Periodicals Levy Has State Taxing Its Own University Libraries

The new California sales tax on periodicals has a quixotic effect: The state is taxing its own university libraries.

The libraries, which subscribe to esoteric and expensive academic journals, will shell out nearly $3 million this year in taxes for them.

UC San Diego alone will face a $182,000 sales tax bill for periodicals, and San Diego State University will have to fork over $100,000. Cal State Fullerton’s tab is estimated at $50,000 out of a library budget that already has been cut by $800,000.

“The way we’re meeting the cost is simply by canceling periodicals,” said Patricia Bril, acting associate university librarian at Cal State Fullerton. “This is absolutely coming at the worst time. We didn’t know how we were going to manage before to deal with the $800,000 cut. Now on top of that, we’re going to cut another $50,000. The impact of that has meant we’ve had to cut about 1,000 subscriptions out of about 3,500. . . .

“And we haven’t had increases for inflation for the last four or five years, so we’ve already been cutting periodicals. It has just been one thing after another.”

At San Diego State, librarian Don Bosseau said they have reduced the number of titles they buy to 10,000 from about 12,000. Like Fullerton librarians, this is just one more in a series of cutbacks Bosseau has been forced to make in the last five years due to the high inflation rate--20% or more--in the price of some journal subscriptions.

“There’s not much we can do about it, except cut the number of journals we buy,” Bosseau said. Some specialized academic journals can cost as much as $10,000 a year for a single subscription.

The tax is an additional kick in the teeth for libraries already reeling from budget cuts, higher periodical costs and a weak dollar in figuring foreign exchange rates for the many scientific journals now published in Europe and Asia.

“This has hit like a double whammy,” said Louise Adler, a professor in the teacher education department at Cal State Fullerton. “And it’s the state that is taking the money. It’s almost driving me insane because it makes absolutely no sense to tax yourself. But that’s what they (state officials) do.”

Karin Wittenborg, UCLA associate university librarian, said inflation and other increases have eroded her buying power by 40% over the past several years, even before the 8% tax levy.

The nine-campus University of California system will pay more than $1.7 million for fiscal year 1991-92. Among the larger campuses: UCLA will face a $300,000 bill, UC Berkeley and UC Davis each a $275,000 tab, UC Irvine $181,000, UC Santa Barbara $180,000, and UC Riverside $85,000. Stanford, the state’s most prestigious private university, will pay between $250,000 and $300,000 in new taxes.

The 20-member California State University system will pay an additional $1 million, with the tab at individual campuses depending on the number of students and the size of the library collections. San Diego State’s $100,000 is at the high end; smaller campuses, such as Cal State Dominguez Hills, will pay about $29,500.

Even the 107-campus state community college system, whose libraries buy far fewer of the more expensive academic journals, will face a new $200,000 bill systemwide.

George Soete, associate university librarian at UC San Diego, said most libraries might be able to scrape through the fiscal year without major subscription cancellations by using contingency funds and making fewer book purchases. But without relief soon, he said that librarians face “cannibalizing” one or more portions of their collections to protect other portions.

Even a temporary cancellation of some journals will result in a permanent chronological gap for those serials, he warned.

Several public university librarians noted the irony of the state taxing purchases made with state money. “It’s the equivalent of just throwing the money away,” Bosseau said.

The UC system is supporting a bill by State Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco) which would exempt from the sales tax free newspapers and periodicals and purchases of newspapers and periodicals made by nonprofit organizations under limited circumstances.

“All this amounts to a price increase, on top of other price increases we haven’t been able to keep up with,” Dennis E. Smith, director of library affairs in UC’s office of the president, said.

The Berkeley library has cut $400,000 from its periodicals budget the last two years because of insufficient money to cover inflation and other costs. It hopes to absorb the sales tax for this year by cutting back on book purchases and using emergency funds provided by chancellor’s office at Berkeley.

“But that’s money we could otherwise use to make up for past cuts and transfers,” said David Ferrell, Berkeley’s acting associate university librarian. The campus serials collection is considered the nation’s largest, or second largest after Harvard, among all universities, depending on the method used to count items.

“And it’s not just the numbers but our concentration in bioscience, in foreign materials, in items from Slavic countries and from (Soviet) collections” that are sought by scholars everywhere, Ferrell said.

At UC Irvine, library officials have tried to balance budget cuts plus inflationary costs running 15% to 20% for books and periodicals. And although a last-minute infusion of $400,000 was found to pay for book acquisitions, departments across the campus are receiving letters from library staffers announcing plans for severe cuts in periodical subscriptions.

In the School of Biological Sciences alone, the library has proposed trimming more than 400 periodicals, and the great majority of those affect the department of ecology and evolutionary biology, said Walter Fitch, department chairman.

“We’re not too happy about it,” added the renowned molecular biologist, who said his department will meet with librarians next week to discuss alternatives to elimination of vital subscriptions.

Evolutionary biologist Michael Rose viewed the latest proposal as the worst in five successive years of cuts in library journals--and one that could deliver a crushing blow to many disciplines.

“For our department, this is a nightmare,” Rose said. “We are looking our mortality in the face. . . . The third journal listed (for cancellation), American Naturalist, is one of the two or three leading journals in our department. A department like this cannot have graduate students earning their degrees . . . without that journal being available in the library. It is not possible.

“The irony is, our department is one of the very best of its kind in the world, one of the top five,” Rose said.

To a lesser extent, the sales tax also will burden the public libraries.

The Los Angeles Public Library’s costs will increase $82,000, the Los Angeles County Library $102,000, the San Diego Public Library $32,000, and the Pasadena Public Library $6,683.