As a result of the world financial crisis, since the second quarter of 2008, Spain has experienced what economists have called the Big Recession (Bandrés and Gadea, 2013). This period has persisted in time, affecting the Autonomous Communities (ACs), which had their expenditures reduced by more than 20% on average between 2010 and 2012 (Lago Peñas and Fernández Leiceaga, 2013). This crisis situation has also been reflected in Spanish public universities, which experienced a 16% reduction in funding during the 2008-2014 period, according to data from the European University Association Observatory (2014). However, this funding reduction has not been homogeneous and has depended on the education and financial policies of each regional government.

In response to this context of general recession, both central and regional governments have initiated a series of actions with negative impacts on the operation of public universities, among which the following can be highlighted:

These measures were approved, and more measures related to the reduction of replacement rates for staff were added. Before 2010, it was 100 per 100, but from that year on, it was reduced by 10 per 100 per year through the year 2015, when it was set at 50%.

In Spain, the first direct mention of the economic crises in the university libraries context is found in the 2009 Memory of the Consortium of Catalonia University Libraries (Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de Cataluña - CBUC). In this document, economic sustainability for the Catalonian Digital Library is introduced as one of the challenges for the future, including the increase in product prices and the crisis situation. Its core concept is that the economic crisis has a negative impact on library funding. Gutiérrez Santana et al. (2010) agree with this premise, indicating that 33% of those in charge of university libraries in Andalusia already had their budgets reduced by the year 2010. This crisis environment has also impacted public libraries, as observed in the studies by Arroyo-Vazquez et al. (2011) and Villoldo et al. (2011), who pointed to the relative stagnation of the economic provisions assigned to Spanish libraries in 2010, which consequently had obvious reductions in funding. Indeed, only the libraries of higher education institutions preserved their funding in 2010, with a slight 2.2% increase with respect to 2008. Merlo Vega (2012) and Pérez-Salmerón (2014) describe the actions undertaken by Spanish libraries to preserve librarian services during the recession period. Similarly, Fernández and Rubio (2013), studying the relationship between the library budget and research productivity at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, indicate that the average budget assigned by university libraries to acquire information resources began to decline in 2010. Hernández-Sánchez and Arroyo-Vázquez (2014) hold the same position in a study that included all Spanish public libraries, highlighting the fact that the economic crisis in Spain has produced a reduction in acquisition expenditures, a decline in service sites, and staff shortages.

The consequences of this economic recession in Spanish university libraries have been clearly stated in the V BUCLE conference held on September 20-21, 2012. Among its conclusions, the following can be highlighted:

In the international context, the first documented reference regarding the impact of the economic crisis on university libraries was the publication of the findings of a survey of 886 librarians from different countries attending the Charleston Library Conference held in 2008. There, participants were required to reveal their opinions on the effect of the recession on their own libraries. The results indicated that 33.4% of university librarians stated their beliefs that budget cuts will be extended, at least to the year 2012 (Nicholas et al., 2010). In the US, Guarria (2011), in a study conducted on 1.442 university libraries, found that by 2009, 33.2% had already their budget reduced, with the number increasing to 43.7% in 2010. The same year, Guarria and Wang (2011) presented numerous examples of the effects of cuts on university library funding in the US.

Regarding Europe, Greece has been the country where the effects of this crisis have been the worst, with a negative impact on the operation of university libraries. Studies conducted by Kostagiolas and Margiola (2011) and Kostagiolas et al. (2013) reveal that the increase in the funding of university libraries implemented up to 2009 due to grants from the European Union was dramatically reduced during the 2010-2012 period by 50% for operational expenditures and 20% for staff expenditures. Giannakopoulos et al. (2014) indicate that in 2013, 85.2% of Greek university libraries had their funding reduced, producing an outcome that translated into the reduction of information resources and maintenance expenditures and investments. Additionally, 79.1% of librarians considered the most negative effect of the crisis to be in the area of staff, with salary reductions, layoffs, and unfilled vacancies.

