College and Research Libraries Quantifying the Allocation of Monograph Funds: An Instance in Practice William McPheron This paper describes a formula for distributing monograph funds that was developed at a medium-sized university library by a committee of subject specialists working closely with other bibliographers. Relying on a combination of objective data and professional judgment, the method employs a size-of-literature approach to the allocations process but significantly alters traditional versions of that model. Procedural innovations are made not only in the means of establishing the amount and cost of materials relevant to an academic discipline, but also in the manner of using these figures to calculate specific allotments. More radically, need and enrollment factors, characteristically confined to usage-based formulas, are incorporated in order to modify abstract costs by probable levels of local demand. ne of the recurring challenges of academic librarianship is the equitable division of materials budgets among rival subject areas. An active tradition of reporting practical approaches to the task, as well as a growing body of theoretical research on the topic, witnesses the seriousness with which the problem is regarded. When a Collections Advisory Committee was ap- pointed within the Central Libraries sys- tem of the University of Cincinnati and charged with developing a formal method of distributing monograph funds, there was, consequently, a pervasive sense of entering a region well populated by com- peting methodologies. Amid the conflict of ideas characteristic of this territory, agreement does exist, however, on at least one point. This common theme is stated clearly in the RTSD "Guidelines for the Allocation of Library Materials Budgets'': ''each institution will need to develop its own method for allocation which will ap- ply to its own circumstance." 1 Recognition of the importance of local conditions usually focuses on the more easily definable aspects of the particular institution. Less frequently acknowl- edged is the significance of an institution's intellectual and political climate, which al- ways directs, and sometimes dictates, choice among different solutions to a problem. Since the Collections Advisory Committee itself was deliberately consti- tuted to reflect the various elements of the local environment, it was sensitive to dif- fering points of view and concerned to ac- commodate them. Indeed, there was a general realization that for a new alloca- tions method to command the consensus required for smooth implementation, the technique must not only be consistent in its treatment of objective factors but also William McPheron is subject librarian for English, American, and comparative literature, Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of New York at Buffalo. Though the paper was personally authored, the development of the formula was a joint effort. The other members of the committee whose work is presented here were: Elizabeth Douthitt Byrne, head, Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning Library; Dorice DesChene, head, Chemistry- Biology Library; L. Ronald Frommeyer, head, Acquisitions Department; Sally Moffitt Neely, reference librarian and bibliographer for history; and Randall L. Roberts, reference librarian and bibliographer for the social sciences-all of the University of Cincinnati Central Libraries. 116 be congruent with the subjective expecta- tions of the librarians, faculty, and admin- istrators involved. From the twin necessity of methodologi- cal integrity and political suitability, there emerged a quantitative procedure for dis- tributing monograph funds that found widespread acceptance. Its interest at large is twofold. First, it exemplifies how a medium-sized academic library, relying on a representative committee of subject specialists and the cooperation of their col- leagues, successfully introduced an im- personal formula into the allocations pro- cess. Second, the procedure itself, a tripartite operation, accomplished a major revision of traditional size-of-literature ap- proaches to the division of monograph funds. The initial stage introduces a series of refinements in determining the total cost of monographic literature relevant to academic budget lines. The second stage modifies those cost figures by incorporat- ing need and enrollment factors character- istically excluded from the size-of- literature model. The final stage presents a means of calculating the amount allotted to a budget line in the context of both the adjusted cost figures and prior funding, so that historical inequities relative to other lines are redressed. Tables 1 and 2 illus- trate the steps of these stages for two ex- emplary budget lines, history and biol- ogy, and provide the structure for the account that follows. STAGE 1: ESTIMATING COST OF MONOGRAPHIC LITERATURE Lines A through E on tables 1 and 2 con- stitute the foundation of the allocations procedure, representing the steps by which the total cost of all relevant mono- graphic and other nonserial materials was estimated for each budget line. This amount was figured on a five-year basis in order to compensate for any unusual, short-term fluctuations