HLS To Reduce Library Purchases

The Harvard Law School Library will be forced to reduce its purchases of new collections by $350,000 compared to the current year, two years after it made a similar $225,000 reduction, according to a memo obtained by The Crimson.

The cut has stirred discontent among some library staff members, but it comes as the library’s overall budget is increasing by nearly five percent.

The Law School expects to exceed its collections budget—which is used to acquire books and subscriptions to electronic resources and periodicals—by $100,000 for the current year, and will rely on one-time revenue sources, such as unspent endowment returns and other money that has been set aside, to fill the spending gap, according to a memo sent last month to staff by the library’s director, Harry S. Martin ’65.

These extra funds are “running out,” so the library requested an additional $350,000 from the Law School so that it could maintain the current level of purchasing. The request was denied, Martin wrote in the memo.

In a phone interview yesterday, however, Law School Dean Elena Kagan said that the overall library budget will increase by 4.6 percent, or $615,000, and that determining where these extra funds are spent was Martin’s responsibility.

“I’m not a micromanager,” Kagan said, noting that Martin did not use the new funds to increase the collections budget because he felt that spending in other areas was more important.

Kagan emphasized that this is a case where a department did not receive as much money as it had requested, saying, “I could show you ten departments that didn’t get all the money they wanted.”

Since the collection division will not receive a budget increase large enough to plug the gap, the library will be forced to reduce collections purchases below the current level.

Of the three areas in the collections budget, Martin said in his memo that the budget for serials—which includes items such as law reviews and scholarly journals—should be reduced in order to maintain spending on electronic resources and scholarly books. He added that spending on scholarly books has “dipped to a point I do not wish to see lowered.”

Martin said the reductions in serials will be noticeable since the library already cut back on serial purchases by $225,000 just two years ago.

“The full impact of these decisions did not actually appear until the current budget year,” Martin wrote. “To repeat the effort now, indeed to expand on it, will be even harder. But I see no alternative.

He added, “I understand how disheartening it must be for some of you to repeat an exercise so recently concluded.”

In the memo, Martin proposed a series of cost-saving measures for his staff to consider, including no longer purchasing works in languages that few scholars work in and reducing the acquisition of law reviews.

He also questioned whether the Law School should continue to pay extra to make its resources available to the entire University, writing, “Should we ever pay the premium for an electronic resource to be made available University-wide?”

Martin was unavailable for comment yesterday.

The librarians in charge of the collections and reference departments both declined to comment when contacted yesterday.

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Kevin Zhou can be reached at kzhou@fas.harvard.edu.