Financial Support of College and University Libraries

A L support of university libraries is a subject of perennial interest to university librarians and students of university library problems.Evidence of this interest is to be found in the frequency with which questions of finance, budget, salaries and book funds come up during the informal discussions in which librarians engage whenever they have an opportunity to meet with their colleagues from other institutions.Similarly such compilations as the annual "College and University Library Statistics" published in College and Research Libraries and the "Princeton Statistics" issued annually in mimeographed form "re looked for and examined with keen interest.Librarians use these compilations or parts of them in preparing their own budget presentations, but this seems to be very nearly the end of the matter, if one is to judge by the paucity of articles dealing with the financial support of university libraries appearing in the library periodicals.In the twelve year period beginning with 1940, annual statistical tables have been presented regularly,l first in the A.L.A. Bulletin and since 1943 in College and Research Libraries, with the exception of the two years 1945 and 1946.In conjunction with the tables it has been customary to include a brief discussion and analysis of the data presented in the tables, relating them to the figures of earlier years and drawing some tentative conclusions.The tables themselves, particularly for the year 1949-50, include more analyses than has been customary in the past.in 1940, compared the data for 193839 with those of the preceding five years and concluded that "colleges and universities in this group are beginning to pick up what they have lost. . .."Richards the following year noted that libraries had spent 4.3 per cent of the university budget as against 4 per cent in 1938-39,