in the production and expense of library materials in a sub- ject area. Line A: Current Domestic Monograph Base indicates the number and retail price of monographs pertinent to a line that were Quantifying the Allocation 117 published and/ or commercially distrib- uted in the United States during the years measured. This information was derived from annual subject analyses of mono- graphs compiled by Baker & Taylor for its domestic approval plan. Prior participa- tion in this plan had provided both famil- iarity with its coverage and experience with the vendor's application of its own subject terminology. Understanding the latter was particularly important, since Baker & Taylor's subject categories were at once different from and more numerous than local budget lines. This is a familiar dilemma with size-of-literature ap- proaches, for the structure of external pro- duction data seldom dovetails exactly with internal accounting organization. 2 To solve the problem, reliance was placed on the judgments of the subject specialists. On the basis of opinions expressed by the selectors and agreements made among them, all the vendor's categories were as- signed in whole or part to one or more of the local budget lines. Table 3 displays the products of this pro- cess for history and biology. To calculate the Current Domestic Monograph Base for ei- ther of these budget lines, the percentages shown on table 3 were applied to the costs of monographs in those subject categories as reported for that year by Baker & Tay- lor. Each year's Domestic Base for every budget line was, in short, a composite fig- ure consisting of varying portions of dif- ferent subject categories. These annual amounts, entered along line A on tables 1 and 2, then functioned as the foundation on which to build an estimate of the ex- pense of all monographic materials rele- vant to a budget line over the full five-year span. 3 Methodologically, it should be em- phasized, these figures stem from a com- bination of objective data and subjective judgment: verifiable information about the numbers and cost of domestic mono- graphs was rendered locally useful by the exercise of solicited opinion. This mixture is characteristic of the allocations proce- dure as a whole and contributed to its pos- itive reception. Line B: Foreign Trade Monograph Factor es- timates the cost of commercial mono- graphs published outside the United A . Current Domestic Monograph Base B. Foreign Trade Monograph Factor C. Non-trade Monograph Factor D . Non-book Factor E. Augmented Base F. Monograph Dependency Adjustment G . FTE Student/Faculty Adjustment H. Total Adjusted Base I. Previous Library Support J. Total Current Monograph Deficiency K. % of Adequacy L. % of System-wide Deficiency M. Recommended Monograph Allocation Supplement N. Total Recommended Monograph Allocation TABLE 1 HISTORY 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 Titles $ Titles $ Titles $ Titles $ Titles $ 2,079 26,922 1,937 25,635 2,142 28,981 1,870 28,750 2,050 33,808 7% 1,855 7% 1,795 7% 2,029 7% 2,012 7% 2,367 10% 2,692 10% 2,564 10% 2,898 10% 2,875 10% 3,381 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 31,499 29,994 33,908 33,637 39,556 98.5% of Augmented Base 0% Added to Augmented Base after Monograph Dependency Adjustment 1975/76 1976/77 1977/78 1978/79 1979/80 6,300 7,300 10,300 10,500 48,063 1-1 1-1 QO (') 0 -;" QCI ~ ~ ~ ~ Cll Total ~ Titles $ ~ n 10,048 144,096 ::r' 7% 10,087 f""'4 a: 10% 14,410 lot 0% e: 168,593 .... ~ Cll 166,064 0 166,064 ~ % Total ~ n 82,463 ::r' 1-1 \D 83,601 QO ~ 50 6.8 $ 5,649.50 $15,013.99 A. Current Domestic Monograph Base B. Foreign Trade Monograph Factor C. Non-trade Monograph Factor D. Non-book Factor E. Augmented Base F. Monograph Dependency Adjustment G. FTE Student/Faculty Adjustment H. Total Adjusted Base I. Previous Library Support J. Total Current Monograph Deficiency K. % of Adequacy L. % of System-wide Deficiency M. Recommended Monograph Allocation Supplement N. Total Recommended Monograph Allocation TABLE 2 BIOLOGY 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 Titles $ Titles $ Titles $ Titles $ Titles $ 1,479 31,721 1,266 28,690 1,530 36,456 1,302 28,305 1,331 34,746 7% 2,220 7% 2,008 7% 2,552 7% 1,981 7% 2,432 10% 3,172 10% 2,869 10% 3,646 10% 2,830 10% 3,475 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 37,113 33,567 42,654 33,116 40,653 84% of Augmented Base 2.5% Added to Augmented Base after Monograph Dependency Adjustment 1975/76 1976/77 1977/78 1978/79 1979/80 2,515 3,661 3,297 7,230 12,065 Total Titles $ 6,908 159,918 7% 11,193 10% 15,992 0% 187,103 157,167 3,929 161,096 % Total 28,768 132,328 0 a:: 18 Ill = 10.77 -~ , .... $ 8,942.24 = (JQ -=- $13,815.58 ~ > -0 n Ill -""'" Q = 1-l 1-l IQ 120 College & Research Libraries March 1983 TABLE 3 DISTRIBUTION OF BAKER & TAYLOR SUBJECT CATEGORIES 10% 100 9S 100 so 10 s 10 s 20 10 History Religion History History of Specific .Areas United States History Auxiliary Historical Science Geography Sociology U.S. Government International Relations Military and Naval Sciences Labor Economics States and not distributed domestically, by treating the expense of these foreign imprints as a percentage of a budget line's Domestic Base. Because