The Selection Team (Ellis, Simmons, Toth and Warren) met last week to create a selection plan for the remainder of FY09, given that the materials budget was reduced by 5% at mid-year. About one-time purchases, we discussed developing spending limits per subject, but decided to let the system proceed as is and to monitor spending closely. We’ll meet with Terry and Joy to talk about music purchasing, to better understand why we spend the amount that we do on music. We’d like to know what our peers spend and a bit more about our purchasing spending history. We plan to tighten the reins a bit on DVD purchasing and examine the approval plan profile to crates savings there. With subscriptions, we’ll once again examine serial continuations, standing orders, and databases to identify resources we no longer need.

Alas, all news isn’t bad. We entered into package deal with Sage Publications just before we were asked to reduce our budget. As with several other packages, for a premium over the cost of our subscribed titles (12% = $4455), we receive access to the rest of its journal roster, some 400+ titles. Sage publishes more in the humanities and social sciences than sciences, so we thought this deal would provide strong coverage in areas previous deals somewhat overlooked. This deal was funded mostly through canceling our subscription to Global Books in Print ($3800), a publication kept in-house for use by acquisitions staff. Our thanks to Acquisitions for letting us know they can live without GBIP.