University Library Committee

Minutes
June 1, 2009

PRESENT: Deb Carver, Gordon Sayre, Francie Cogan, Julie Haack, Marilyn Linton, Andy Karduna, Steven van Enk, Alisa Freedman

GUEST: Mark Watson, Associate University Librarian for Collections & Access

The meeting was called to order by Gordon Sayre, chair at 10:05 a.m.

EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF THE LIBRARY'S MATERIALS BUDGET
There has been some concern expressed about possible inequities with allocations of the library's materials budget among the Sciences and the Humanities/Social Sciences. Library staff will take on a project this summer to document how the collections budget is divided among campus departments, and will then determine whether that information supports or suggests a change is necessary in how the library currently distributes the materials budget. The focus should not just be on serials. The committee discussed several factors that should be considered in the review process - e.g., monograph purchases, usage rates, memberships that provide resources such as CRL, faculty and student FTE, degrees offered, and publishing costs. It was also suggested to look at how other libraries address this issue.

Deb added that inflation in past years helped determine the rates used in deciding budget allocations. Because inflation rates have equalized between disciplines, the same rate was applied to all disciplines this year. A question was asked on where the UO ranks in materials expenditures vs. borrowing. Deb reported that the most recent data from ARL (2006/07) has the UO Library ranked 103rd on materials expenditures, 8th in borrowing, and 7th lending. This gap between what is needed and requested, and what we are able to provide locally is wider here than any other research library. It was suggested that there needs to be better communication between the library and departmental reps on what their disciplines really need. It is important to consider what will be needed in the long term. What are the trends?

Alisa agreed to serve as the liaison for the ULC on the data collection process this summer. The data results will be presented to the ULC in the fall.

Gordon added that another part of the equity issue is whether monograph publication fees should be subsidized similar to the recently created fund to help cover publishing costs for faculty who publish articles in Open Access journals. That fund benefits faculty in the sciences and social sciences to a greater degree than those in the humanities, who tend to publish monographs instead of journal articles. The ULC might consider sending a letter to Provost Bean on recommending financial support to faculty for first books. Deb added that we could also contact colleagues within ARL to see if their campuses are offering subvention funds for monograph publications.

DISTRIBUTED PRINT REPOSITORY
Since Orbis' proposed regional library service center did not receive the necessary funding to move forward, the consortium is discussing a distributed print repository, which is building a shared repository without a shared facility. If several libraries have the same journal titles, one or more libraries agree to preserve the printed versions while the other libraries could discard theirs and rely solely on the electronic version. This would free up much needed stacks space in the participating libraries. We are not talking about loss of content because we are focusing on titles that have been digitized. We are talking about print back files. Orbis has the legal infrastructure in place with all titles identified and which library in the consortium would take responsibility for them. Deb added that there is no benefit until the final step is taken - agreeing to let another library be the home for archival runs of the identified journals. The primary reason for this kind of agreement is to free up valuable real estate in the stacks by withdrawing titles. If someone needs the print copy, a special request can be made through Summit, but in general the archival copies would not circulate.

The committee recommended that Deb address this topic at department head meetings this fall, possibly in the departments that would be affected most by the titles identified for the UO to discard. A suggestion was made that before discarding any items, the library ask the department(s) affected the most if they would be interested in housing the materials.

Deb added that Orbis will continue to lobby for a high density storage facility to house materials from the participating libraries. Two possible sites have been identified at Oregon State University which would not have any land lease costs.

Submitted by
Sheila Gray

Maintained by: Sheila Gray, skgray@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 09/18/2009