the available sub- ject analysis of foreign book production is not sufficiently detailed, most size-of- literature models do not explicitll account for nondomestic monographs. Yet this neglect risks inequities, since the propor- tion of a literature's foreign titles varies considerably among academic disciplines. Calculating foreign costs as a percentage of domestic monograph outlays does al- low direct compensation for such varia- tions among subject areas. The actual determination of specific per- centages for particular budget lines was based on a series of considerations. The relative importance of foreign mono- graphs in a discipline's literature was es- tablished on the basis of subject special- ists' judgments. These were elicited through a questionnaire which asked se- lectors to rate the centrality of the major classes of monographic materials to their fields. Analysis of answers regarding for- eign imprints resulted in the placement of every budget line in one of four general levels of dependency. Then, to ascertain the percentages allotted to each of these Biology 10% 100 100 7S 100 100 Paleontology Biology Biophysics Biochemistry Microbiology Physiology 30 100 100 100 10 s s s s s 10 10 10 10 so 20 10 Conservation of Natural Resources Botany Zoology Human Biology . Medicine Internal Medicine Pathology Health SCiences Neurology Agriculture Agronomy Horticulture Forestry Animal Science Fish Culture and Fisheries Veterinary Medicine Home Economics general levels, the proportions of local monograph budgets actually expended in recent years on foreign monographs were examined to identify ranges correspond- ing to the levels, and the median of each of these ranges was then taken as a repre- sentative figure. Finally, a number of discipline-oriented citation studies, which included data on the frequency of refer- ence to foreign language monographs, were consulted to countercheck the me- dian figures derived from internal acquisi- tions statistics.5 Emerging from this pro- cess were 0 percent, 2 percent, 7 percent, and 22 percent as the portions of the Do- mestic Base that would be added as the For- eign Trade Monograph Factor at each year along line B for budget lines at the four dif- ferent levels of dependency. These specific figures possess, of course, no external applicability, since they are products of the subjective judg- ments of particular selectors and local ac- quisitions data. But the method itself does have independent value as a consistent means of registering variations in the im- portance of foreign monographs. It also has the advanta,ge of respecting the major differences in the cost of monographs among the disciplines, as tables 1 and 2 il- lustrate. 6 Both history and biology quali- fied for a 7 percent foreign jmprint supple- ment; but while the number of domestic titles in biology over the five-year period is only 70 percent that of history, because of the greater expense of biological mono- graphs, the total amount of its Foreign Trade Monograph Factor was actually 10 percent higher than the one for history. Line C: Non- Trade Monograph Factor esti- mates the cost of those monographic im- prints, both domestic and foreign, that are unavailable through normal commercial channels, by again calculating their ex- pense as a percentage of the Domestic Base. This category includes not only mono- graphs published by learned societies and professional associations but also nonse- rial, nondepository titles produced by governmental and other official agencies which must be purchased from mono- graph funds. Such materials are typically acquired directly from the issuing body and consequently are not usually included in approval plan statistics, such as those from Baker & Taylor. Nor are there other sources of production data that would al- low direct measurement of the cost of this type of monograph in specific subject ar- eas. Yet this kind of publication does play a major role in some disciplines, and fail- ure to account for it in a size-of-literature model threatens to penalize those budget lines. By computing the expense of non- commercial monographs as a variable per- centage of the Domestic Base, different de- grees of need for such publications are explicitly recognized. Arriving at the actual percentages re- peated the technique used for the Foreign Trade Factor and again involved the evalu- ation of subject specialists' ratings, inter- nal acquisitions records, and external cita- tion studies. From analysis of this information came 20 percent and 10 per- cent as the portions of the Domestic Base added along line C for budget lines with respectively heavy and moderate reliance on nontrade publications. The applied sci- ences and business were the recipients of the higher supplement, with many of the pure sciences and the social sciences quali- fying for lower compensation. Disciplines in the humanities reported virtually no re- Quantifying the Allocation 121 liance on this material. Line D: Non-Book Factor is designed to register the cost of another type of library resource that is often purchased for sub- ject areas from their allocated monograph funds but is seldom explicitly acknowl- edged in size-of-literature approaches. This nonbook