For VIVA's first biennium, the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia, the state's academic library community, and the Virginia legislature, working together, restructured the academic libraries' materials budgets to give VIVA a central budget of $2 million for group purchases in 1994-96.

The financial benefits to VIVA institutions can be measured in three ways: Reduced Purchasing Costs, Cost Savings, and Value Added.

Reduced purchasing costs:

VIVA calculates financial benefits in terms of reduced purchasing costs for all purchases. During the 1994-96 period, VIVA paid $2 million for databases and software that would have cost $12.6 million if purchased by each institution individually, realizing $10.6 million in purchase price savings.

In the summer of 1996, VIVA institutions were asked to analyze the VIVA resources available to them in fiscal year 1995-96 and to record direct cost savings, indirect cost savings, and value added savings realized during that year. A total of 63 responses were received from 58 VIVA institutions and their branch libraries. Respondents included all 15 state-assisted doctoral and comprehensive VIVA institutions, 28 of the 34 public two-year institutions, and 15 of the participating 27 independent colleges.

Cost savings:

The survey documented cost savings of $330,977 during 1995-96. This is an important base-line measure of cost savings and reflects

• Many resources started mid-year, too late to have an impact on cancellations and
• Telecommunications and hardware infrastructure problems at some schools, preventing or limiting their access and use of VIVA resources.

Value added:

This survey documented a financial benefit of $6,121,031 worth of new resources made available to VIVA institutions during 1995-96. Key results:

• The IAC indexes and full-text journals represent 31,869 new journal subscriptions statewide, for a total of $3,640,131 in value added in 1995-96.
• Chadwyck-Healey full-text sources (African-American Poetry, 1760-1900; English Poetry Full-text Database; and English Verse Drama) represent $3,273,615 in value added, electronic resources not previously available to most of Virginia's colleges and universities.
• Project Muse online journals represented 521 new subscriptions for VIVA schools.
• VIVA's purchase of the Britannica Online represented the first access faculty and students at 24 campuses had ever had to an online encyclopedia.

This survey has been revised and distributed for the 1996-97 year and will be revised and distributed on a biennial basis to all VIVA institutions.