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THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 1999
MINUTES




Members Present: Carol Drum, Carol Turner, David Hickey, Dorothy Hope, Marcia Pearce, Martha Hruska, Bill Covey, Gary Cornwell, Carolyn Henderson Allen, John Ingram, Jan Swanbeck, Frank Di Trolio, Barbara Oliver, Rob Roberts, Cathy Mook for Erich Kesse, Pat Mason

Members Absent: Pam Cenzer, Rich Bennett

Meeting Manager: Dale Canelas

Facilitator: Trudi DiTrolio


1. SUS Meeting Report Dale reported that the SUS directors discussed the possibility of using a new system. There was no recommendation from the subcommittee, but there was a strong leaning toward having FCLA build the new system. No vote has been take yet. A budget is due by April 14. 2. SPARC Dale reported that this new organization was put together by ARL to develop new electronic journals to compete with publishers that have extremely high-priced journals. The organization wants the journals to be maintained on university computers. The library is involved to ensure archiving. Three new journals have been started and a world-renowned editor has been hired.   Dale said she hopes that in a year or two the library will be able drop expensive journals that compete with SPARC. Bibliographers will have to talk with faculty to find out what journals they prefer.   Martha asked what would happen if some professors wanted the old and journals. Dale responded saying that some libraries will just drop the older journals because with continued budget cuts, libraries can't afford to pay for expensive journals. 3. System Liaison Training Bill Covey reported that the liaison staff is overextended and the responsibilities are growing, requiring more training. He proposed a three-tiered approach to liaison training:
    1. a more tailored introduction to training
    2. a workshop more unique to the library environment, which would be given by Systems staff
    3. Outsourcing training to a company, which would come to the library to do a three-day intensive workshop.
He said the outside company would bring in their own equipment because the library doesn't have the equipment pool to do it on its own. He said the more intensive training wouldn’t make a difference in the time spent or responsibilities of the liaisons; that is a management decision.   One drawback to outsourcing the training is that it is not a one-time expense. With staff turnover, technology changes and equipment changes, additional training will be necessary.   Trudi DiTrolio said that the cost of hiring a company to do the training would be around $1,200 per liaison. At a given time there are 25-40 liaisons throughout the library.   David Hickey said at one time the possibility of having a few "super" liaisons was mentioned, and asked if this could be a possibility. Bill said that that there could still be liaisons who were trained at the basic level with a few others receiving the higher instruction, or Systems could have a few full-time liaisons who are not centrally located.   Carol Turner said the proposal sounded like a good idea, but wondered where the money for the training would come from. Dale suggested that it might be possible to write a grant to assess how a program such as this would work. That would provide funding for the first year.   Others agreed that the program sounded beneficial, but they didn’t know if every liaison should go through the training. Martha said that one way or another the liaisons needed more training, so the question was how will that training be done. Bill suggested that each geographic area of the library could take part in the high level training. He also said that one disadvantage was that the more skilled a person became, the more likely it was that they would move on to other jobs.   He said the liaison program has been an outstanding success and that if a full time unit were to do this type of work would require a staff of at least three or four people.   Trudi suggested that Marcia Pearce, Bill Covey and she could work together to see if there was a foundation interesting in funding the project for a one-time training session. 4.  Gift Opportunity Proposal
    Marcia Pearce reported that the library had reached its $1 million goal. It received $1,144,000 in cash, gifts-in-kind and state matches. She is preparing for the faculty and staff campaign. Volunteers are helping to bring awareness of the campaign to the staff and to help answer any questions.
5.  Closing the Stacks
    Bill Covey said the library should reassess the open stacks policy. He suggested a task force be formed to look into closing the stacks and making them a paged collection where the patrons can use LUIS to find a book and then request that staff retrieve it.

    There was general discussion as to how the patrons would respond if the stacks were closed. Some felt that irate patrons would be complaining while others thought that people would like the idea of electronically searching for books and having them delivered. David Hickey said it would take a great deal of dedicated staff time to do all the paging. Jan Swanbeck said that it would change the approach to the way the library does reference.

    Dale said that many universities have closed stacks, but allow graduate students and faculty into the stacks. She said before any decisions were made, she would want to discuss it with the university administration.

    Frank DiTrolio said that electronic browsing doesn’t tell the patron anything about the quality of the book. The only way to determine the quality is to open the books. Bill said we were already moving toward a closed stack system with the storage facility and paged collection. Frank pointed out that the items moved to storage are chosen because they are seldom used.

    The decision was made to form a task force to examine the impact of paged storage for all collections. David Hickey will chair the task force, which will also include Gary Cornwell, Bill Covey and representatives from Science and Collection Management.

6. Announcements
    Martha reported interviews for the University Web Master would be held in the next few weeks.

    Barbara Oliver reported that Culligan would begin delivering water to Library East because the water in the building contains too much iron. The building would need to have new pipes installed to fix the problem. The bottled water will only be in staff areas. Signs will be placed on the water fountains to keep the public from drinking from them.
     

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