Sing for your supper - how uni libraries win budgets

University library budgets are shrinking. Not only has library funding declined as a proportion of overall institutional spend, it has also failed to keep in step with costs, many of them new.

Some library directors are taking an active and creative approach to the shortfall. They are spearheading fundraising and forging partnerships to save money
and attract new budget streams. This is an increasingly central part of their role, and those who have been most innovative and active in their fundraising research
have been able to attract considerable sums of money to their library.

But critics say that fundraising should not be a central function for top library
management and that higher education funding bodies must understand and meet the need for better funding. Higher education libraries receive funds from a range of sources, public and private. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) provides up to 60% of the income for English universities, and libraries must fight for their slice of this pie.

HEFCE’s failure to ringfence funds for library provision came in for criticism in the Science and Technology Select Committee’s 10th report: “It is unacceptable that
HEFCE has shown so little interest in library budgets. We recommend that it commission a study from HEPI [Higher Education Policy Institute] to ascertain both current library funding levels and library funding needs. We recommend that HEFCE
establish a code of good practice for library funding that universities can draw upon when allocating budgets.”

In its defence, HEFCE pointed out that library funding was not part of its job: “HEIs for their part are autonomous bodies drawing their funding from a range of public and private sources including HEFCE. They are accountable to HEFCE for their good management of public funds but are not generally subject to detailed requirements as to how these are spent.”

Funding arrangements for universities are changing, which may well affect how funds within the university are allocated. HEFCE is changing its funding method from 2007 and the research assessment exercise, which is the basis for distributing more than £1bn to universities a year, will be held for the last time in 2008. After that, funding will be based on a number of measures – mainly how much each university brings in from research grants and industry contracts.

NEW INCOME STREAMS

Whatever the changes in the funding systems it looks very likely that university
librarians will need to continue singing for their supper, justifying their impact and relevance and creating new income streams. These realities have already started to bite and some libraries have discovered that a useful strategy is to employ someone specifically to raise money for them.

Edinburgh University Library employed a business development manager to help it achieve its target of 25% of its funding being external. Sheila Cannell, director of library services, says: “Given the continuing pressure on library materials, it is
incumbent on us to look for alternative sources of income. We use external income to do a lot of our development. We couldn’t do the development from our core funding and this has given us a leading edge.

“We appointed a full-time business development manager for a year and that has been successful – now she has been appointed by the university alumni fundraising section. The library redevelopment project is now a top priority – you need to show that you mean it.”

Cannell believes that fundraisers require a very specific skillset: “I think ours brought in a smarter attitude to funding. You have to work hard at it to tick all the boxes of funders and you have to be fairly rooted in the institutional strategy.

While she was with us, she made links to other staff – this is not a one person
job. Getting everyone to think of this kind of income generation is part of their job.”

PROFESSIONAL FUNDRAISERS

The University of Aberdeen has embarked on a flagship library project worth £55.5m as part of its Sixth Century campaign. It believes that the project is one of the largestever fundraising campaigns to be undertaken by a UK university for
a new library.

Professional fundraisers have been brought in to help achieve Aberdeen meet its target. Professor Chris Gane, vice-principal for library and information services, says: “The university has, over recent years, invested in growing a professional
development team of experienced international fundraisers, supported by a backroom operations team who use all the methods and research tools regarded as best practice for a professional fundraising operation.”

University library staff will contribute to the efforts of the fundraising team. “As this facility will be so central to university life and the academic strategy, many staff will be contributing to the project,” says Gane. “For example, specialist staff in
charge of our special collections of historic material welcome visits from potential donors interested in seeing at first hand the treasures that will be rehoused and showcased in the new facility.”

Specialist staff at Manchester University are playing a similar role in showing round potential donors. Library director Bob Simpson believes that existing staff are best placed to bring in the money.

The university launched a campaign in 2003 to raise £15m to redevelop its John Rylands library; all but £1.4m has been raised largely through individual
benefactors, who have given up to £90,000 each, and charitable foundations, which have donated up to £300,000 each. A current member of library staff was employed to research and approach potential benefactors.

Simpson believes that the best fundraisers for the university library are current employees. “It has to be done by people who have commitment and empathy with the buildings and the contents,” he says. “It is important to use our people.”

Oxford University Library Services (OULS) director Reg Carr is spending all his time raising money – so much so that Ronald Milne is acting director while Carr devotes his energies to fundraising for the massive redevelopment taking place at OULS. “People want to meet the top person. He has two or three people helping him,” says Carr.

The 30 libraries that were originally in OULS will shrink to around a dozen, saving staff and space costs. “We are always in funding mode,” says Milne. “We have
three large capital projects. The Oxford University Press is funding our new deposit library, costing £30m. The new Bodleian Library will cost £60m and half must be funded.”

OULS is also hoping to build a new humanities library by the end of 2010, which will consolidate up to a dozen libraries into a single space.

Money raised through fundraising from benefactors and sponsorship typically goes into redevelopment projects. Attracting more money for the day-to-day running of the library is a more politically sensitive kettle of fish. Successfully arguing for budget increases depends on a number of factors but an increasingly important
one is the ability to prove your case.

“Fundraising is just part of the library’s budgetary work,” says Edinburgh’s Cannell. “If we are to maintain our budget we need to look at more efficiencies as part of a
portfolio of strategies. Another strand of our work is to look at the impact of the library – the material we are making available is more used and has more impact and we need to be able to show that.”

While no one in the UK has yet gone down the route of the Florida State Library, which sought to prove its return on investment, figures that show library usage and impact or comparisons with similar libraries can help to make a case.