category encompasses the complete gamut of print and non print for- mats, but specifically excludes microform reproductions of previously published texts, since these are properly an aspect of retrospective collection development and hence not germane to measuring the total expense of current nonserial production. In the absence of statistics sufficiently de- tailed to allow direct calculation of non- book costs to individual disciplines, a per- centage of a budget line's Domestic Base was again employed to ascertain the amount of the supplementary Non-Book Factor. The assignment of exact rates of compensation was, in practice, simplified by the fact that subject specialists reported only one area with a significant need for nonbook materials. The actual percentage of monograph funds expended on such resources by that budget line in the pre- ceding year was consequently adopted and used to calculate its Non-Book Factor from each year's Domestic Base along line D. No attempt was made to construct rep- resentative figures, as had been done for the Foreign Trade Monograph Factor and the Non- Trade Monograph Factor. Local circum- stances in which more emphasis is placed on nonbook materials would, of course, require greater methodological rigor in de- termining each line's Non-Book Factor. One general aspect of this methodology as it applies not only to the Non-Book Factor but also to the Non- Trade Monograph Factor is problematic and deserves a cautionary notice. By calculating these supplements as percentages of the Domestic Base, the cost differentials of domestic trade mono- graphs among the various subject areas are perpetuated. This is an advantage in computing the Foreign Trade Monograph Factor, since the prices ·of domestic and foreign imprints parallel each other; but there is no confirmation of this pattern for nonbook and nontrade items. In the ab- sence of evidence that, for example, a 122 College & Research Libraries technical report or videocassette in biol- ogy mirrors domestic book prices and so costs approximately 60 percent more than comparable materials in history, the dan- ger exists of overestimating the expense of nonbook and non trade resources for some budget lines and underestimating it for others. Line E: Augmented Base is the sum of the Domestic Base and its foreign, nontrade, and nonbook supplements. This is en- tered on tables 1 and 2 for each year moni- tored as well as for the entire period. The total amount represents an exhaustive budget, theoretically sufficient to acquire all monographic and nonserial resources published during that span of time. This comprehensive figure is the critical one for subsequent stages of the allocations pro- cedure. STAGE 2: ACCOUNTING FOR LOCAL CIRCUMSTANCES Lines F through H adjust the exhaustive Augmented Base in light of curricular and enrollment factors specific to the individ- ual institution. Size-of-literature ap- proaches do not typically assess the in- structional and research orientations of local curricula in order to estimate what portion of the total body of relevant mate- rials is actually needed for their support. And only occasionally ·is this allocations model made responsive to differences in the size of student and faculty populations among subject areas. Yet the particular nature of a discipline's local organization as well as the number of people active in its program can significantly affect its practical requirements for monographic resources. The importance of such prag- matic demand in making allocations deci- sions is, of course, the central premise of a variety of recently developed usage-based models for distributing materials bud- gets.7 Their emphasis on usage as the pri- mary criterion for allotting funds enters this allocations procedure in stage two as a secondary element. Here, measurements reflective of probable demand act to mod- ify each budget line's Augmented Base. Line F: Monograph Dependency Adjust- ment estimates the percentage of the Aug- mented Base that is required to support a March 1983 discipline as it is locally organized. This figure establishes the extent of a pro- gram's need for its full range of mono- graphic resources and thus reflects both the nature of the local curriculum and the orientation of the field at large. Resistance among selectors and their faculties to such a quantified judgment is understandable, since it entails acknowledgment of limits and a retreat from an ideal standard of support. But in the absence of abundant funding, it is important to recognize that degrees of dependence on monographic literature do vary among subject areas. The Monograph Dependency Adjustment serves to account for these differences by establishing the minimum percentage of the Augmented Base necessary for adequate support. To determine the size of this fig- ure f9r a budget line, responses to the col- lections questionnaire were again used. Subject specialists' ratings of the depen- dence of their discipline on current mono- graphic resources were tallied for every line. These totals clustered into five groups, and the median number of points scored within each group was treated as representative. This median number was then translated into a percentage and