The document discusses the challenges librarians face in maintaining electronic resources with limited budgets. It notes that electronic resources now comprise a large portion of library budgets, so cuts in this area are unavoidable when budgets shrink. However, librarians are reluctant to cancel resources because they are passionate about supporting collections. The document argues that in times of major budget cuts, librarians must make decisions based on facts like usage, not emotions or hypothetical future needs, in order to justify maintaining expensive resources that are rarely used.

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BL RUNNING ON EMPTY
24,2
The Yogi Berra school of library
science
138
Anthony McMullen
Baron-Forness Library, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Edinboro,
Accepted May 2011
Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into issues encountered in maintaining
library technologies on a limited budget and with limited personnel.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses real world experiences to report on collection
development decisions as they relate to electronic resources in an era of shrinking budgets.
Findings – The percentage of library budgets allocated for the acquisition of electronic resources has
risen steadily in an online era. As state legislatures across the country cut funding, librarians must cut
expenditures accordingly. With electronic resources comprising a large segment of overall
expenditures, cuts in this area are unavoidable.
Originality/value – This paper examines the decision-making process in the context of renewing or
canceling underused electronic resources in an era of shrinking library budgets. It takes a humorous
approach in suggesting that librarians need to look beyond emotions and base their decisions on facts.
Keywords Electronic resources, Budgets
Paper type Viewpoint
“We can’t cancel that! It’s a great resource! It’s just that nobody uses it!” This was the
opening salvo at a recent meeting I attended, fired off in support of an expensive but
rarely used database. It is a great resource – nobody uses it . . . Where had I heard that
before? It sounded vaguely familiar to me, reminiscent of something former New York
Yankees great Yogi Berra, a man as famous for his malapropisms as he was for his
skills on the ball field, may have said had he chosen a slightly different career path.
Yes! That is it! It is the juxtaposition of one of my all time favorite “Berraisms” – the
one where Yogi, in explaining why he no longer dined at a certain restaurant, stated,
“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
The meeting had only a single item on the agenda: identify a list of electronic
resources to cut in the likely scenario that the library’s budget is reduced in the
upcoming fiscal year. It was a painful gathering with negligible progress and
considerable contention. Looking backwards, and knowing what I know about
librarians’ personality types, I realize that I was foolish to believe we could ever come
to a consensus. Generally, librarians do not enjoy confrontation and go to great lengths
The Bottom Line: Managing Library to avoid it. Conversely, we are passionate people and vigorously defend our territories
Finances or our collections as is the case here, when we feel as though they are threatened. We
Vol. 24 No. 2, 2011
pp. 138-139 loathe letting go, as in, “Hey! Mrs Grimstead still uses those eight track tapes, Mister!”
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0888-045X
Our stacks are filled with volumes that have never been charged. We keep things
DOI 10.1108/08880451111169205 because somebody might potentially need them someday. We are all things to

2. everybody. Let’s face it; we are organized hoarders, holding fast to our principles of The Yogi Berra
every book his reader, every reader his book. Thus, we can stand proudly in the face of
unprecedented budget cuts and fight the good fight for the database that nobody ever
school of library
uses because somebody might need it someday. science
Perhaps that somebody is the Godfather of a certain academic department, the
revered professor who has been handing out the same assignment in the second week
of April for the past 34 years; the assignment that requires students to use a printed 139
index to locate and photocopy an article from microfilm. We certainly cannot tell the
Godfather that he must change his assignment; that we are no longer subscribing to
the film or the printed index; that both have been supplanted by electronic versions.
We are all things to everybody. We must not rock the boat. So we maintain redundant
hard-copy and electronic subscriptions with little concern for finances so that a single
instructor can continue to do what he has always done.
Or perhaps that somebody is nobody at all. This, seemingly, was precisely the point
of a respected colleague, who in her defense of a pricey but seldom used electronic
resource quoted the noted philosopher Thomas Carlyle. “The true university these
days,” she said, “is a collection of books,” to which she added triumphantly, “Note that
it says nothing at all about usage.” Well alright then. Let us keep another great
resource nobody uses based entirely upon the stale words of a Scottish philosopher,
cherry-picked from a passage in a 150 þ year old work that has absolutely nothing to
do with library collection development. Let us conveniently ignore the fact that Carlyle,
in the sentences leading up to his quote, clearly notes that it is not the books
themselves that comprise the university, but the reading of the books. Usage matters,
even in 1841.
The harsh reality is such that we cannot have our cake and eat it too. When the
Governor is proposing to slash our funding by 54 percent, we can no longer hang on to
expensive resources that nobody uses simply because we believe them to be quality
resources. We live and work in an era where we are held accountable for our decisions
and actions. We live and work in an era where we must not only do more with less, but
justify all that we do with that ever shrinking slice of the pie. In this setting, the notion
of standing on the carpet and explaining why we elected to renew for yet another year
a resource that costs hundreds of dollars per use is a highly unappealing one. In this
setting where, as Yogi once said, “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore,” we need to
make decisions based upon timely and relevant evidence, not on our emotions, fears, or
even the words of a brilliant but long-gone philosopher. The Godfather and Mrs
Grimstead may be disappointed, but I have got to think that Yogi had exactly this type
of situation in mind when he told us, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
About the author
Anthony McMullen is Systems Librarian at the Baron-Forness Library, Edinboro University of
Pennsylvania, one of the 14 universities comprising the Pennsylvania State System of Higher
Education. Anthony earned his MSLS at Clarion University of Pennsylvania and has been in the
library profession for over 16 years. Anthony McMullen can be contacted at: amcmullen@
edinboro.edu
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