The University Libraries’ budget enables our organization to play essential roles in advancing the University’s educational, research, clinical, and outreach missions.
Overview
The University Libraries’ total budget includes the salaries/benefits, operations, technologies, and access to information resources for the Main Library, Weaver Science-Engineering Library, Health Sciences Library, and Special Collections. The Law Library operates separately and reports to the Dean of the James E. Rogers College of Law, though Law students and faculty also have full access to all UAL content and services. The faculty and students of University of Arizona Global Campus (UAGC), however, are served exclusively by their own library.
Base Budget Allocations
Fiscal Year 2023 - $37,487,276
Base Budget Expenditures
Fiscal Year 2023
Information Access Expenditures
A significant portion of the University Libraries budget funds information access, which encompasses databases, journals, books/ebooks, streaming video, interlibrary loan services, and the systems that enable discovery and access.
As responsible stewards of campus resources, we employ every strategy available to maximize information access, contain costs, and enhance buying power. We achieve this by engaging in intensive negotiations with vendors, leveraging consortial licensing, prioritizing access over ownership, and signing multi-year licenses. We actively manage our ongoing subscriptions, adding and/or removing titles and/or databases to meet changing needs and maximize value.
Due to annual inflation of information resources and a typically flat budget allocation, the University Libraries’ expenditures on information access are reduced by approximately $500,000 per year to maintain a balanced budget.
We also support open access, and actively explore new open access publishing models that can remove financial barriers and ensure free global access to scholarship. Read about UAL’s engagement in open access publishing.
Comparing peer spending
While apples-to-apples comparisons are difficult due to differences across peer institutions (size, land grant mission, with or without a medical school, etc.), the University of Arizona’s budget is significantly lower than the midpoint for our 15 peer institutions identified by the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR). University of Arizona Libraries rank among the bottom of this group for overall expenses.