be- came a group's Monograph Dependency Ad- justment. For example, history fell into the group that registered 82.7 of the maxi- mum 84 points possible on the question- naire, which yields the 98.5 percent of its Augmented Base brought forward on line F; while biology, a member of the group with a median of 70.6 points, was allowed only 84 percent of its ideal monographic budget. These figures are indicative of local cir- cumstances only, but what can claim gen- eral applicability is the concept of intro- ducing projected levels of monographic need into a size-of-literature model by em- ploying these estimates to variably reduce the total costs of disciplines' literature bases. Also of general use is the technique of relying on selectors' professional per- ception of the orientation of local pro- grams to establish such projections. Though operating without objective data, this technique does inject the specialists' personal knowledge into the allocations procedure at a particularly critical point and consequently provides a basis on which anxiety about quantifying the pro- cess can be shared and resistance to it al- layed. Line G: FTE Student/Faculty Adjustment responds to that type of demand for monographs which is generated by large numbers of people in a program. This kind of usage is presumed to be intense but narrow, justifying the duplication of titles central to a discipline but not war- ranting the broadening of its literature base as delimited by the Monograph Depen- dency Adjustment. Since its intent is to pro- vide supplementary support for core works, the Student/Faculty Adjustment comes after the reduction of the Aug- mented Base on line F and is calculated as a percentage of that line. To identify those disciplines receiving compensation at this point, the number of full-time equivalent (PTE) students and faculty during the preceding five years was compiled for each program. Analysis of this data disclosed four groups of heavy concentration, into one of which about a half of the budget lines fell, the others not showing sufficient density to warrant this kind of support. On the basis of local esti- mates of reasonable rates of duplication, supplementary amounts of 10 percent, 7.5 percent, 5 percent, and 2.5 percent of their reduced Augmented Bases were granted budget lines in the respective groups. Ta- bles 1 and 2 illustrate this operation, with biology receiving the minimum compen- sation for high enrollment and history not qualifying for any supplement. Restricting use of enrollment informa- tion to predicting demand for duplication is a characteristic principle of size-of- literature models. Less typical is the inte- gration of such statistics directly into the formula in order to adjust the cost of a dis- cipline's base. 8 Yet in some programs the need for multiple copies is clearly greater than in others, and this higher demand does increase, in effect, the overall ex- pense of their monographic requirements. It is this fact that justifies the Student/Fac- ulty Adjustment. Line H: Total Adjusted Base is the sum of a budget line's enrollment supplement and its Augmented Base after reduction by the Quantifying the Allocation 123 Monograph Dependency Factor. This amount represents the minimally ade- quate monographic budget over the five- year period for a discipline as it is locally practiced. It is this figure that is used in the final stage of the allocations procedure. STAGE 3: COMPUTING THE ALLOCATIONS Lines I through N are the steps by which the Total Adjusted Base is translated into specific allocation recommendations. The salient feature of this stage is the use of prior levels of monographic funding as the context for computing each budget line's allotment. Advocates of formulas, whether based on usage or literature size, consistently warn against incorporating such historical precedence, since these earlier budgetary decisions are seldom the products of a rationalized process. While this position commands assent in the ab- stract, it neglects the practical and political problems posed by concern about funding inequities in the recent past. Where signif- icant imbalances are perceived to have de- veloped in the immediately preceding years, a formula cannot start afresh but must take account of prior funding if it is to correct these inherited discrepancies. The perception of inequities is not uncom- mon and the need to deal effectively with such a situation prompted the technique of stage three, which allows the calcula- tion of present allocations to account for past practices and compensate systemati- cally for them. Line I: Previous Library Support records the amounts available to a budget line for the acquisition of current monographic re- sources during each of the years moni- tored, as well as for the period as a whole. Monies budgeted for retrospective materi- als are excluded here, since the purpose is to gauge a line's capacity to purchase the body of literature represented by its Total Adjusted Base. Line]: Total Current Monograph Deficiency is the difference between line I, a disci- pline's actual funding over the period, and line H, the estimate of its minimally adequate monograph budget for those years. This deficit measures the