its allocated budget grow from just under $6 million to over $7.5 million. As of 2002, this university spent slightly more than $2.26 million on its monograph additions, $3.66 million on serials, and $1.447 million on electronic resources. Facilitating this level of investment were various grants made available to the university, which tends to do its own cataloging and therefore has an extensive cataloging staff (University of Florida, 2002).
Morris and Wool (1999) estimated that it costs $6.13 per title for the time a cataloger spends creating and editing records. With associated costs, the cataloging center cost increases to $8.17. When staff overhead costs up to the assistant director level are added in, the cost nearly doubles to $16.25 per title. The following table reflects these data:
Average Percentage
Center Staff Costs cost of Total l
Cataloging Tasks Only $6.13 37.7
Associated Cataloging Tasks 2.04 12.5
(Postcataloging authority work, training,
problem solving, procedure documentation)
Total Center Cost $8.17 50.3
Staff Overhead Costs Average Percentage
(Paid leave, administration, meetings, Cost of Total
professional time, automation support, etc.)
Cataloging Departments $6.61 40.6
Assistant Director Office 1.47 9.0
Total Overhead Cost 8.08 49.7
Total Per Title Cost $16.25
These costs, according to Morris and Wool (1999), were based on five sample weeks of cataloging activity at the Iowa State University's main academic library. Time was recorded at a task level. Tasks were organized into five product centers and three staff overhead cent...