University of Missouri: After Fee Fails, MU’s Ellis Library Plans End To 24-Hour Access
Note: Additional background in “MU Library Looks for New Ways to Improve After Fee Failed” (December 2, 2015)
From The Missourian:
Ending the longer hours follows a failed MU student vote in November to raise fees for library operations. Ann Riley, acting director of MU Libraries, said the new hours haven’t been determined. Previous hours at Ellis for Sunday through Thursday were 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m.
MU libraries, which includes nine branch libraries in addition to Ellis, are the only academic unit at MU without a dedicated student fee. The proposed student fee was projected to generate $4.3 million in its first year and steadily increase until 2022. By 2022, it was projected to generate an additional $12.99 million annually.
[Clip]“It’s more of the same,” said Jim Cogswell, MU Director of Libraries. “We’ve been reducing our budget as best we can really for the last five to six years.”The budget has remained somewhat stagnant for about a decade as student population and operating costs have increased.
MU’s enrollment increased more than 52 percent from 1998 to 2013, from 22,723 to 34,658 students. During that period, the number of library staff decreased by 25 percent from 193 to 146, according to the proposal for the fee increase
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About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
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