distance between the needs of the local program 124 College & Research Libraries and the support provided. Line K: % of Adequacy parallels line J; it also compares actual funding with needed funding but presents this relationship proportionally, as the percentage of the lo- cally appropriate budget that was, in fact, furnished. It is at this point that any ineq- uities in earlier allocation patterns will emerge, since major differences in per- centages here indicate that the require- ments of some disciplines were being met more fully than others. Such an imb!llance is evident in tables 1 and 2, with the Ad- justed Bases of history and biology being approximately equal, but their levels of re- cent support varying dramatically. The result on line K is a 50 percent adequacy rate for history and only 18 percent for bi- ology. Line L: % of System-Wide Deficiency repre- sents a single budget line's share of the cost of all locally needed but unacquired monographic resources over the period measured. This percentage is a special version of the figure conventionally em- ployed by size-of-literature models to dis- tribute funds. In that approach, a subject area's allotment typically depends on the cost of its literature relative to the expense of the cumulated bases of every field. In this procedure, a discipline's previous support is first deducted from its Adjusted Base and entered at line J as its Current Defi- ciency. It is, then, the cost of this remain- ing, unacquired segment relative to the cost of the unacquired segments for all dis- ciplines that determines the division of funds. The greater the discrepancy be- tween a budget line's needed and its ac- tual funding during the previous years, the larger its share of the body of materials still required by the libraries, and hence the higher its portion of present funds. Thus, by making a line's allocation reflect both the cost of its necessary materials and the level of its past support, inequities that occurred in the immediately preceding pe- riod are redressed. This compensatory process emerges clearly on the accompanying tables. The li- braries' total of unacquired monographic resources, the sum of every discipline's line J, amounted to $1,228,713. History was unable to purchase $83,601 of its rna- March 1983 terials, which constituted 6.8 percent of the libraries' unfilled needs, while biolo- gy's shortfall of $132,328 was 10.77 per- cent of the system's overall requirements. Although their Adjusted Bases are almost identical, because of its relatively lower funding in prior years, biology thus re- ceived a 3. 97 percent higher allocation than history. Line M: Recommended Monograph Alloca- tion Supplement reflects a further incorpo- ration of historical precedent. Instead of distributing the libraries' full monograph budget according to the percentages of need entered on line L, these figures were applied only to new monies. The resulting amounts were then used to supplement each discipline's allotment from the pre- ceding year, historical funding decisions thus being substantially maintained. This limited use of the percentages pro- duced by the allocations procedure is not inherent in the procedure itself but was recommended by local considerations. Its effect was to avoid the precipitous reallo- cation of funds which would have oc- curred had the formula's figures been al- lowed to operate on the whole monograph budget. For example, biolo- gy's 10.77 percent share would have yielded a steep rise to $22,706, an upward jump of 88 percent over its prior year's al- lotment of $12,065. Such sudden increases inevitably entail parallel reductions in other budget lines. Even in conditions of abundant funding, this is a difficult move; when there are surpluses nowhere, it can jeopardize acceptance of a quantified ap- proach to the materials budget. In local cir- cumstances where this concern is less prominent, it might be unnecessary to slow the pace at which reassignment of support among subject areas is effected. LineN: Total Recommended Monograph Al- location is the sum of a discipline's share of new monies, as calculated on line M, and the amount of its allocation from the pre- ceding year, as established by prior prac- tice. This final figure is a compromise, su- perimposing the results of present quantification on past informality. This does, however, provide continuity and consequently assures a smoother transi- tion to the new allocations method. LIMITATIONS OF THE PROCEDURE This allocations procedure suffers from several methodological shortcomings that ought to be noted. 1. No provision is made for the prefer- ential consideration of programs accorded high priority. Because disciplines are treated equally within the framework of the formula, a portion of the monograph budget must be reserved for administra- tive assignment to areas requiring special support. 