Ireland is another European country greatly affected by the economic crisis in the university library sector, with a 9% forced reduction in university staff during the 2008- 2011 period and a 15% decline in the purchases of information resources (Cox, 2010a, 2010b).

Since 2009, British university libraries have experienced funding reductions in digital format journal purchases due to the depreciation of the pound against the euro and dollar, with effects in collection development (JISC, 2009; Kid, 2010; Harper and Corrall, 2011). Similarly, Harper and Corrall (2011) note a significant reduction in librarian staff funding.

In the Netherlands, funding cuts in public libraries started in 2009 (Nijboer, 2010), with a 6%-10% reduction in the following years, causing a decline in library staff in the libraries of the country’s main cities.

Librarian consortia have also suffered impacts from the economic recession, as publicly acknowledged by the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) in its declaration “The Global Economic Crisis and its Impact on Consortia Licenses” in January 2009 and again in June 2010. This declaration indicates that budgetary cuts to libraries and consortia would not be sporadic but significant, widespread, and lasting. Several proposals intended for consortia and publishers to preserve information context as much as possible are suggested in this declaration.

In Spain, the five university library consortia, two library associations, and the Spanish National Research Council Archive and Library Network initiated a consortium board in 2014, to coordinate a common strategy to negotiate with large journal publishers. In a document released by the board in 2015, this effort was highly commended, and the document specified in detail some of the strategies intended by the parties to negotiate with the large publishers.

In short, this period of recession has produced diverse effects: on one hand, a salary cut and, on the other hand, a dramatic reduction in funding both for the purchase of information resources and to meet operational expenses. In addition to the previous effects, there is the position of the large groups of journal and electronic resource publishers, which, despite the economic context, have continued to raise their prices.

In response to this contextual change, libraries have developed several strategies to maintain the same level and quality of service provision. The proposals that libraries have formulated can be classified into three major categories: first, those suggesting that the key is in librarians’ professional development as a crucial factor for any change in strategy (Guarria and Wang, 2011; Varela Pardo and Baiget, 2012; Giannakopoulos et al., 2014); second, those holding that the key is to make their social role more visible and to establish links with society (Lloret Romero, 2011); and, third, those proposing the establishment of improvements at the level of resource management to face the cuts to funding for the purchasing of information resources in both the medium term and the long term. Kostagiolas et al. (2013) perform an excellent literature review on the different proposals from different researchers. Among them, and because of their potential application to the Spanish context, the following are worth highlighting:

In the Spanish environment, the effort undertaken by several institutions to establish the relevance of libraries for society should be noted (Pérez-Salmerón, 2014).

In this paper, we first intend to identify and quantify the effect of the economic recession on Spanish public university libraries regarding the following parameters:

These data were compared with the effects of the economic crisis on funding, staffing, and the number of students enrolled in Spanish public universities.

Lastly, proposals made by Spanish university libraries to mitigate the effects of the economic recession were analyzed.

This study takes the 47 Spanish public universities as reference. We should clarify that only on-site universities were considered. The library data used in this study have been collected from yearly statistical reports published by the University Libraries Network (Red de Bibliotecas Universitarias - REBIUN) corresponding to the years 2008 to 2014. With the aim of improving the data contained in this statistical network, we have first considered their yearly evolution to verify that there were no inconsistent figures in the series. Second, we have compared the data from REBIUN to the data collected from the different library reports, although we must note that this last approximation was conducted in only 25 cases of the total analyzed, given that they were the libraries with yearly activity reports. Lastly, data on expenditures have been verified in some occasions against the data collected in the universities’ budget executions.

For librarian consortia, we considered it convenient to use the expenses incurred during the 2008-2013 period corresponding to the purchase of electronic resources. We obtained the data from the following sources:

Regarding the universities, the data presented in this paper come from the following sources:

The measures adopted by libraries to face this period of crisis were obtained from two sources: their yearly library reports and the strategic planning documents found on their webpages.

