(3 Nov 2025) In the world of libraries, every dollar matters. As budgets tighten and the demand for new services and resources increases, resource allocation increasingly becomes a complex and high-stakes puzzle. This is the question that keeps administrators up at night: Which projects will deliver the greatest return on investment for our patrons, and how do we fund them responsibly?
Much too often, these critical decisions rely on intuition or historical spending. But what happens when you could eliminate the guesswork and use hard data to find the best combination of projects within a fixed budget?
This is where Excel Solver comes in. Solver is an often-overlooked tool that transforms spreadsheets into a decision-making engine. It is an Excel add-in program used for optimization, which basically means finding the best (maximum or minimum) value for a specific goal. In doing so, Solver systematically adjusts values in a set of designated cells while adhering to specific constraints. For library leadership, this means moving beyond simple budget tracking to evidence-based, optimal (yes, optimal) resource planning.
Sam Suber, the Electronic Resources Coordinator at Moraine Valley Community College Library, United States, shares his experiences here.
