These principles may be revised as CoDGeR observes the process of central funding for multidisciplinary digital resources.
At least inititally, there will be no buffer built into the budget. The first year of a multidisciplinary digital resource will be funded through established contribution methods. The central fund will seek only estimated inflation during the budgetary process each year.
At this time, there is no vision of top-slicing to create the Central Fund. Rather, it will be built from the contributions of those subjects most interested in a digital resource. These will generally be the same funds that contributed funds during a resource’s initial year. However, at the point of transferring support of the resource to the Central Fund, there will be an opportunity to review which funds will have their base reduced by the amount supporting that resource.
NOTE: some funds (some endowments and funds from Medical, Law, Beinecke, etc.) will of necessity need to contribute each year to the central fund instead of having their base reduced. To simplify such contributions, the same percentage increase requested overall for the Central Fund will be applied to the previous year’s contribution to the Central Fund.
Contributed funds will be consolidated in the Central Fund and will not be tracked. CoDGer does not think it likely that funds would remain or that resources would be cancelled outright or without substitution of a similar or related product. If a resource is no longer acquired for whatever reason and there is no appropriate substitute identified, the funding support for that resource will be returned the next fiscal year for general distribution by the AUL for collections. Any unspent funds remaining at the end of a fiscal year will join the general EOY distribution.
Candidates for the Central Fund shall be those which can be considered of multidisciplinary interest.
????The group agreed that only materials that were accessible library-wide belonged in this group. We will remove titles that are only available on local LANs.
CoDGeR will maintain a list of digital resources currently receiving support from the Central Fund as well as a separate list of prospective titles. Selectors may propose titles to CoDGeR for inclusion in either list. CoDGeR will have the final say on inclusion or exclusion of titles.