Many stories of how libraries are quietly solving problems.

The grant person figures it out. On my campus it would take them maybe 2 hours to do the budget for a complex grant. That’s their expertise. And it wouldn’t be a librarian so much as it would be ILL fees. These things could be gathered pretty easily.

Say a campus’s grant capture is 250,000. 15% =37,500. That’s enough for a half time person.

You’re telling me they cost 60% of every grant?

It’s not that time consuming once you learn how to do it. But that’s the issue: we don’t know how to do it. But that’s what we have grant people for. Doesn’t your institution have someone who does your budget? Can’t they put in specific costs for each of these things?

Why are we special in higher education? Or are we just enjoying being egocentric and expecting our institutions to do things for free? We *should* be budgeting all costs.

I have to write that into my grant budget. So those are accounted for before the overhead. For us overhead goes to the university administration and we never see it.

As someone who works in a small institution, I don’t understand why we need to pay so much for overhead. It often doubles my budget and I don’t get why.