EXPRESS THE SOFT BENEFITS

OULS commissioned a consultancy, the Electronic Library and Information Service for Oxford (ELISO), as it felt it was not putting anything like enough investment into electronic resources. ELISO’s research confirmed its suspicions.

“Compared with Harvard and the like we spend a quarter of what they spend on electronic publications and half of what Imperial College London spends. Now we know we have to increase our spend by £1m a year,” said Milne when the findings were known last year. That funding has now been put in place.

There is no set formula for demonstrating the benefits of the library to funders. But academics at Glasgow University have developed a model – Espida – that helps express a business case where the benefits are generally not financial but harder-to measure attributes such as reputation, intellectual capital, way of working, and so on. Espida is being used initially within the area of digital resource management.
Glasgow University Library is planning to do a case study retrospectively evaluating the Enlighten institutional repository, and a range of libraries in the UK and abroad have downloaded the model materials.

Project leader James Currall says: “If there is a case to be made, it can be better expressed using the Espida methodology than any other techniques, simply because there are a wider range of benefits available from four dimensions than there are
from a single one [financial].”

Another way of tapping into ongoing funding or budgetary savings is to forge partnerships beyond the library. Libraries need to be creative about forming new partnerships and joining consortiums – to share storage, to apply jointly for grants, to negotiate deals with publishers, and the like. Or the library might be able
to tap in to funds going to other university departments where there is an overlapping need.

Cannell says: “We bought an LMS with the National Library of Scotland and that saved us both a lot of money. Since then we have grown the consortium to include other universities, which has let us keep some support staff in employment.

“These days we work much more closely with partners elsewhere in the university. Not all the funds benefit us directly – for example, we work with researchers on digitisation projects that they have funds for.”

Other institutions have tapped into savings on tax or VAT that are available if they structure their finances carefully, especially when using external service suppliers.
Many library directors are watching the case of Newnham College, Cambridge, with interest. It came up against the VAT authorities after it set up a subsidiary company to run its library services. The Court of Appeal ruled that Newnham was
entitled to recover VAT on works carried out to its library as the college  had not remained in occupation. HMRC is set to appeal against the court’s decision.

A portfolio of strategies is needed to save budget and create funds. The reality is that fundraising has become part of the university librarian’s job and a creative and active approach to it will benefit everyone.

GRABBING A SLICE OF THE PFI PIE

Worcester University is set to get its hands on £38m in PFI funding for its library through an innovative partnership with Worcestershire County Council and Worcester City Council. Plans have been submitted for a joint university and public library, a children and young people’s library, a county record office and
archaeological services all under one roof in a new city centre learning quarter.

The university also has plans to expand its student population by around 5,000 over the next 10 years and to develop a second campus, including a library, in the
city centre.

“The city council had been seeking funding for a new public library, so we looked at the benefits for each other of a shared facility,” says Peter Parkes, head of strategic projects.

PFI funding could only be attracted by the city council – the university couldn’t do it alone. “The government was attracted by the project’s innovation and
uniqueness. We were the only library to attract this funding this time. The council could not have done it without the library, and vice versa,” says Parkes.

“We envisage a joint operation that can deliver library services. We will bring all the staff together in one joint operation and hope there will be significant
cross-fertilisation of ideas and roles,” he says.

The proposed building will have a flexible layout and wireless technology. The children’s library will have its own area but there will be no zoning between public
and university in the main adult library. Users won’t know whether they are borrowing public or university books.

Parkes believes any practical issues can be solved. “We may need to keep back stock for students with coursework or assignments but I am sure we can manage that. The main study zone will house up to 800 students. 750 square metres is for
children and we hope there will be crossover between the groups – for example, drama students performing to children.”

Subject to planning and PFI approval, building work on the project is set to start in 2008.

I WANT MONEY (THAT’S WHAT I WANT!)

External funding is available from a number of sources; a few important ones are mentioned below. University libraries may have to take a lateral approach to
applying for funds. One way might be to go into partnership to attract new money, as Worcester University did when it hooked up with the city and
county councils to win PFI funding.

Partnerships with universities in Europe could be a first step towards attracting European funding. Or discrete projects within the library might attract
arts and cultural funding.

■ www.welcomeurope.com A
database of EU grants and loans.
■ fp6uk.ost.gov.uk/fp7 The
Framework Programme (FP) is the
European Union’s main
instrument for funding research
and technological development.
FP7 will take over from FP6 on 1
January 2007 and will run for
seven years, funding
internationally collaborative
technology projects to bring
about the information society.
■ www.euclid.info Provides info
about EU sources of funding. It is
also the official UK contact point
for the EU’s Culture 2000
programme (Culture 2007 from 1
January 2007). The first call for
Culture 2007 is expected to be
launched this autumn although
it may be delayed until early
2007. Funds will be available for
three European institutions
working together to share
European culture.
■ www.jisc.ac.uk/capital_
roadmap.html JISC has an extra
£81m in capital programme
funding over the next two years.
The two strands that will most
interest librarians will be
repositories (£13.8m) and
digitisation (£6m). Further details
are available on the site.
■ www.lotteryfunding.org.uk
The Arts Council makes grants of
up to £100,000 for arts-related
organisations to do their work.
Nesta supports organisations
exploring new ideas, developing
new products and services, or
experimenting with nurturing
creativity for commercial and
social benefit.
The Heritage Lottery Fund helps
non-profit groups with projects
to conserve and enhance the UK’s
diverse heritage, encourage more
people to be involved in their
heritage and make sure that
everyone can learn about, have
access to and enjoy their
heritage. The fund operates a
number of grant schemes,
handing out anything from
£5,000 to in excess of £1m.

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