Submitted by Bill Warren

We have recently started purchasing materials for the new Middlebury summer-language program at Mills College, which will start this year. Courses will be offered in Arabic (all levels), and French, Italian, and Spanish (lower levels). The items we buy will be received and paid for here. Then, after cataloging and processing, they will be shipped to Mills (in Oakland, California). Fortunately, the money to pay for these resources is not coming from the library materials budget, which has suffered a reduction of almost 6% this year because of the lamentable state of the economy. The necessary funds—a relatively modest amount, since lower-level language courses tend not to be very library-intensive—are being furnished by the language-schools administration. Thanks to colleagues in the language schools and the financial offices, we have received the necessary authorizations to directly expend money from the budget lines involved, rather than having to resort to cumbersome internal transfers of funds from one budget to another for each purchase. About 10% of the money allocated has been committed so far.