University Library Council
Friday, December 8, 2006
Dean's Conference Room
2:30 – 4:00 p.m.
Meeting Minutes
Present: Baeder, Baughman, Dix, Finsterbusch, Francescato, Klumpp (Chair), Modi, Peres, Ruschoff
Absent: Foudy, Greer, Lapin, Newhagen
Meeting with Council: Charles Lowry
Guest: Susanna Van Sant
Meeting called to order at 2:32 p.m.
Topic: Minutes of November 8, 2006
The minutes were approved without amendment.
Topic: Reports
- Chair’s Report
- Klumpp delivered the Motion of the University Library Council to the Provost and the University Senate Chair. He will discuss with Peres who to send it to in the USM office.
- Referring to the University’s recently published draft Mid-States document, Klumpp asked if the Council should respond to the provost’s request for reaction by responding to the section on the Libraries. Should the challenges facing the Libraries be made clear? He distributed a draft of such a response. The Council agreed that Klumpp should send the response, representing the whole Council. Klumpp asked for comments by December 14, before sending his response to the Provost by December 22. (Attached)
- The University Senate Executive Committee is uncomfortable with the idea of a purely fact-finding task force, without action objectives. So the SEC will create a different model for the task force that will survey the dissemination of faculty productivity. When issuing charges to various councils and committees, the Senate will indicate that a task force has been created to provide background in responding to the charge Some charges will be to the Council, for example regarding inflation and how the library is responding to changes in scholarly productivity.
- Dean’s Report
- Lowry has been asked by the Provost to provide a model for projecting ways to implement the budget over many years with a view to strengthening acquisitions and improving the Libraries’ standing relative to our ARL peers. Lowry is close to completing this report and will share it with Klumpp for input.
- There is a project to put photos of staff members in the library staff directory. He would like to have pictures of Council members on the website as well. A form will be distributed for members to grant permission for their ID photos to be used. The Council agreed to this project.
Topic: Policy on Moving Print Periodicals to Storage
Susanna Van Sant presented the proposed policy for addressing the shortage of space on campus by selectively transferring to off-campus shelving those print serials that are available electronically.
Klumpp asked for clarification of the treatment of partial runs available electronically. He asked if cataloging is good enough to indicate when part of a journal is on campus and part in off-campus shelving but available electronically. Van Sant said that the system is improving and the catalog does point people to the right place.
Francescato commented that for those working in the visual field, usage is different from when one is just reading text, so should lead to a different policy regarding off-campus shelving. Sometimes images can be better online, but the usage, e.g. comparing pictures, may not be possible online.
To concerns that offsite shelving might lead to the deterioration of materials, Van Sant and Lowry responded that the environment offsite is better. Facilities are climate controlled and items are not handled as much so they do not suffer damage.
In closing, Klumpp asked Van Sant to circulate her revised draft proposal to him and the Council.
Topic: Long Term Agenda
Klumpp has redrafted the agenda according to suggestions from the Council. No objections from Councilors on the revised version. (Attached)
Topic: Revision of the Library Council’s Bylaws
Klumpp said that the Senate’s bylaws affect ULC in three places.
- Section 7 provides general specifications for Councils, so if ULC recommends changes that would affect Section 7, they would affect Councils campus-wide.
- Section 8.1 refers specifically to the University Library Council
- Appendix 2 refers to the report of the ad hoc committee that originally set up the ULC.
Klumpp met with three past chairs of the Council and the long term provost’s representative. None showed any serious concerns with the bylaws. Anything that didn’t go well during their terms tended to occur when the bylaws were not properly followed.
Charge (Section I)
Strategic planning was not mentioned in the charge. It should include a charge for the Council to advise the Provost on strategic planning, and to have an advisory role in the Libraries’ strategic plan.
A former chair said that ULC Councilors used to serve on task forces and committees within the Libraries. To resurrect this idea could help to raise the level of awareness within the Libraries of the ULC’s work. Lowry warned that such participation should be only at the highest level, working on topics of greatest significance, such as policy, or the strategic plan.
It was decided to add a section on the inherent powers of Council, as Section D of the charge. Lowry asked for more consistency of language, to consolidate and eliminate redundancies.
Composition (Section II)
Currently there are three ex officio members – a representative of the Provost, a representative of the Dean and a library senator – acting as conduits to Council. Klumpp proposed replacing the library senator with the Vice Chair of the Senate. This would create a more direct link to the Senate leadership. The Vice Chair would then be more cognizant of library issues when she/he takes up the post of Chair of the Senate. Peres commented that this would also open up a second conduit to the Provost.
