A $240,000 budget reduction for Founder’s Memorial Library will be needed to balance the library’s budget for fiscal year 1989.

The reduction has been recommended to NIU Provost Kendall Baker by library directors.

Baker said, “They didn’t ask for a reduction. They submitted an analysis of what would be necessary to balance the budget.

“That would require a reduction in serials (library materials such as journals) amounting to $240,000, (about 20 percent of the journals budget) in order to bring the budget to balance.”

Caroll Varner, NIU assistant director for Technical Services, said officials should know in “about two weeks” where the budget cuts will occur.

The decision of where to make the cuts will be made by Director of Libraries Theodore Welch in consultation with Baker, Varner said.

The materials budget is $1.9 million, about 40 percent of the whole library budget. The entire budget exceeds $5 million, Varner said.

In a memorandum to deans, department chairs, library faculty, department library representatives and directors of special study centers, Welch said, “the library’s budgetary shortfall for FY89 is projected at $240,000 on a journals budget of $1.2 million.”

He said there is more than $160,000 in actual shortage of funds in the FY88 journals budget.

A decision to stop purchasing materials except journals after January 1988 was made to pay for the shortage, Welch said.

Varner said the library has started buying books again. He said the library is purchasing a relatively smaller number of quality books rather than large quantities of low quality books.

In the memorandum, Welch said the Library Senate has developed several budget options and has discussed them with Baker.

One option includes canceling all the journals on the final cancelations list. This would reduce the materials budget by $240,000.

Option two would reduce the materials budget by $240,000 by canceling about half of the journals on the final cancelations list and making a 20 percent reduction in the number of books purchased.

Option three would reduce the number of journal purchases by 75 percent and reducing book purchases by 10 percent.

“This ($75,000) will first be used to pay over $40,000 in deferred book bills,” he said. The remaining $35,000 will be used “to offset the inflation costs of books in the coming year.”