After Harvard University lost $11 billion of endowment value last fiscal year, President Drew Faust is pulling the pursestrings rather tightly.
Harvard’s 70 libraries, for example, must work together to increase savings, she said in a speech today on campus in Cambridge. Schools and divisions across Harvard have to work together to cut the impact of the fund’s losses resulting from the global financial crisis, she said.
Harvard’s library system, which has more than 16 million volumes, is the oldest in the U.S. and the largest academic library system in the world, according to the school’s Web site. While the system is one of the school’s “proudest treasures,” it’s in need of better coordination, Faust said.
“Curious practices have grown up as the system has grown – – obstacles to sharing and coordination,” she said. Economic arrangements at the libraries discourage them from working together, she said. [Sound familiar?]
“Change in our library system is not a choice, but a necessity,” she said. “We need to ensure that we make that change in the wisest way possible.”
Schools can also see savings in their purchases of computers and other forms of information technology, she said.
“We must dedicate ourselves — individually and collectively — to harnessing the power of a more unified Harvard,” she said. Report from Bloomberg News.
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