At Bentley College the library has a seat on Curriculum Committee, which is
useful in an informational way, but not, as I've learned, useful in trying
to convince the school that if they wznt to add Program X, they'll have to
throw some money at  the library for support of said program. My concernes
are always pooh-poohed, and the department directly involved in setting up
Program X always says they have looked at the library's holdings in that
area and have found it sufficent. LAT ER, when Program X has been approved,
the library gets a note from said department saying something like "Now that
we are going to have Program X, we will need the following materials" ,
attached to a list  a mile long, mostly of expensive serials.
I'm happy to report that in all these cases the library has been able to buy
off the departments with a few token purchases.In addition, we now have in
place a special fund called Project Fund into which we can dip from time to
time for such cases. It is for on-time-only purchasses, however, which does
us no good for all those serials requests. (I meant to type One-time-only!)
However, we have not come to any blows with any departments yet, so I guess
we manage minimally adequately.
I'm curious what other libraries' experiences are.

---Tjalda Belastock
   Bentley college
   Waltham, MA