This study describes budget trends at Harvard University, Stanford University, Montana State University at Bozeman and New Mexico State University at Las Cruces. These financial trends are connected to the Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities' rankings from 2004-2008. The connected data indicates that effective budget patterns include keeping collection and materials budgets as large as possible without sacrificing from a human resources perspective. The data also suggests that universities should aim to allocate at least three percent of the total organization's budget to the library system. After establishing the connection between healthy libraries and parent organizations, it is also recommended that libraries treat employees more like business people who are responsible for the well-being of the organization than like librarians whose primary concern is short-term
