Posted May 13, 2005.

Missouri Budget Strips MOBIUS Funding

The $19.2-billion budget passed in early May by the Missouri General Assembly will result in higher fees for members of a resource-sharing consortium of academic libraries. The budget eliminates the entire state subsidy of $650,000 to the Missouri Bibliographic Information User System (MOBIUS) for next fiscal year, a loss that will result in a 36% increase in the fees charged to the 60 colleges and universities and the two public libraries that participate in the program.

MOBIUS Executive Director George Rickerson said in the May 10 Jefferson City News Tribune that the annual fee for the University of Missouri at Columbia library will rise from $493,000 to $713,000, effective July 1. “We’re quite concerned about it,” he added, “because when MOBIUS was formed in 1998, one of the fundamental assumptions was that it would be a state-local partnership.”

The MOBIUS consortium, managed by UM, allows faculty and students to request library books from a statewide, internet-based database and have them delivered within one or two days.

UM administrators announced May 5 that MOBIUS would relocate by the end of the summer to a facility in Columbia occupied by another state information service, the Missouri Research and Education Network, which provides internet connectivity and services to Missouri schools, libraries, and government organizations. The state budget also reduced MOREnet’s appropriation, by $4.35 million. The university estimates it will save some $200,000 to $300,000 annually by consolidating the locations.

Posted May 13, 2005.