(10 Nov 2023) Times are tight, for local councils as much as anyone, so it’s not surprising they’re running a ruler over all their services. That includes libraries. From Auckland’s Wayne Brown suggesting they could be staffed by volunteers; to Christchurch’s Phil Mauger saying last month that community libraries were just “buildings with some books in them”…
(7 Apr 2022) An analysis by the OECD shows governments have shrunk their budgets for research in 2021, one year after the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to boost public expenditure on science. After a significant 15% growth in real terms in 2020, which was largely focused on health, government R&D budgets for the entire OECD…
(6 Oct 2020) From ALIA: Tonight’s federal budget, as anticipated, provided an unprecedented level of government spending aimed at jobs and recovery. By putting money into businesses and cash into people’s pockets, the government is banking on Australia emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic in better shape than other national economies. While there remain…
(6 September 2017) Australia’s strong global university rankings face growing competition from a rising Chinese university system powered by Government investment, highlighting the dangers of a proposed $2.8 billion cut to university funding. The rankings influence where international students choose to study – and our strong rankings in recent years have helped to generate a…
(31 May 2017) A new study has found that the federal government’s ‘wilful neglect’ of Australia’s national libraries, galleries and museums is putting the nation’s shared history and heritage at risk, particularly in regional areas, reports the Canberra Times. The report by Community and Public Sector Union researchers Kristin van Barneveld and Osmond Chiu, which…
(26 April 2017, Kuala Lumpur) An international expert in socio-economic development in Southeast Asia says Malaysia shouldn’t be cutting down on the budget for education, especially since neighbouring countries are pumping more resources into education. Speaking to FMT, Prof Patrick Ziegenhain, a visiting professor at Universiti Malaya’s (UM) Asia-Europe Institute, noted that Indonesia and Philippines…
By Ruth A. Pagell* (28 March 2017) Ruth’s Rankings 24 is based on Malaysian news articles that chronicle the changes in funding to Malaysia’s premier research universities following the release of the Ministry of Education’s Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education) – MEB – in 2015. In preparing the article, I read many news articles…
(31 May 2016, Boston, MA) Institutional library budgets across the globe will increase by 1.4 per cent overall this year, reports the Annual Library Budget Survey, carried out by the Publishers Communication Group (PCG), Ingenta’s publishing consultancy arm. The worldwide study, which interviewed senior librarians in 686 institutional libraries across the globe about their budget…
(28 December 2015) India’s Ministry of Culture has approved Rs. 400 crore [US$60 million] for the scheme “National Mission on Libraries – Upgradation of Libraries – Providing Services to the Public” for the 12th Plan period [2012-2017]. The components of the National Mission on Libraries (NML) are : (i) Creation of National Virtual Library of India…
(23 April 2015) The annual Periodicals Price Survey has been published. A lengthy summary with tables and figures is featured in the Library Journal.