A Survey of Budgeting Systems in Academic Libraries from India

As per the 2021–2022 All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) report, there are close to 58,000 libraries in Indian Universities, Colleges, and Stand-Alone Institutions. This paper finds out the prominent practice of annual budgeting that is used by these libraries. Five hundred and four libraries were surveyed through a questionnaire. It was found that a vast majority of the academic libraries are following incremental budgeting practice. We prove that incremental budgeting as a practice doesn’t lead to the desired level of involvement of the librarian in the annual budgeting process. We also tested if zero-base budgeting practice is a more inclusive library budgeting practice. Respondents overwhelmingly agreed that zero-base budgeting is a more inclusive library budgeting practice as compared to incremental budgeting. Notwithstanding certain limitations, we strongly recommend zero-base budgeting for academic libraries to move toward a more inclusive budgeting practice.