Managing the acquisitions budget: a practical perspective

This paper focuses on four areas, all of which affect a library’s bottom line in one way or another: fitting library materials expenditure into the parent organisation’s budget cycle, including suggestions for taking advantage of any unspent institutional allocation at the end of the financial year; budget control, including managing commitment and expenditure; internal budget allocation, where it argues in favour of a flexible formula, developed to suit the needs of the organisation; and audit and stocktake. It argues that success in these areas provides the basis for successful collections management.