Where Are Academic-Library Budgets Most Likely to Grow?

p strongAcademic-library budgets are not moving in a single direction: many leaders are protecting core allocations while ively adding personnel and streaming media rather than expanding every format./strong/p p Primary Research Group's survey of 50 academic-library leaders found that 62% expected spending from their allocated budget to remain unchanged. That stability does not mean a freeze across categories. Forty-eight percent planned to increase personnel spending, indicating that staffing remains a priority even when the overall envelope is tight./p p Collection plans differ by institution and format. Seventy percent of community-college libraries expected to increase streaming-media spending. At the same time, 10% of the full sample planned to reduce ebook spending. Those figures reinforce the need to analyze demand at the local level rather than assume all digital content moves together./p p For vendors, a flat total budget can still contain growing markets. Products tied to high-use instruction, hard-to-replace staff capacity or visible student demand may win funds from lower-priority categories. For library leaders, the challenge is to explain reallocation clearly: what is growing, what is being held, what is being reduced and which institutional outcome each decision supports./p p The most useful benchmark compares plans with peer institutions of similar size and mission. A personnel increase at one library may address vacancies at another, it may build data, AI or student-success services. The numbers become actionable when they are paired with subgroup detail and the reasons behind the change./p p  /p