There was also a suggestion to increase the number of faculty members by three, because of the great diversity of disciplines across the campus. An increased number would give exposure to different patterns of library use and a richer understanding of faculty needs. This proposal would not violate the language of Senate Bylaws Section 7. Councilors agreed and also agreed to insert language to aim for a fair distribution of members, but not prescriptive, or there would be problems filling specified slots.
Baughman wanted to change the language of the first paragraph of Section II. The reference to “associate staff” of the library is out of date and should be changed to “faculty.” A similar change should be made in Section II A4.
Tenure (Section IIA)
Add language in Subsection IIA1:“Normally the Chair shall have served as a member of the Council.”
Subsection IIA2. The language should be cleaned up to state that Councilors serve two years but not more than four consecutive years.
Operation (Section III)
Subsection IIIA. The Senate is supposed to provide support for the Council but does not, the Libraries do. Either call this to the attention of the Senate or add language such as “provide support or delegate it to another unit.” The Senate should at least link to the ULC website. Add language on links.
Subsection IIIB. State that the Provost’s Office hosts the ULC website.
Klumpp suggested language regarding quorums for meetings and powers to call meetings.
It was decided to formulate language providing for majority e-mail voting, limiting such votes to items that the Council has approved in principle.
Review of the Council (Section V)
This section will be pruned to include only the last sentence of the current version.
Topic: Future Meetings
Klumpp asked Councilors to indicate their availability for meetings in the Spring semester.
Meeting adjourned at 4:03 p.m.
Appendix A
Response to the Provost’s Request for Middle States Self Study Reaction
To the Middle States Drafters:
The University Library Council has reviewed the section of the Middle States report dealing with the libraries. That section properly identifies initiatives and strengths that have marked the progress of our libraries over the last decade and we second and applaud this recognition. We also are aware that the section is drafted to fit a particular requirement of the report, and that there is no particular section in which the libraries are the focus. From reading the section, however, there is no indication that our libraries are facing and recognizing the need to address significant future challenges. We would propose an addition to this section on libraries, or another section addressing the libraries in relationship to these challenges.
In addition to providing a more comprehensive picture of the UM Libraries, a section such as this also seems wise because it addresses issues faced by university libraries more generally and thus seems an important part of a comprehensive review process by an accrediting agency.
We offer the following as a possible addition to an appropriate section of the report:
“Four major challenges face the University Libraries, challenges common to many libraries in the early 21st century. First, dramatic and complex changes are taking place in the formats for delivery of information resources within the university. The task of the libraries is to manage this change in such a way that the most up-to-date resources are incorporated into the work of our faculty and students. Many of the successes outlined above [or add a reference to the current section if this is located elsewhere] testify to the effort. Nevertheless, the university today is in a period when the formats and types of resources are evolving at different rates and in different directions in various disciplines. Information access in business and sciences has changed at a more dramatic rate, for example, than that in many of the humanities and social science disciplines. The libraries must not only track the academy as a whole but also be sensitive to the mosaic of disciplinary changes. This is a challenge to policy making and collection management.
“Second, inflation in information resources challenges the ability of the university to properly support its collections. The inelastic demand for academic resources is an economic fact that has been exploited by publishers of academic work. Inflation in publishers’ prices have been averaging nearly ten percent per year for serial publications and slightly less for monographs and data bases. Transitions from print to electronic products have produced some modest, one time decreases in the prices of individual products, but those savings have been offset by the advent of new electronically based products which have taken a central role in accessing academic information resources. On balance, the electronic environment is more expensive than the print environment because of the need to pay for improved resources. The scissor effect of diminished state support and high rates of inflation leave the libraries ever more squeezed to provide material to users. The material holdings are the weakness in our libraries most cited as inadequate in user research.
“Third, diminished staff in the libraries occurs at the very time when the proliferation of new library resources, particularly electronic resources, increases the need for reference and user-education services. Purchase of new products by the library is a boon to our faculty and students only if they are aware of those products and incorporate them into their work. Thus, beyond management of the new products into the collection, the library faces the difficulty of incorporating the products into the everyday routine of their users. These processes are staff intensive, both in terms of producing training products and ongoing reference services. Many reference services are now managed electronically through email and other interactive tools. Rather than increasing efficiency, such delayed exchanges are often more staff intensive, but a necessary part of the electronic library.
“Fourth, the oft-imagined shift from a bricks and mortar library to an electronic library has not developed into reality. Usage of the university’s brick and mortar library facilities are increasing, not decreasing. Part of the reason for this is that new electronic resources have connected faculty and students with existing resources in a way that was not true previously. Use of Google Scholar, for example, may expose a student to resources that previously would have remained obscure. The result is a trip to the library to access this resource. Given current copyright laws, it is likely that the Google book project will increase this effect. Past planning has often assumed a steady or diminished need for bricks and mortar library space. The evolution of library use is not supporting that prediction.”
