University libraries across the state are bracing for the elimination of the Board of Regents’ contribution to the budget for LOUIS, the Louisiana Library Network.The Board of Regents, which supplies two-thirds of the LOUIS budget, announced June 30 it would provide $500,000 to the library consortium to last for two months. After that, the funding will stop.LOUIS, which is housed on campus but is not an LSU department, is a group of higher education libraries across the state, according to Sara Zimmerman, LOUIS executive director.The consortium has 47 members that come together to share resources like online databases and electronic titles. Dues paid by LOUIS members account for one-third of the organization’s budget and have been supplemented until now by the Board of Regents’ contribution.Zimmerman said the cut to the LOUIS budget will be hard to absorb because of how much is done with the money.”The cut of two-thirds of our funding has a massive impact since that is the total budget for electronic resources,” Zimmerman said in an email to The Daily Reveille.Electronic databases like LexisNexis, PsycINFO and Louisiana Historic Newspapers are all funded by LOUIS and available to students and faculty at the libraries of each LOUIS member.By sharing services among many universities, Zimmerman said LOUIS’ $4 million budget is able to purchase $19 million worth of resources. Resources are acquired through careful consideration by committees of the Louisiana Academic Library Information Network Consortium. The committees include experts from member libraries who know what resources their institutions need most, Zimmerman said.”There is no waste,” Zimmerman said. “We are very frugal, and I think purchasing $19 million for $4 million is a pretty good return on the investment.”Specifically for LSU Libraries, the funding cut could mean the loss of 72 databases and 63,795 titles, according to Dean of Libraries Jennifer Cargill.The cuts to the LOUIS budget bring additional stress to University libraries across the state, which are facing their own financial hardships, Cargill said.”It’s coming at a bad time, when the LOUIS members are all looking at cuts from their budgets at their home institutions,” Cargill said. “We’re looking at local cuts, and now we’re looking at losing a resource that has been shared.”The Board of Regents’ decision to cut LOUIS funding came as a surprise, said Nancy Colyar, assistant dean of libraries.”[LOUIS members] have gotten complacent because though we haven’t gotten increases in funding, the funding has been pretty steady,” Colyar said.One reason for the success of LOUIS since its inception in the early ’90s is how effectively member libraries work together, Zimmerman said. There is no mandate for University libraries to join the consortium, so any library’s participation is by choice.”Libraries join because it makes good business sense,” she said. “The project should be a poster child for how to do it right in the state. Collaboration, cooperation, efficiency — add satisfied students and faculty, and you have something the state should be very proud of.”LOUIS makes it easier for higher education libraries in Louisiana to work together, Colyar said.”LOUIS provides an interlibrary loan system we all share,” she said. “That is important, particularly as you have to cut your budget.”Colyar said the loan system may become increasingly important to library users as resources are lost because of this budget cut.Though loans used to be conducted by mail, Colyar said the system has advanced and LSU Libraries can sometimes fulfill loan requests by providing a PDF file within 24 hours.LOUIS members will be communicating intensively with each other for the next two months to determine what resources can be saved, Cargill said.”All of us are trying to figure out how to function and what our priorities are during this economic period,” Cargill said.Colyar said LOUIS members will focus on how to best serve their users with a reduced budget and will make the best decisions they can on the current timetable.”The good news is we have two months to talk about it a lot with each other. The bad news is it’s only two months,” Colyar said.–Contact Ryan Buxton at [email protected]