SIVACRACY.NET

Paul Courant explains:

... The obvious problem is that recessions bring with them reductions in income – the stuff that state legislatures and student households use to support universities, and wealth – the stuff that constitutes university endowments. Much has been written recently about the terrific endowment growth that universities experienced during fiscal year 2007. Well, the stock market has been falling quite sharply for the last several months, and I’ll bet that the number of universities whose endowments grow appreciably in the current fiscal year will be fairly small. So, the sources of the money that we spend on collections and services are likely to be under stress in the next year or so, and libraries will get to share in some of the pain that our institutions will experience. (There is a longer discussion, that I will provide at some point, about the problems that arise when institutions that collect with an eye to the needs of users over years and decades have to deal with the vagaries of budgets that bounce around from year to year. Briefly, it would be good for both us and our universities to try to smooth out the effects of the business cycle, but that’s not easy to do.)

The less obvious problem has to do with the indirect effects that a recession will have on the behavior of publishers and media companies as they continue to press Congress for protection against all and sundry, most emphatically including libraries. ...