Pursuant to the provost’s request via email on 4 December, the University Library Council discussed and endorsed this response during its December meeting. We appreciate the opportunity to address these issues in the self-study development process.
For the University Library Council,
Jim Klumpp, Chair
Appendix B 2006-2007 Long Term Agenda
As we plan for our future deliberations I will be keeping a prioritized list of issues that the council wishes to address. I hope that all of you will be proactive in listening to colleagues and other users to find issues that should be before the ULC. Issues may come from users, the library, the provost, or the senate.
Following is a draft of issues during the current academic year:
- Review of Library Council Bylaws. The Senate Executive Committee has charged the Council with reviewing the operation of its current bylaws and reporting back to the Senate by March 2007.
- Funding of Library Acquisitions. This item was forced onto the agenda by the unexpected problems with funding resources during the current year. The Council should continue to work with its three reporting agents – the Dean of Libraries, the Provost, and the Senate – to try to stabilize the collections of the library. This issue should be framed by the data that indicates the availability of material is the focus of faculty concern with the library and the ARL statistics showing that our library collections are inferior to those in institutions who are our peers. The ULC should work as best we can on all sides of the problem, supporting efforts to address funding, to increase efficiency, and to manage inflation of library materials. Specifically, the ULC should work to:
- assist the provost in pursuing corrective funding for the current deficiencies, perhaps system wide.
- Work with the Senate in pursuing the Task Force on Changes in the Diffusion of Scholarly Productivity. The task force focus includes such sub-issues as: (a) the commercialization of learned journals; (b) the open access movement including SPARC and the NSF mandate for open publication; (c) online journals; (d) new arrangements such as PLOS in which authors pay to have their work reviewed and accepted work is provided open source without subscription cost. The impact of these issues include: (1) the evaluation of new outlets for academic research on tenure/promotion/merit decisions; (2) the economics of library journal subscriptions; (3) the submission practices of faculty. The implications interrelate and approach many sacred cows of current academic practice. The results of the task force may present issues for the ULC to address to the Senate.
- Work with the provost toward stabilizing funding to prevent future erosion of the collection.
- Retain a focus on issues of efficiency. For example, the ULC may soon need to examine whether the erosion in the collection has reached a point of diminishing returns in which interlibrary loan has become the patch that costs the library more than is saved by continued cuts.
- Electronic Access to Library Resources. The LibQUAL+ survey has consistently shown that after the depth of library materials, the next most significant issue for users is the website and interfaces so vital to accessing today’s resources. As a first stage in understanding this problem, it may be time for the Council to receive a briefing on the libraries’ thinking on the directions and priorities for addressing this expressed problem. Informational reports should be scheduled on the:
- Library Website
- Research Port
- Google Scholar
- Online catalog
- Strategies for the introduction of innovative library products. Over the last few years the resources of the library have been increasingly directed toward new products, particularly electronic products. Such expensive products are a good investment only if they are useful to, and incorporated into the everyday experience of users. I would like to focus on two vital dimensions of innovation:
- How is the library assessing and incorporating the needs of users into the decisions on innovations? We will invite the library staff to describe the various ways they are collecting and utilizing user data and preference. We should then be able to assess our own role and make any recommendations we think would enhance this dimension of the decision making process.
- How is the library integrating new products and services into the day-to-day activities of users? On the face of it, it seems that a plan to “roll out” an innovation should have a dimension that takes the innovation into the everyday experience of users. We should seek to understand the diffusion and integration of innovations and offer any recommendations that we see fit to better achieve integration of innovations.
- Library Summit. The library summit is a process in which the LibQUAL+ survey is followed by a structure such as focus groups, interviews, and campus discussions to give depth to the findings of the survey. Such a summit needs a sponsor. The ULC would seem to be an appropriate body to advise or even manage the structure of such a summit.
- The vision of the library in five or ten years. Sound planning typically requires a vision of the future. The current reconfiguration of the balance between electronic and paper products and delivery in the library seems one of the planning problems important to both the libraries and to the users, and that both could benefit from a clearer vision of the future. There seems to be considerable evidence that some of our users have a trajectory that is more and more electronic, while others rely now and for the foreseeable future on paper products. Or do they? Although predicting the future in the midst of such rapid change can be chancy, the virtue of a continually revisable vision of the future seems clear. We should hear from the library on their vision of the library’s products and services in ten years, how and where the balance between paper and electronics will be struck, and how the library experience of users will be different in ten years.
