Allocation Formula Factors

A. STUDENT CREDIT HOURS (WEIGHTED)

Measure of student enrollments in departmental course offerings (previous year). Credit Hour counts provided by the College's Office of Research, Analysis & Planning.

Column A-1: Weighted C.H. count.

Undergraduate, lower level: 1
Undergraduate, upper level: 2
Graduate student: 3

Column A-2: Percentage values

B. FACULTY SIZE

Measure of faculty size by department (previous year). Data provided by the College's Office of Research, Analysis & Planning.

Column B-1: Count (with allowance made for part-time appointments)
Column B-2: percentage values

C. CIRCULATION OF BOOKS

Relation of patron use of the collection to academic programs (previous year). Circulation statistics are compiled by Library of Congress (LC) classification numbers corresponding to departmental programs/course offerings. For example, "N" class books (Art) that circulated during the previous year are tallied and credited to the Art Department.

Column C-1: Total number of book circulations, credited by department
Column C-2: Percentage values

D. BOOK PUBLISHING STATISTICS

Estimation of previous year's publishing outputs and per volume prices relevant to local academic programs. Data taken from the Blackwell Approval Program Coverage and Cost Study.

Column D-1: Publishing outputs (no. of books) credited by department, using LC classification numbers.
Column D-2: Per volume prices of books in LC classifications from D-1
Column D-3: Total estimated publishing costs per discipline (D-1 x D-2)
Column D-4: Percentage values

E. AVERAGE OF FACTOR PERCENTAGES

Percentage values of each of the four above factors (Columns A-D) are averaged here to give final percentages.

F. BASIC (FORMULA-DERIVED) DEPARTMENTAL ALLOCATIONS

The percentage values from Column E are here converted into dollar amounts based on the total funding available for departments.

G. RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENTAL ALLOCATIONS

Allocations recommended by Library personnel involved with the expenditure of the Library's acquisitions budget (Collection Management, Acquisitions, and Library Administration). These recognize various factors that the formula fails to take into account.

"Interdisciplinariness" – Allocation of additional monies to departments with significant interdisciplinary needs.
Data from report of previous year's orders for each department, analyzed against LC classification numbers appropriate to department. This factor is based on the reasonable assumption that the degree to which a department's library acquisitions is concentrated or dispersed among the LC subject divisions reflects, in large measure, the extent to which its curricula are interdisciplinary. Those departments showing considerable dispersal would seem to be highly interdisciplinary. Other departments showing little dispersal are regarded as having a more precisely defined, i.e., less interdisciplinary, program.
Example: If during one year, of 150 volumes ordered by African-American Studies, only 50 fell within the DT and E184.5-E185 classifications, then 66% of their purchasing would represent other subject areas. Thus AAS would be viewed as highly interdisciplinary.
"Online-liness" – Decrease in book allocation for departments recognized to be much more highly dependent on online resources.
Other factors – Increase or decrease in allocation for extraordinary circumstances (department regularly and significantly underspends their budget, department is new and has no figures from previous year on which to base a formula-derived allocation, etc.), or because Basic Allocation amount is judged inadequate or excessive by Library personnel involved with the expenditure of the Library's acquisitions budget (Collection Management, Acquisitions, Departmental Library Liaison, and Library Administration).