Overall, the Spanish university libraries that belong to public universities began to be aware of the effects of the general economic recession in 2009, although in most, it did not become evident until 2012, the year when their funding was dramatically reduced.

During the long period of economic recession, from 2008 to 2014, libraries suffered a set of negative consequences that, in this study, we have grouped into the following categories: staff, the acquisition of information resources and collection development, and services provided to users.

Regarding staff and similar to what has happened in other countries, in this period, Spain experienced the loss of librarian and assistant positions due to the legal prohibition against filling vacancies. In addition and linked to this issue, it could be determined that libraries suffered a dramatic reduction in the number of students with scholarships as a consequence of cuts to funding, contributing to the loss of buying power of staff due to salary reductions.

The consequences in the domain of information resources purchasing are determined by reductions in budgets assigned to libraries by the universities and, perhaps, by the reduction in contributions from research funds and the centers themselves. Similarly, the consortia have reduced their budgets for electronic resources.

Expenditures on the acquisition of bibliographic materials have fallen more than 28% in constant euros (taking the year 2008 as the base). However, these reductions have not occurred in all libraries but have depended on the Autonomous Communities in which the university is located. The consequences of this decline in funding have had a major effect on the maintenance and development of collections, especially printed material. In light of this situation, managers have taken action by prioritizing the development of electronic resources, especially electronic periodicals, which are essential for developing university research. However, the impact on students caused by the reduction in the purchase of printed monographs remains unknown. These users have not yet changed their habits toward the use of monographs in electronic format, in addition to the fact that in many disciplines, collections of manuals in electronic format are poorly developed.

With respect to the volume of librarian services rendered during this period, it could be proven that first, the volume of book loans decreased in 2014 compared to 2008. However, the declining trend that started in 2011 should be analyzed to determine its causes. Although the data presented suggest that the cause could be due to a decrease in the number of students, we think that a more detailed study should be conducted, given that also since 2011, a decrease in the purchase of both printed monographs and manuals used by students can be observed. The effect of the electronic support platforms for teaching with the availability of a large volume of information to students should also be analyzed. Second, the declining evolution presented by the volume of interlibrary loan requests during this period could be because researchers have increased their access to the electronic publications acquired by their universities, consortia, or even to the growth of open access publications. Regarding the number of days that libraries are open annually, the reduction produced in this period, although not large, could nevertheless be a trend maintained over time as a consequence of the efficiency programs that universities have implemented since 2011.

The data on the budgets approved by universities in the years 2013 to 2015 suggest that the situation of continuous reduction in university funding may have come to an end. However, macroeconomic data suggest that the funding recovery could be very slow because of, among other factors, the volume of Spanish public debt and the goals for the budget deficit established by the European Union for the coming years. This situation suggests to us a scenario of university funding with small reductions, which means that library managers should design and develop strategies, on the one hand, to mitigate the negative effects of cuts on staff and compensation, the reduction in operational expenditures, and the purchase of information resources and, on the other hand, to maintain the levels and quality of service.

Simultaneously, library managers should address current challenges such as their participation in and maintenance of virtual teaching or internet competition. They should also think about their role, which, up to this moment, has always been that of facilitating information. At this point in technological development, that role has expanded, producing the power to act proactively with users. Because of the amount of information niches available to work, they should be capable of offering users current and precise information for the generation of high-quality knowledge. Additionally, social networks and the crisis itself have revealed that to achieve efficiency, it is indispensable to cooperate with other entities in the integration of and access to resources, etc.

Ultimately, the consequences of the economic crises have revealed, among other issues, the need for library managers, along with academic authorities, to commence a process of debate on what should be the library mission in this new economic and social environment. They should work on enhancing their capacities for planning, innovation, and cooperation to establish proactive actions to become sustainable and to continue improving the quality of the services rendered to users.