Proposed measures for improving efficiency of library services in the face of budget cuts.

Introduction

It’s a fact that the library profession, like all fields, is affected by the current global economic difficulties, with budget cuts impacting materials and resource acquisition and recruitment.
This situation began two years ago, and in this time we have introduced a number of measures to maintain or even increase our competiveness despite less money being available for resources and staffing.

Objective

Our objective is to implement some measures in order to face a situation in which our service is under pressure from the management to reduce costs, while our users expect us to maintain the same level of quality in the information services delivered.

Methods

First, we describe the setting of our library to place our work in context. Our work takes place in an environment that is highly specialized both thematically (biomedicine) and in terms of its user base (researchers in basic and translational research). Our institution is a foundation, which implies that it is mainly maintained with public finances. As is the case with other public institutions in Spain, we currently face severe cuts and budgetary pressures. The status of the center as a foundation means also that it is privately managed, which entails a risk of staffing changes, contrasting with other public institutions, where most staff are government employees with full job security.
Then we describe the measures that include from collaboration with colleagues in other centers and exchange or donation of journals and agreements with other libraries, to the use of ICT and the development of our own software. Each measure is explained in relation to the various services provided by our library.

Results

The measures introduced over the last two years have shown that it is possible to provide a quality service and even to reduce costs, so long as we have qualified library staff trained in the management of free resources and able to compare and evaluate existing resources on the market and to establish partnerships and agreements through professional networks.
Furthermore, by taking advantage of our staff’s skills and experience, we have increased the provision of services in specialized health science documentation and expanded services to the institution management – for example by conducting bibliometric studies for project submissions, preparing reports or doing collaborative work in technology watch together with the center’s Technology Transfer Office.

Conclusions

We believe that the current economic crisis can be even used to advantage by biomedical library professionals to demonstrate capabilities and to our increase visibility and recognition. Finally, that collaboration between librarians and libraries was one the most important elements enabling us to improve our results, our next challenge is to extend our collaborations with other European colleagues and libraries.