Operating Expenditures of Libraries in Autonomous Universities and Polytechnics in Last Three Years

25 Assoc Prof Walter Theseira asked the Minister for Education for each of the last three years, what are the operating expenditures of the libraries of each of the Autonomous Universities and Polytechnics, broken down by (i) electronic database/electronic journal subscription costs (ii) physical book/journal/media acquisition costs and (iii) staff/administration costs.

Mr Ong Ye Kung: The expenditure on libraries varies across Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL), depending on the volume and type of research they undertake, the range of academic disciplines they offer, the size of the student and faculty body, and other factors.

Over the past few years, operating expenditure on libraries ranged between $1 million to $6 million per year, across each Polytechnic. For the Autonomous Universities (AU), their library expenditures ranged from $1 million to $32 million per year. This works out to be between one percent to four percent of the total operating expenditure for each of the IHLs.

Table 1 shows the breakdown of the library operating expenditures for AUs and Polytechnics.

The IHLs have put in place measures to share resources across institutions through inter-library loans, so that students can have access to more library materials than those in their own institutions. For example, the AU libraries are studying the possibility of joint subscription of e-resources. The IHLs will continue to work together to enhance such efforts.