University Librarian's Cabinet: Minutes of the May 15, 2007 Meeting

Present:

Agnew, Boyle, Fultz, Gaunt, Golden, Joseph, Mullins, Puniello, Sewell, Sloan, Tehrani, Zapcic

University Librarian's Report – Gaunt

• The panel discussion, "The Library & Community: Celebrating Twenty Years at the John Cotton Dana Library Under the Leadership of Lynn S. Mullins," was lovely; thanks to Michael Joseph for arranging it. Cabinet will arrange a dinner for Lynn in June.
• Announcements at Deans Council and Administrative Council: The APS union efforts are going forward. Employees and their supervisors cannot be in the same union group. As a result, PERC will need to determine that more than 50% of each group voted for union representation. There will be several units to which APS members belong. We have been asked to provide job descriptions for some of our personnel. There are certain classes of individuals that cannot be in a union by legal definition. We will be hearing the results over several weeks/months.
• FASIPS – Librarians will be receiving letters from HR regarding FASIP retroactive salary payments. The calculations were made over a year period rather than a six-month period as noted on the contract. As a result, some faculty were overpaid. The errors will be corrected in the next retroactive salary payment. This did not affect regular salary payments. We will send out an e-mail to faculty alerting them that a message wiol be coming from the university. If there are any questions, please contact Sandra Troy.
• Tom Frusciano and Steve Dalina gave a presentation to the Deans Council on the records retention project; the project will move to the departmental level next fall; academic record retention will begin with the Deans' offices this summer.
• Carol Herring gave a presentation on the recent changes in the Foundation and plans for the capital campaign. There will be a Rutgers Foundation Major Gift Fundraising Training Session for deans in May.
• Vice President Pazzani announced the appointment of a new director of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. Deans should alert their faculty to expect some changes with respect to deadlines and endorsement forms, and should look for greater ORSP involvement in promoting research. Pazzani emphasized that their staff will no longer sign off on any grant forms that have not been signed by the respective deans.
• Vice President Furmanski is reviewing all new high-level positions in the university; from now on all new positions that fall into that category will have to be approved by the President. Filling vacant positions or reorganizing but not creating additional positions at this level is not included. This is part of an on-going review of high-level administration positions in higher education by the state.
• Jay Kohl gave an update on security issues following the Virginia Tech tragedy; discussed text messaging at the university as a way of alerting faculty, staff, and students; one consideration is whether the university should contract with an outside vendor to provide this service. He also reported on the number of officers and emergency people that are deployed on all campuses, and the communication teams that work in concert with them in an emergency. Kohl has been reaching out to parents on safety at the university and will come to the departments if there are issues. We may want Kohn to come to a meeting for all staff. Boyle and Puniello will follow-up on any outstanding security issues.
• President McCormick discussed the important of diversity at the university; the numbers are not going up for the concentration and support he's been giving for a diverse faculty; he will address this at his September State of the University meeting.
• Representing ARL, Gaunt will attend two diversity programs at ALA that are addressing careers; will have an opportunity to learn how to make it more attractive for candidates to come; more active engagement with the community is needed; Zapcic noted that the University of Pennsylvania recruits through high schools; they found that some of these students have gone on to study information and library science.
• In an article in Campus Technology, Congress is warning university presidents on Internet file sharing; letters were sent to 19 presidents to warn them to curb this sharing; OIT believes this is not a major issue for Rutgers because of the way we make music available.

CDC Policy Updates - Sewell

Sewell reviewed with Cabinet two policies that were reviewed and approved at the February Collection Development Council meeting:

Principles for Licensing Digital Resources

http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/staff/collection_dev/policies/licensing_digital_resources.shtml

Much of this is agreed on language in contracts; some language is specific to Rutgers; in particular, the description of the libraries in the overview section. The "Principles" is a public document, which we share with anyone we license with so they can see our position; we make the point that we are one institution, one library. In a few cases we are still charged by campus; in most cases we can overcome it. We may want to broaden our definition of authorized users to include emeritus faculty and anyone currently advising our students; licenses currently include NJIT and UMDNJ joint degree programs, and for others we would need counsel advice; there is a group working on that. Use of the word "course packs" in 2f under Acceptable Uses was questioned; might be simpler to just use the words "educational materials". The policy states that the University Librarian has delegated responsibility for negotiating site licenses and financial terms for digital resources to the AUL for Collection Development and to the Head of Acquisitions, and therefore agreements made by other Rutgers University Libraries staff members are non-binding and unenforceable. With Cabinet's approval, the document will be forwarded to University Counsel for review, and they will let us know if there are issues they can't support.

Acquisition and Retention Policies for Journals in Print and Online Format

http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/staff/collection_dev/policies/journal_acq-retention.shtml

This policy was agreed on by the Collection Development Council and is generally practiced; had a lot of experience over the years, and particularly this year. This is a great document for implementing a policy, but what is the policy? We want to reduce duplicate subscriptions and prefer online access. The real priority is to move to electronic and reduce duplication, but how do you figure the most economical and efficient. Sewell will add a statement that these changes be made in a way that "is most effective to support research and teaching."

