Missouri Governor Matt Blunt proposed a $239.2 million budget reduction on March 24, on top of more than a billion dollars already announced in proposed budget cuts. Tucked away in the new proposed budget cuts is the complete elimination of state monetary support of the Missouri Bibliographical Information User System, more commonly known as MOBIUS, a Common Library Platform.
At $649,530, it is a complete cut of state appropriations for MOBIUS CLP, which will hamstring MOBIUS, the database of libraries, users and catalogues with over 17 million items.
MOBIUS was founded in 1998 by 50 Missouri libraries and since has grown to 60 members. Its members include almost every college or university in the state and two non-academic libraries.
Funding for MOBIUS began at the university level with each charter member paying for itself to be in the program, including upgrades to computing and creation of the needed infrastructure.
For the cuts to become official they have to pass through the House Budget Committee, which began work on Tuesday March 29, and then the House and Senate. Even if the cuts do not pass the House or Senate, the Governor can use the power of line item veto to enact the cuts.
In 2000, an official legislative letter of intent was issued by the Missouri House Budget Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee specifying the state of Missouri would appropriate an amount to support half of the CLP budget. Funding never reached that high and today supports approximately 23 percent of the CLP budget.
Last year member libraries supported MOBIUS with over $1.5 million in funds, $650,000 of it coming from private colleges and universities.
If the cuts are approved, fees paid by the 60 member colleges and universities will increase by 40 percent. For UM-St. Louis, which has a yearly appropriation of $73,166 for MOBIUS, this would mean an increase of almost $30,000. At UM-Columbia the extra appropriation would be around $119,000.
"It's really robbing Peter to pay Paul. It would put pressure in other places," Amy Arnott, UM-St. Louis Dean of Libraries, said.
Blunt's official press release announcing the cuts said, "The actions I am taking today were made with careful thought and analysis and complement the priorities of mainstream Missourians to increase funding for our classrooms."
The press release also says, "Blunt's proposed $170.6 million funding increase for Missouri schools for FY 2006 remains unchanged as are budgeted appropriations this year for all Missouri colleges and universities."
The cuts do not affect money going directly to schools and instead targets the money going to libraries at the schools. For many small colleges in the state, MOBIUS is important to their academics since it increases their library inventory dramatically.
"I think it would be most unfortunate if MOBIUS was cut since picking up extra assessment would be a pain for most of the libraries in the state," Arnott said.
For the fiscal year 2004-2005, almost 70,000 MOBIUS transactions were made at the UM-St. Louis libraries. Over 8,000 books and other material were requested and used by the students, faculty, staff and administration of UM-St. Louis through MOBIUS. All told, more than 3.5 million MOBIUS transactions occurred in the state of Missouri.
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