<p>The paper chase
As the cost of acquiring manuscripts soars, Princeton increasingly finds itself on the sidelines </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW05-06/05-1116/features_manuscript.html[/url]”>http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW05-06/05-1116/features_manuscript.html</a></p>
<p>even more unfortunate is princeton’s unwillingness to adequately fund its general library acquistion budget–that is, for keeping up with current publications. in the fiscal years between 1990-2004, the increase in the library’s acquistion budget at princeton was at the bottom of its peer group, lower than at harvard, yale, columbia, mit, penn, cornell, and dartmouth. the library is always begging for money but the priorities committee (in charge of budget recommendations to the president) usually says that while they respect the library’s efforts they can only add $25,000 to their budget for the next year. as you can imagine, in the context of a university library, this is almost offensively stingy.</p>
<p>however, though the main humanities library (firestone) needs refurbishing and has some inexcusable absences on its shelves, the art history library (marquand) has been nicely renovated and is one of the better art history collections in the world.</p>
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<p>you should be happy to know, then, that the priorities committee just gave the library an additional $1.1 million for acquisitions:</p>
<p>“The library system will use the $1.1 million to augment its acquisitions budget, enabling the University to purchase more research material such as books, manuscripts and journals. The funds will help close a growing gap in the libraries’ budget caused by decades of inflated prices for printed publications, University librarian Karin Trainer said.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/09/13/news/15753.shtml[/url]”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/09/13/news/15753.shtml</a></p>