Research University Library Budgets: How Is the Money Spent?

Abstract

This study performs a comparative quantitative assessment of the financial status of 107 public research libraries and 39 private academic research libraries in the United States. By deploying The University of Alabama Education Policy Center's Mission-Driven Classification (MDC) System and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's Basic Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, this research explores the 146 private and publicly funded doctoral-granting universities with very high research activity (R1) and their library budgets from fiscal years 2012 and 2021. The study examines any differences between research university revenues and the major components of research library expenditures, staffing expenses, materials expenses, and operations and maintenance expenses. The study also examines any library differences based on the institutional type and size, library collections and scope, and per-student library expenditures. The secondary data for this study were compiled from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey and the U.S. Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data. This study found that the most disadvantaged research libraries are those at the 28 smaller research universities, which could be identified using the MDC system. It also advocates for research libraries to receive federal funding from the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), a National Science Foundation program whose mission is to strengthen the nation's research infrastructure. The library budgets of the smaller flagships declined 29% over ten years, more than any other research libraries studied, and 17 of these smaller research libraries are in EPSCoR-eligible states.