2. The mixture of objective data and subjective judgment employed in the pro- cedure renders the accuracy of its results questionable. The inevitable imprecision caused by reliance on selectors' opinions is tolerable initially, since their participa- tion in developing the formula encour- aged its positive reception. After this in- troductory phase, more rigorous data is preferable. This does not, however, mean that staff involvement ceases. Indeed, lo- cal use and citation studies may provide the best objective information about a dis- cipline's actual dependency on different types of monographic resources, and re- sponsibility for designing and executing these studies resides naturally with the subject specialists. 3. Focus on current monographic re- sources ignores the need for out-of-print and antiquarian titles. Though determin- ing "retrospective acquisitions rates" is noted in the RTSD "Guidelines" as a problem "not yet handled by any library budget formula,' ' 9 it is susceptible to solu- tion within this procedure. For retrospec- tive funding could be handled as a supple- ment to a budget line's Domestic Base and, like the other factors in stage one, calcu- lated as a percentage of that base. Com- puting a line's percentage would require both a numerical measure of a discipline's reliance on retrospective monographs and a statistical account of the adequacy of ex- isting retrospective holdings. The latter Quantifying the Allocation 125 figtire would serve to define that portion of the universe of retrospective titles pre- sumed to be absent from the collection, while the degree of dependency would es- tablish the amount of those lacking re- sources which ought still to be acquired. Multiplying the rate of reliance against the proportion of materials required would then yield the relative percentage of a dis- cipline's need for retrospective support. For example, if 80 percent of history's monograph dependency is retrospec- tive-a possibility suggested by a recent study10-and evaluation of local resources shows 40 percent of retrospective titles ab- sent, then the product of these figures, or 32 percent, becomes the portion of his- tory's Domestic Base that represents its need for out-of-print funding. Its Aug- mented Base would be increased by this amount before the adjustments of stage two are made. CONCLUSION At the end of his survey of techniques for distributing academic book budgets, Jasper G. Schad recommends assigning the staff responsible for collection devel- opment ''the task of preparing an alloca- tion for review by the library administra- tion. " 11 The procedure presented here issued from such an assignment and is in- formed by the attitudes of librarians who daily encounter collection problems famil- iar to most medium-sized university li- braries. The manner of the procedure is eclectic, reflecting the concerns of differ- ent disciplines as well as drawing con- cepts from competing allocation models. Its method is pragmatic, relating general principles of allocation theory to particular circumstances. Though lacking the formal elegance of a mathematical formula, the procedure 'does possess an unusual inclu- siveness of considerations relevant to the allotment of. monograph funds. This is a sign of its roots in actual practice and may be the source of its greatest interest. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. "Guidelines for the Allocation of Library Materials Budgets," in David L. Perkins, ed., Guidelines for Collection Development (Chicago: American Library Assn., 1979), p.33. Jasper G . Schad provides 126 College & Research Libraries March 1983 a convenient survey and critique of published allocations formulas in "Allocating Materials Bud- gets in Institutions of Higher Learning," The Journal of Academic Librarianship 3:328-32 (Jan. 1978). 2. The sources of publishing data employed by different practitioners of the size-of-literature ap- proach have varied widely. William M. Randall, "The College-Library Book Budget," Library Quarterly 1:421-35 (Oct. 1931) relied on a printed bibliography, Charles B. Shaw's List of Books for College Libraries (1st ed., 1930). William E. McGrath, "Determining and Allocating Book Funds for Current Domestic Buying," College & Research Libraries 28:269-72 (July 1%7) analyzed an annual cumulated volume of the American Book Publishing Record, BPR. Bette Dillehay, "Book Budget Allo- cation: Subjective or Objective Approach," Special Libraries 62:509-14 (Dec. 1971), examined book reviews appearing in major discipline journals, while more recently Richard Hume Werking and Charles M. Getchell, Jr., "Using Choice as a Mechanism for Allocating Book Funds in an Academic Library," College & Research Libraries 42:134-38 (March 1981), have demonstrated the utility of a single, general reviewing organ. All these involved the problem of relating external information to internal budget-units, and in each case it was resolved by the exercise of informed judgment. 3. Budget lines not identified with academic departments, such as reference and documents, were handled outside the allocations procedure because cost data was not available. For lines with a primary dependence on foreign monographs, such as German and Romance languages, the Do- mestic Base was constructed from expenditure figures provided by university libraries collecting comprehensively in the fields. 