Collection Growth and Expenditures in Academic Libraries: A Preliminary Inquiry

These data, from a group of liberal arts college libraries as well as from the much more scrutinized ARL libraries, raise important questions about certain articles of faith in academic librarianship. These questions relate to: the "doubling time" of library collections; the "60-30-10" division of library expenditures; the growing robustness of materials expenditures as a percentage of total expenditures, especially among the college libraries; and the phenomenon of increases in total expenditures considerably exceeding increases in major price indexes.