In section 2a concerning the "aggregator," we might not need 1b if we keep 2a. In section 2b, the word "hard copy" is used. Should use the same terminology as used previously, such as print copy or paper copy. In section 2c referring to multiple subscriptions, is it multiple print or multiple print and online? Who would allow section 5 (Supplemental Charges for Online Access with Print Subscriptions) to be asserted, and what are transfer funds and holding funds? Holding and transfer funds are the same. This is something CDC has been aware of for some time and needs to be communicated outside Council. If we are able to recoup money from cancellations, it should be put in transfer funds. Agnew brought up CD-ROM Statistical Packages and circulating CDs. Also, in 3a, the annex should be mentioned. Sewell will make the changes suggested and the policy does not need to be reviewed again at Cabinet after the changes are made.

Gaunt thanked Sewell, Mary Page, and the Collection Development Council for their work on these policies.

2008 Collections Budget Update – Sewell

Vice President Furmanski agreed to give us a 5% increase on serials, which amounts to $310,000; he has also agreed to pay the $3M Harrassowitz serials invoice several months early which will result in a $90,000 discount on our serials, which totals $400,000 and covers a little more than inflation. There are some issues; Library Journal anticipates a 7.9% increase in serials. Also, we had funds available this year that we will not have available next year from refund checks for materials, including the NJKI. We also reduced the approval plan costs, maybe as much as half; by acquiring paperback when available. There is an issue with our non-state funds; every year we get $.5M from annual interest on the endowments; we get $400,000 in new gifts; most comes from the Parent's Phonothon. The Foundation now assesses 10% on all new gifts, which will reduce some of our new gift money; we always carry over non-state funds; some are already committed and some are free balance; will have a little over $1M in non-state funds next year. Overall the additional funds and the serials discount are very good news, and we are grateful to Vice President Furmanski for this and for the early notification. Vice President Furmanski also noted that if there is a reduction in finding next fiscal year, the cuts from the Libraries is not to come from collections. Sewell will discuss with Collection Development Council new money and ways to think about using the money we have. Gaunt complimented Sewell and the CDC on a fabulous job of getting us through the year with very little loss of content.

CRL Annual Meeting Report – Sewell

Sewell noted that this agenda item deserves more time and preparation; would like to have a forum in the fall on CRL. We have two librarians currently active in CRL programs – Jim Niessen and Lourdes Vazquez; would like to get the word out on what they are doing and what we can do. CRL leadership continues to be impressive; Bernie Reilly conceptualized what the organization is. They are doing as much as they can to make their resources discoverable and available to the membership. Anything that is sent out on ILL is digitized and made available. We might ask Public Services Council and Collection Development Council to make a joint recommendation on making CRL more accessible to our community. Probably would be good to bring some of the CRL people here to talk to our librarians and engage the teaching faculty who are involved in international programs to hear about this great resource and other possibilities. CRL likes to hear from scholars and it's a learning opportunity for them as well; could think about molding a symposium group; involve Joanna Regulska and the international studies group. Might also be a good time to bring people in to talk about copyright education; try to think about the timing so everything doesn't happen at once. We are very "happening" in terms of all they are talking about; we have the need and it brings up the value of our collection development librarians. Gaunt thanked Sewell for representing us at the CRL meeting.

De-briefing on the Mid-Atlantic Futures Conference – Boyle/Gaunt

This agenda item is postponed to a future Cabinet agenda.

Announcements

Puniello

• Very proud of faculty in New Brunswick who have been getting awards; Denda, Mullen, and Hartman have all received awards; Harrington and Glynn were elected to offices; the ETD team received a special award; have talked to Glazer about putting these on the web page.
• Setting up a virtual task force to look at reference.
• Putting together a small group to experiment with Second Life.

Joseph

• Accepted an invitation to serve as editor of the children's literature review page of an online journal International Journal of Multicultural Education (IJME).
• Marilyn R. Rosenberg donated six artists' books to Special Collections and University Archives. Created 1977-1982, these books will be valuable additions to our book arts collections and help us to document the early period of the first American wave of artist book making.
• The Planning Committee completed a new draft of the two council model of reorganization, thanks to hard work by all committee members, particularly Jeanne Boyle and Lauren Mullen.
• The Libraries and the Rutgers-Newark campus co-hosted a panel discussion "The Library and Community," an event given in honor of the retirement of Lynn S. Mullins. This well-attended event was by every account an unqualified success.

Boyle

• Boyle and Gracemary Smulewitz met with Emmet Dennis and Dr. Al-Hassan Conteh, President of the University of Liberia, in April to determine if the relationship between Rutgers University Libraries and the University of Liberia that was spearheaded by Boyle and Thelma Tate in 2000 could be revived.
• The Peer and Aspirant Institutions list has been revised; will get it posted to the staff pages and send out and announcement.

Agnew

• Will be in Washington, DC for the next two days attending the third edition of the Framework NISO group.
• The ETD team received an award from the graduate school; Camden will be the next project for the fall.
• VDA Conference program on Standard Open Student Television Network extremely impressive and all are done by students; were given links to some of the programs. OIRT is looking at purchasing those channels.
• OIT hosted a meeting with UK Georgia; they are looking to buy the first integrated library system; do have a few records in automated form, but will mostly be starting from scratch.

Sewell

• At the National History Day, New Jersey competition at William Paterson University on May 5, 2007, Ron Becker received the New Jersey Educator of the Year Award.

Gaunt

• Mike McKay has retired; Don Smith will be the acting head; they will look at how OIT is organized and divide whatever internal adjustments need to be made before posting the position.
• Will send a message to Cabinet about the areas for a leadership development program based on Cabinet feedback.
• The Futures conference will be on the next agenda
• Cabinet will meet as necessary over the summer.