Minutes of August 17, 2000 Meeting

Present:

R. G. Sewell. R. Becker, A. Tallau, H. Hemmasi, J. Sloan, R. Womack, A. Montanaro, J. Nettleman, H. M. Dess

1. AUL Report
   • A new committee has been formed with title: Annex Construction Implementation Committee Membership: R. G. Sewell (chair), R. Becker, M. Fetzer, H. Hoffman, F. Puniello, F. Tehrani

   Immediate concern is review of proposed Annex expansion plans, and how best to maximize or optimize utilization of this space. Committee will also be examining use of other space in NB for storage purposes. The additional shelving in the Annex should be completed by Fall 2001.

   • Bob displayed a special edition of "Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries" which focuses on the topic: "New Jersey's Three Constitutions: Essays and Text." Bob is the editor of JRUL.
   • Latest issue of ARL Bimonthly Report (August 2000) features an article by RGS, "‘Big Heads' Library Materials Budget Survey Now on ARL Website." Available in print and accessible at ARL website www.arl.org/newsltr/211/lmbs.html.
2. Acquisitions and Systems Reports, Ann Montanaro and Harriette Hemmasi
   • The production server for IRIS will be down from 8/15 thru 8/25 in order to rebuild indexes. During this time, IRIS will be available as a static read-only database from the test server. Access service functions such as Rutgers Request and ILL will not be functional during this period, and patrons will not be able to access their self service personal accounts. However, patrons can search and view the entire bibliographic database and circulation will be available. A public service announcement will be posted noting this temporary change in service.
   • Ordering and receiving are both just about caught up, with minimal backlogs. Rush orders will be processed during the IRIS downtime.
   • End-processing (i.e., book labeling) is showing about a 2 week lag time.
   • Mary Page will transfer to TAS as Head of Acquisitions Dept. on Sept. 5.
   • Harriette Hemmasi will leave for her new job at Indiana University around mid-September. CDC expressed appreciation for a job well done at Rutgers and wished her all the best at IU.
   • Succession planning for the AULTAS position soon to be vacated by Harriette is now underway.
3. Budget Outlook — R. G. Sewell
   • In response to questions about outlook and timing for 2001 budget:
   • Optimism was expressed by Bob that we will receive our budget from Dr. Seneca around the end of August, the earliest since Bob has been at RU, and that it should be larger by "several hundreds of thousands of dollars" over the $100,000 base increase for FY2000/01 which we have already, although specifics are lacking at this time. Timing is crucial because journal cancellations must be finalized by no later than Sept. 15, and cancellations will be required to make up for any gap between the budget increase, and inflationary costs for journals and cost for related e-access.
   • A hand-out was distributed showing final RULS serials costs (both print and electronic) for 2000 and projected costs for 2001. An 8.6% inflation rate is forecast for print resources, and 7.5% for e-products. Overall materials costs (print + elec) expected to rise from $4.45 mil. in 2000 to $4.82 mil. in 2001. And $200,000 has been budgeted for implementation and expansion of the new document delivery program, plus another $36,911 earmarked for growth in e-resources.
   • Bob displayed a chart summarizing non-state funds expenditures for RULS as a whole for FY 2000, and also broken down by campus and central budgets. This diagram starkly illustrates something that we have been aware of for several years now, that we never come close to spending all available NS funds during any given academic year. In 2000, for RULS overall, only 55.1% of available funds were spent. Possible reasons for this ongoing situation were discussed. It was agreed that we need to send out periodic reminders to selectors to utilize these funds more fully. Bob stated that orders can be made against non-state funds before the final allocation is known if there is a significant cash balance from the previous fiscal. The balance carries over into the new fiscal year.
   • Another hand-out provided a summary of yr. 2000 expenditures by material type and by state and non-state fund categories. Annual total came to $7.2 mil., of which 90.2% was state funds, and the balance non-state funds.
   • Reviewed a prior announcement about budget rollover, and use of temporary allocations of 60% of prior year state fund allocation levels as an expedience to permit selectors to make purchases even before 2001 allocations have been finalized. Spending against non-state fund codes that have not been spent out (and there are many!) can proceed normally. Bob will do his best to obtain non-state fund updates for 2001 at the earliest. We were also reminded about the change in serials fund codes: the non-periodical (N) and newspaper (W) codes have been merged into periodical (P) fund codes. The N and W codes have been removed from Unicorn and can no longer be used.
4. Principles for serials review/cancellation — R. G. Sewell

   Prior to this meeting Bob had e-mailed a set of principles proposed to govern the process we utilize for selecting journals for cancellation. Considerable discussion ensued. Everyone agreed with the idea of consulting the faculty about cancellation choices, but it was recognized that this is a highly individualized process that varies with selectors, with subject areas in question, with specific academic departments, etc. In short, too many variable involved to enable a one-size-fits-all procedure to be meaningful or practicable. Changes in language were proposed and accepted by the group. Document will be revised and reissued by Bob. ["RUL Policies for Serials Review" has been revised and is available on the Collection Development page. Path: About Libraries, Staff Resources, Collection Development, Policies.] One important principle that was proposed for elevation into "policy statement" concerned cancellation of print materials in favor of e-access when the publisher was a society (although we have already breached this guideline in the case of Academic) and permitted to do so by the publisher, as well as cancellation of all duplicate print subscriptions [ i.e., all but one print copy] when full-text or full-image of a title is available in a journal package such as ProQuest or ABI/Inform.

5. Elsevier ScienceDirect Proposal - Howard Dess and Bob Sewell

   In response to a request from Marianne Gaunt, HMD had prepared a study of Rutgers current holdings of Elsevier journals which identified a pool of journals from this publisher that were demonstrated to be of minimal value and which could be cancelled to reap a substantial savings. (77 titles and estimated savings of $301,180 over a three year period). This study suggests it could be advantageous to Rutgers to delay entry into the ScienceDirect program because that action would effectively prevent such cancellations and assure that we contracted with Elsevier at a higher initial cost level.

   Bob Sewell presented another study which showed several scenarios that narrow the savings gap between ScienceDirect and the print cancellation program proposed by Dess. The reasons for this are:

   • Guaranteed lower, annual inflation rate if you go with ScienceDirect (21.5% vs 27.0% over the three years of the contract)
   • Can cancel print subscriptions and have e-access only for a savings of 10%
   • Can cancel in the 3rd year of the contract up to 4.5% of the subscription base

   With the most cost-savings HMD scenario, the results in 2002/3 would be:

   HMD Plan:

   • 404 high utility Elsevier print journals
   • No e-access
   • Cost: $1,094,482

   Science/Direct:

   • E-access to 1080 Elsevier journals (of mixed utility) + ScienceDirect searching software across all titles (in first year of contract)
   • All journals linked to Web of Science citations (in first year of contract)
   • No print copies and no need to bind, check-in, or shelves print journals (for additional savings and staff realignment into other areas of need)
   • Cost: $1,134,368

   HMD Plan would be $39,886 cheaper in 2002/3.
   The savings over the 3 years of the HMD plan over ScienceDirect would be $194,399.

   The cost benefits of these two plans must be weighed to determine the best path. Cabinet will discuss at its August 22 meeting.