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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi Dennis,<br>
<br>
Our campus capitalizes perpetually-licensed e-books for
audit-reporting purposes. The decision was made by campus
accounting management outside of the library so I don't know the
details, but it was presumably based on our university system's
Capital Assets Guide, which states that purchases of books and
materials for a library should be capitalized, and includes
"electronic access charges" as a capitalized expenditure. It also
notes that periodicals, subscriptions, and AV materials should be
expensed, rather than capitalized.<br>
<br>
I report the following capital expenses to our campus accounting
people each year:<br>
<ul>
<li>Number of volumes and cost (aggregated by vendor, fund, and
total amount):<br>
</li>
<ul>
<li>Physical books purchased<br>
</li>
<li>Physical books received on standing order (if they would
be available for standalone purchase)<br>
</li>
<li>Electronic books purchased under perpetual license
(purchase price only--platform fees are separately expensed)</li>
<li>Electronic books received on standing order under
perpetual license (if they would be available for standalone
purchase)<br>
</li>
</ul>
<li>Number of volumes:<br>
</li>
<ul>
<li>Physical books donated (only those added to the
collection)</li>
<li>Physical books withdrawn</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<p>We base the decision entirely on perpetual vs subscription and
don't take platform, DRM, or user/uses restrictions into
account--it's basically down to whether we get to keep it once
we paid for it or whether we have to keep paying for the
content. We distinguish between a subscription (paying for the
content itself) and a platform fee (paying to maintain access on
a specific platform while retaining the right to keep the
content in some format), but both are expensed.<br>
</p>
<p>There is useful information in chapters 4 and 13 in our
system's GAAP Accounting and Reporting Manual. I think this URL
is available to everyone--apologies if it requires
authentication:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://calstate.edu/financialservices/resources/year-end/GAAP/manual/gaap-manual.shtml">http://calstate.edu/financialservices/resources/year-end/GAAP/manual/gaap-manual.shtml</a></p>
<p>I hope this helps.</p>
<p>-- <br>
<b>Nikki DeMoville</b>
<br>
Coordinator - Electronic Resources, Acquisitions, and Resource
Sharing
<br>
Robert E. Kennedy Library
<br>
California Polytechnic State University
<br>
San Luis Obispo, California
<br>
<br>
Direct 805-756-5780
<br>
Fax 805-756-7711
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ndemovil@calpoly.edu">ndemovil@calpoly.edu</a>
</p>
<br>
On 11/29/2018 8:26 AM, Dennis W. Flanders wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:3E05C8328C51114E822D1DC63DE6498BF0E73F47@SRV-EXCH-MB09.adm.suffolk.edu">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hi all,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am helping our accounting department to
explore the possibility of capitalizing e-book expenditures
like we do with physical books. Does anyone have any
experience with this, or otherwise have some insight to
share? It would be much appreciated!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For the moment, we are only looking at
purchased content, not subscriptions. Part of what I’m
reviewing is whether, for a given publisher/vendor, purchased
titles need to live on the publisher/vendor platform for DRM
reasons and/or to manage finite simultaneous users. I’m also
curious whether the existence of recurring maintenance/access
fees might influence whether purchased e-books are capitalized
or uncapitalized. Finally, I’m wondering whether we’d be
able to consider some e-books capitalized expenses and other
e-books uncapitalized expenses depending on these variables,
e.g. Oxford Handbooks may be capitalized but purchased titles
on Proquest Ebook Central should not be.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thanks for your thoughts!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dennis<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color:#404040">Dennis
Flanders<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color:#404040">Electronic
Resources Librarian<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color:#404040">Sawyer
Library, Suffolk University<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span
style="color:#404040;background:white">617.973.1120</span></i><i><span
style="color:#404040"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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