn't help at a time when the library needs to hire more specialists, Leonard said.

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