Originally published on January 13th 2009

The University of Edinburgh library has been hit by a £200,000 shortfall, as plunging exchange rates have caused costs of academic journals to soar.
A high percentage of the Edinburgh University Library’s acquisition budget is spent on journal subscriptions, many of which are paid in foreign currencies.
A recent report by the library estimates that 50 percent of journal subscriptions are paid in euros, 15 percent in dollars and the remaining 35 percent in sterling.
Sheila Cannell, Director of Library Services at the University of Edinburgh, told Student: “We are now in a global information environment; we are not buying only information published in the UK but international and global information.”
“We did not know this would happen when we planned our budgets and this has led to a funding shortfall that we are working to address.”
She added that there is a “complicated supply chain” involving purchases that are paid for in sterling but priced in euros or dollars. The fluctuating exchange rate is adding pressure to library budgets as the purchasing power of the pound declines.
The Assistant Director of Glasgow University Library, Tony Kidd, recently told The Times that they have had to ask for additional “exchange rate funding” of over £400,000. He added that if the pound dropped by a cent against the dollar in the course of a year it would cost his library £7,000. A fall of a single cent against the euro would cause a £12,000 funding gap.
Sheila Cannell said these figures are similar for the University of Edinburgh, although the overall shortfall is around the £200,000 mark.
At the end of last semester, the library were quickly passing journal invoices to the Finance Office who examine exchange rates before deciding the best day to pass them for payment.
It was estimated that the library will have to pay an additional £230,000 for invoices which represents a 12.7 percent increase on top of an average 7 percent increase in prices by publishers. The Chair of Research Libraries UK, Mark Brown, warned “the danger is that libraries will be forced to start canceling journals.”
The University of Edinburgh library are working hard to patch the unexpected hole in the budget with the library currently in the process of preparing a paper outlining the extent of the problem.
EUSA Vice President Academic Affairs Guy Bromley told Student: “Just as many people who went abroad over Christmas will have found their spending decreased compared to previous visits, where the University has to import products from abroad its spending power is cut too.”
Bromley added that he is “putting pressure on the University to ensure that journal subscriptions are not cut, and that money is found elsewhere to plug the gaps left by the weak pound. Were Britain a member of the eurozone, spending power would be much easier and budgets more stable.”
The University of Edinburgh library made some savings by delaying some purchases until the VAT cut from 17.5 percent to 15 percent came into effect in December. It was estimated that this could save up to £35,000 but there are concerns that any savings have been dwarfed by the plummeting value of the pound.