By Jean Cleveland
The University of Georgia Libraries ranked 32nd among the 110 institutions in the Association of Research Libraries 1996-97 membership index.
The membership index is calculated annually using a formula applied to five factors to establish a threshold for admittance to ARL, according to University Librarian William Gray Potter. UGA Libraries were 30th in the 1995-96 index.
“While we should be proud to rank in the top third of the largest academic libraries in the United States and Canada, the ARL membership index is a measure of size and quantity of volumes held, dollars spent and people employed. It is not meant to be used as a measure of the quality of a library or to determine whether the students and faculty of a library are being well served,” says Potter, who serves on the ARL board of directors. “I consistently hear from faculty that they are able to find the information and resources they need at Georgia more readily than they can at libraries that might rank above us in the ARL index. Our libraries are focused on curriculum and research needs; we don’t have much that’s extraneous, and I think that shows in our satisfaction level.”
All five factors depend upon expenditures for the year.
“Our support has stayed constant relative to other libraries. We’ve had good increases, and might see some improvement in the rankings for 1997-98,” Potter says. “We had $1 million in our book budget for the last fiscal year. These rankings are a good relative measure of how good your funding is.”
All institutions except one that rank above UGA have a medical school, an engineering school or both, Potter says.
UGA is particularly strong in one area, the number of current serials, an indication of an emphasis on science. One dilemma facing all institutions is a rapid escalation in the cost of scholarly journals.
“The journals we subscribe to are quite important and needed by researchers,” Potter says. “However, the subscription prices for these journals increase about 12 percent each year. If we don’t get a funding increase next year, we will have to cancel some journals, which is a potential problem. Some universities have responded to the crisis better than others, but it will remain a problem until we find another way to communicate scholarly information.”
While printed journals comprise the bulk of subscriptions, Potter notes that subscriptions to electronic publications make up about 10 percent of the libraries’ budget. That figure does not include the resources available through GALILEO, which are funded through the board of regents for all University System institutions.
Potter says ARL over the years has considered developing qualitative rankings to set benchmarks for service.
“That’s probably more important, but it is very difficult,” he says. |
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