These minutes were approved as submitted at the ULC meeting on December 8, 1993 UNIVERSITY LIBRARY COMMITTEE MINUTES October 27, 1993 PRESENT: Joanne Eustis, Library Ken McCleary, Chair, Human Resources Ed Fox, Arts & Sciences James Smith, Forestry & Wildlife Diane Kaufman, Staff Senate J. D. Stahl, Faculty Senate GUESTS: Alan Armstrong, Library M. Norstedt, Library Paul Metz, Library Melissa Obenhaus, Library ABSENT: S.Brooker-Gross, Provost's Off. Mark Smith, Veterinary Medicine Lori Marsh, Ag. & Life Science Marie Wall, Architecture Pamela Percha, GSA James Yardley, Business The meeting was called to order at 3:00 p.m. The minutes of the September 15, 1993 meeting were approved as submitted. OLD BUSINESS: MEETING TIMES IN NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER (K. McCleary): It was agreed that since the regular meeting time conflicts with the holiday breaks in November and December, the next meeting will be at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 8, 1993, and the November meeting will be canceled. CLARIFICATION OF MATERIALS TO BE DISTRIBUTED ELECTRONICALLY WITH MINUTES (K. McCleary): After discussion the committee approved a motion that the electronic distribution be limited to the minutes of the meeting unless otherwise directed to include specific attachments. NEW BUSINESS LIBRARY REPORT (J. Eustis): J. Eustis distributed the fall issue of BiblioTech, which contains the University Libraries' goals document. It will be mailed to all faculty. J. Eustis attended the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) meeting and reported briefly on their three major initiatives. The first is coordinated acquisitions and networked based distribution of foreign language and area studies materials. The second initiative involves intellectual property rights in an electronic environment. Part of ARL's concern is about the way faculty members produce copyrighted material and give it to a publisher, who then sells it back to the university's library. They are looking at other kinds of ownership options. The third initiative is to develop a strategy that will encourage scholars to make their work available on the network. One aspect of this initiative is the lack of institutional rewards and recognition for electronic publication. The library has just completed a major project to review staff classification and salary equity. A task force of classified staff and two faculty members was appointed to work with the university's personnel services. They have been meeting since the first of August to complete a very demanding analysis of library tasks, ranking them in order of complexity. The task force report is now ready to be distributed and discussed in the library. A question was asked about the status of the library infill project. Last year Richmond turned down all construction projects, and consideration of a library addition is in abeyance. Although this is not the time to press for a library addition, the library would be interested in proposing that the old entrances to the library be reopened and the "pigeon court" be covered over. However, at this time no formal proposal has been made to the university and no cost estimates have been solicited. This is a complicated process which requires state approval for expenditure of funds even if it is university funds which are used for renovation. The passage of the bond issue last November guaranteed funding for the storage facility; an entirely separate matter from the proposal to build an addition to the library. The final sign-off on the storage facility plans is now underway, and the library expects ground-breaking in December. The massive project of barcoding all the material stored in Cheds is beginning, preparatory to moving it into the new building. Volunteers will work on the project on an overtime basis. A committee member suggested that someone from the University Library Committe should be on the committee responsible for planning the storage facility. That group has been composed of people from Facilities Planning, Records Management and the library. Since the plans for the structure are essentially complete at this time, another ULC member suggested that he would be more interested in the development of policy governing the facility and the process of selection of additional materials to be placed in storage. A storage building report will be on the ULC agenda for December. MATERIALS BUDGET (P. Metz): (This discussion is a substitution for the ARL statistics listed on the agenda.) The library is still enjoying the benefits of last year's addition of $1.25M for materials, received as part of the tuition increase, and a subsequent further small addition of funds which were divided 50/50 between the operations and the materials budgets. Last year and this are the two best years in a decade for monographic purchases. A modest number of new serials orders has been approved. This fiscal year the library has added Statistical Masterfile on CD-ROM and signed contracts to bring the Commerce Business Daily and the Federal Register online. The library also is acquiring Legislate including the full-text of the Washington Post online. Use of the Engineering Standards, acquired last year, is increasing and we are now conducting a trial experiment with vendor catalogs. The library recently bought the complete papers of Charles Darwin on microform. The materials budget is underwriting the purchase of cataloging copy for some of the library's outstanding microform sets in order to make them accessible. The database for the Center for Research Libraries is being mounted on VTLS and the library also is expanding the available number of document delivery providers. Another growth area in the budget is what the library calls "unreimbursed literature search," which includes online services such as Federal Register, Dow Jones, Westlaw, Avery Index and, increasingly, the classroom instruction program offered by Dialog. A major library goal is to increase online access from faculty offices. In looking to the future, the library will be seeking guidance about what to place in the storage building. If half of what the library acquires is serials and every 10 years we store 10 years worth of serials, the library is off-setting only half its growth. This means that the library will, for the first time, have to store a significant number of monographs. VTLS data will show what has not circulated, but the library will seek faculty advice in choosing which books to store. Another future concern, in this fiscal environment, is that no funding agency will be able to keep up with serials inflation, new serials, and online databases. The consequence of this is that there will probably need to be another serials review in about two years. The number of reinstatements after the last round of serials cuts is between 10 and 15 out of 1,255 cancellations, which is a remarkable record. Requests for reinstatements compete with requests for new serials and deserving ones are reordered with backsets. UPDATE ON THE VTLS '92 UPGRADE (M. Obenhaus): The upgrade was brought online during Christmas break in 1992. Some of the major enhancements in the '92 upgrade are: the ability of the library to customize screens, increased help facilities (there are now 99 help screens specific to this library), and enhanced key word searching. Since the initial installation there have been a number of upgrades to fix problems found in the system. M. Obenhaus is negotiating with VTLS on 35 to 40 outstanding problems reports (some of which predate the upgrade). VTLS has reorganized its support structure so that each VTLS library client has an assigned support team to work on problem resolution. The major problems for which the library continues to seek resolution concern technical aspects of the work done by the library's cataloging department, rather than problems the patron might encounter. When accessing VTLS, patrons should notice the entry at the bottom of the first screen which reads, "For more information about VTLS searching and the University Libraries, enter NS." Entering this command will display the menu of library information available online, which is quite extensive. Also, patrons now may go to the circulation desk to be issued a second private patron ID. This second ID number will allow the patron to see the items for which he/she has placed holds and recalls and those items currently checked out, with due dates. K. McCleary read a draft of the letter thanking Norm Dodl for his service to the University Library Committee. The draft was approved and will be sent to Dr. Dodl. The meeting was adjourned at 3:58. The next meeting will be on Wednesday, December 8, 1993.