Recurring materials budget funds allocated to the University by the state legislature each year are used to acquire materials for the Library’s collections, fund access to remote electronic resources, and pay associated access, delivery, and preservation expenses. These expenditures include payments for monograph and other one-time orders (including audio-visual materials), subscription and standing order payments, binding expenses, access and simultaneous user fees associated with remote electronic resources, and costs associated with the development and maintenance of an integrate online catalog. A small Miscellaneous fund line covers preservation microfilming and charges associated with participation in out-of-print online networks. Both capitalized and non-capitalized expenditures are paid with materials budget funds. Materials expenditures are tracked within several categories:

• Firm Orders (Monographs, A-V Materials, Government Documents, Maps, Periodical Backsets)
• Periodicals (includes CD-ROM subscriptions and network charges)
• Serials (classified continuations)
• Access Charges (Web-based indexes/abstracts and full-text resources)
• Binding (of both Periodicals and Monographs)
• Miscellaneous (out-of-print services, replacement photocopies, sample copies, preservation microfilming)

The materials budget is allocated by subject area, not to academic departments or programs. Allocations are made within seven broad subject areas: Business, Education, Humanities and Fine Arts, Science and Technology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Library (law, library professional literature, medicine, popular reading, discretionary fund), and Reference and Special Services (Reference Collection, Career Collection, Art & Music non-print, Documents and Maps, Special Collection, Youth Collection). Within the seven broad divisions, encumbrances for one-time orders and expenditures for all materials are tracked according to specific subject lines (e.g., Accounting, French, Sociology, Biology) and material type (monograph/firm order, periodical, serial, remote electronic resources).

Allocations for specific subject areas, which are tied closely to the curricula and academic departments on campus, are determined, for the most part, by a formula. The formula incorporates a number of weighted factors: student credit hours, departmental contact hours, number of faculty FTEs, number of declared majors, average cost of materials, books circulation, and anticipated journals dependency. In some instances, figures which represent three-year averages are used in order to minimize the budgetary impact of dramatic, and possibly short-term, changes. Differences in undergraduate and graduate enrollments and in course levels are factored into the formula.

Where necessary, statistics utilized in the budget formula which are cumulated and reported by department or program are reassigned to discrete subject areas. For example, credit hour and contact hour statistics for Criminology and Sociology, reported jointly by the Registrar’s Office, are divided between two subject allocations. Allocations to selected subject areas which do not have direct ties to local academic programs (e.g., Law, Medicine, Library Professional Literature) and to discrete library collections (e.g., Reference, Career, Documents and Maps) are not determined by formula; these are set at an established, and regularly reviewed, percentage of the materials budget.

At present, subject allocations determined by the formula receive a base allocation equivalent to 50 percent of the previous fiscal year's final allocation.

September 14, 1999