Curated tweetstream: what our audience said about Charles B. Lowry on the economic crisis

Here's another first for LiveSerials - rather than writing a report on the session by Charles B. Lowry, Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries, I thought I'd give you a snapshot of the tweeting that took place throughout:

Setting the scene:

• bookstothesky Telling wordcloud from Lowry re library budgets: key words emphasized are budget, reduction(s), cut, reduced :-/ #uksg

On US vs UK library budgets:

• jharvell Does that mean that 10 universities in the us had library budgets of over 40 million dollars before the cuts? #uksg #didimisssomething?
• chriskeene @jharvell and the lowest category was 'libraries with budget less than $20million'. different world!
• jharvell Don't get me wrong those big budgets are brilliant. Brilliant. But my gob hasn't closed for the last 5 mins. #ineverknew #uksg
• jharvell With the amount of money available in US budgets why are publishers even bothering listening to us in the uk #uksg

On the other hand:

• charlierapple Decreasing budgets are the new norm, not an aberration, with consequences for teaching and research internationally #uksg Lowry
• ORourkeTony @charlierapple #uksg I heard someone say recently that flat was the new up!
• MelindaKenneway Time to head to Canada by the looks of things - they seem to be the only libraries left with budget. #uksg

And finally ...

• antet Not sure I like the detached phrase "reduced commitment to human resources" #uksg