Effects of the Economic Downturn on Academic Libraries in the UK: Positions and Projections in Mid-2009

Abstract

Findings confirm prior assumptions about human and information resources as targets for cuts, demonstrate strong commitment to service provision, reveal complex effects on development projects and highlight critical dimensions of managerial behaviour.Keywords: academic libraries, budgets, economic recession, higher education, surveys, university libraries. IntroductionThe world economy has recently experienced "a steep and synchronised global downturn" (HM Treasury, 2009: 2) that has been compared to the Great Depression (FSA, 2009; UN, 2009). The value of UK currency fell sharply between 2008 and 2009, with a drop in trading value of 19.3% (FSA, 2009) and the UK officially entered recession in January 2009. Recovery is expected to be slow and the squeeze on public spending severe (IFS, 2009).The UK higher education (HE) sector expanded following the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which established the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and abolished the distinction between universities and the former polytechnics and colleges/technical institutes (Jordan, 1998). According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) 1 , there were 165 higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK in 2008-09. Twenty large research-intensive universities belong to the Russell Group 2 , 19 smaller research universities form the 1994 Group 3 and another 19 institutions whose status pre-dates 1992 and commonly referred to as 'other pre-1992' universities. Newer HEIs now outnumber the pre-1992 institutions, with 57 'post-1992' universities and 50 HE colleges. The student population in HE has expanded dramatically in line with key policy documents (NCIHE, 1997;DfES, 2003). Nearly a quarter (22%) of 18-year-olds attended HE in 2000 (Mowat, 2006) The HE sector relies heavily on public finance, with HESA figures showing large proportions of its income derived from funding body allocations (34.8%) and research grants (16.3%). Some HEIs rely heavily on funding from industry, which will naturally suffer with large sections of industry in decline (Gilbert, 2008;Mohrman et al., 2008). Libraries and information services (LIS) are in a distinctive position as not-for-profit units that rely on allocation of funds from their parent organisations (Smith, 2002). Although universities' expenditure on LIS grew significantly from £322M in 1997-98 to £550M in 2008-09, their share of total university expenditure fell from 3.0% to 2.1% during this period of expansion (RIN, 2010).HE teaching has shifted towards independent, resource-based learning, often complemented by collaborative study (Abson, 2003;Marcum, 2001). In this resource-based learning context, LIS have a pivotal position "at the heart of the learning experience" (Webb, 1999: 158). LIS in HE have been radically changed by the "exponential growth of network access" (Feather, 2008: 90), which is now embedded in information provision (Atkinson and Morgan, 2007), enabling LIS to be "a means of access to information wherever it is held", as envisaged by the sem...

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