[The following is the text of an update sent to the Chief Academic Officers of PASCAL member institutions.] On May 12, an ad hoc committee of chief academic officers from both public and independent colleges and universities distributed an emergency funding plan for the Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries (PASCAL) in order to stabilize the essential core database package and rapid book delivery service through Fiscal Year 2009-10.

As you know, the committee requested that institutions notify the PASCAL office of their intent to participate in this plan no later than June 30, 2009.  We are pleased to report that we have received formal responses from 53 of 56 member institutions.  Of these, only one institution was unable to commit to the emergency funding plan.  (We are still working to clarify the situation with the three remaining schools.) [Note: Only one member institutions has actually declined to participate in the emergency plan for FY 2009-10, Sept. 1 2009]

The contributions of the committed institutions represent 93% of our revenue target.  Consequently, we will be able to ensure access to the resources that were available to South Carolina students and faculty in FY 2008-9, and we will be providing them to at least 96% of the students who were able to utilize them last year.  Our Board of Directors determined that invoices for the three component fees, Dues, Library Service Fees and Institutional Emergency Assessments, be sent to library directors and we are in the process of receiving these revenues and making payment arrangements with our vendors.

It is both gratifying and humbling to be recognized by the preponderance of the state’s chief academic officers as a resource that is both essential and cost effective.  This is particularly so given the fact that you were asked to make significant unanticipated expenditures late in the budget process in an extremely difficult year.  We will work very hard to make our programs even more effective.

For 2010-11, we will work diligently to recover state support for this important example of sharing inter-institutional costs in higher education. We will continue to try to broaden our base of financial support in order to reduce the burdens on individual institutions. In this regard, it will be important to explain that the factors that led to our shared success in responding to the emergency this year will probably not align in the same way next year.  It will also be important to draw attention to the fact that losses over the past two years – both directly to the statewide portfolio in FY 2008-9, and now in terms of the trade-offs inherent in the redirection of institutional funds to support the remaining program – have been grave.

We will continue to report to you on our program activities and seek your counsel and support in our upcoming informational and legislative campaigns.

 

Submitted September 1,  2009