The Brown Library is on track to developing new and improved collections for the ACU community.

Library administration met  on Oct. 16 to talk about the budget and how to go about clearing out old books and buying new ones.

The Dean of Brown Library, James Wiser, is starting the process of weeding out the books now to gain more research materials for the students and staff.

“An explosion of books and electronic books are coming soon,” said Wiser. “If a book is 20 years old and hasn’t been checked out in 10 years, they pull it. If no one on staff wants it then it will be discarded.”

The library uses a a Google document that entails original amounts, expenditures, encumbered and total balance.

There are three essential funding streams that are presented in the library– the base budget given by the university, endowment proceeds and shared services from both ACU Dallas and the Brown Library.

The collections are mostly paid with the endowment money, and right now the budget has almost tripled for these collections. The budget has raised from $36,000 to $101,537.89 in 2020 alone.

“The responses that we have received from faculty so far are that they are very excited to have additional money to purchase new materials for the library and update the books in their field of study,” said Mark McCallon, associate dean for library services.

For long-term innovations in the library, once the collections are settled, they plan to use the rest of the budget to create study areas and additional rooms on the first floor.