4. Randall, ''College-Library Book Budget,'' Dillehay, ''Book Budget Allocation,'' and Werking and Getchell, ''Using Choice,'' all appear implicitly to assume that foreign titles are represented in ap- propriate proportions in the bases they variously employ. McGrath, ''Determining and Allocating Book Funds," p.271, does observe that foreign imprints present a special problem and suggests that they ''be handled on an ad hoc basis.'' 5. Representative citation rates of foreign language imprints are the following: Herman H. Fussier, "Characteristics of the Research Literature Used by Chemists and Physicists in the United States," Library Quarterly 19:128-29 (April1949) reported 11.8 percent for chemistry and 37.1 per- cent for physics; Shirley A. Fitzgibbon's convenient survey article, ''Citation Analysis in the So- cial Sciences," in Robert D. Stueart and George B. Miller, Jr., eds., Collection Development in Li- braries: A Treatise, Part B (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1980), p. 291-344, records a range from a high 15 percent (political science) to no use (business administration and education); Richard Heinzkill, "Characteristics of References in Selected Scholarly English Journals," Library Quar- terly 50:361-63 (July 1980) showed 9 percent. 6. Actually, if the figures for the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Federal Republic of Germany provided by The Bowker Annual of Library and Book Trade Information (26th ed.; New York: Bowker, 1981), p .344-45, 351, 352, are analyzed, American hardcover books in the sciences cost approximately 70 percent more than ones in history, biography, and travel. German scientific texts run, however, about 170 percent more than their historical and geographical counterparts, while the analogous rate for British books is an even higher 180 percent. If the bases from which these figures derive are truly comparable, it may be that an additional adjustment within the For- eign Trade Monograph Factor is necessary to compensate for steeply higher ratios of differences be- tween foreign book costs by discipline . 7. Most recent work on allocations models has emphasized usage, measured and weighted in vari- ous ways. S. K. Goyal, "Allocation of Library Funds to Different Departments of a University-An Operational Research Approach,'' College & Research Libraries 34:219-22 (May 1973), stresses num- bers of faculty and students; William E. McGrath, "A Pragmatic Allocation Formula for Academic and Public Libraries with a Test for Its Effectiveness," Library Resources & Technical Seroices 19:356-68 (Fall1975), relies on circulation figures by subject and average cost of books by disci- pline; Steven D. Gold, "Allocating the Book Budget: An Economic Model," College & Research Libraries 36:397-402 (Sept. 1975), employs the number of student credit hours in an academic de- partment, weighted both by extent of library work required and putative value of the program to the university; R. J. Welwood, ''Book Budget Allocation: An Objective Formula for the Small Aca- demic Library," Canadian Library Journal34:213-19 (June 1977), uses three variables-enrollment, circulation, and number of courses-weighted by cost differences among disciplines; Thomas J. Pierce, ''An Empirical Approach to the Allocation of the University Book Budget,'' Collection Man- agement 2:39-58 (Spring 1978), focuses on size of departments, local availability of resources, sub- ject characteristics or library orientation of disciplines, and relative price of materials. Schad, "Al- locating Materials Budgets," p .329-330, criticizes the basic premise of these models that use in an academic library is predictive of need. 8. Randall, "College-Library Book Budget," p.421, states the standard position that "the number of Quantifying the Allocation 127 students enrolled" is important "chiefly with respect to duplicates required for collateral read- ing." Where size-of-literature models do take enrollment into account, for example, Eleanor W. Falley, "An Impersonal Division of the College Book Fund," Library Journal 64:933-35 (Dec. 1, 1939) and Don Revill, "A Book Fund Allocation Formula," New Library World 75:162-63 (Aug. 1974), the factor is employed to predict overall demand, not duplication needs. 9. Guidelines for Collection Development, p.41. 10. Clyve Jones, Michael Chapman, and Pamela Carr Woods, "The Characteristics of Literature Used by Historians," Journal of Librarianship 4:147-49 Guly 1972). 11. Schad, "Allocating Materials Budgets," p.331. APPLICATIONS INVITED FOR EDITOR OF COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES Nominations and applications are invited for the postion of editor of College & Re- search Libraries. The editor is appointed for a three-year term which may be renewed for an additional three years. Applicants must be members of ALA and ACRL. Quali- fications include experience in academic libraries, evidence of research and editing activity, and a broad knowledge of the issues confronting academic libraries. A small honorarium for the editor and funding arrangements for editorial assist- ance are available. Nominations or resumes with the names of three references may be sent to Larry Wilt, Chair, College & Research Libraries Search Committee, Albin 0. Kuhn Library and Gallery, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Catonsville, MD 21228. The deadline for applications is May 20, 1983.