Minutes of December 18, 2003 Meeting

Present:

Grace Agnew, Ron Becker, Jeanne Boyle, Veronica Calderhead, Kayo Denda (recorder), Howard Dess, Tom Glynn, Jackie Mardikian, Ann Montanaro, Jim Nettleman, Mary Page, Bob Sewell (editor)

1. AUL Report

Restructuring aftermath:

• The merger proposal was rejected. At New Brunswick/Piscataway Campus, greater collaboration between UMDNJ and Rutgers (the libraries and academic department). is anticipated.
• The "devolution" gives greater autonomy to the campuses, however there is little impact for the libraries.

Research Guides:

• Reaffirmed importance of in research guides as an evaluation criterion for librarianship and essential tools for users and reference librarians.
• All disciplines/subject areas at RU should have a research guides, especially Ph.D programs.
• WAC will coordinate and communicate to the selectors the need for updates. Research guides should be updated at least on an annual basis.

Collections Budget Request Proposal:

RU "All Funds" Approach:

• Excludes unit gift and endowment funds
• Mostly relevant to revenue generating units, therefore RUL is less affected.
• Greater unit/local autonomy (i.e. control of salary savings). Federal Grant Fund Indirect Cost Return (ICR): RUL will continue to advocate for direct allocation for library support.

The white paper "Funding Rutgers Libraries Collections: Needs and Challenges" was submitted by H. Dess on behalf of New Brunswick Collections Group.

• The white paper identifies 2 major areas (1.Out of RUL control, 2. Within RUL) and offers contributing thoughts and recommendation for how to improve the budget process and areas within in our control, especially SIRSI related technical and policy issues. CDC supported white paper as an articulate summing up of collection budgeting issues, with useful recommendations.

Three Part Budget Request Strategy Outlined by B. Sewell:

Overall need for greater predictability and adequacy in collections budget. The new university administration recognizes these budgeting principles and goals.

1. Increase to and stabilization of base budget. For most of the 1990's the base/permanent budget remained unchanged and beginning in FY 1999 there have been increases and decreases each year in the base budget. Since FY2000 the base budget has been supplemented annually with one-time/temporary funds ranging from $500,000-850,000 from the Office of the VP for Academic Affairs. The budget request will ask that an amount at least in this range be incorporated into the base. (Base budget should reflect the cost of support for ongoing programs – serial subscriptions, memberships, monograph purchases, the approval plan, etc.)

2. Agreement for annual percentage increase to base budget. Most academic libraries have agreements with universities for annual % increases to base budget to reflect inflation in library materials. There has not been such an agreement at RU.

3. Requests Reflecting Special Needs. These requests will be for strengthen collections in specific fields to support new programs, new hires, areas target for excellence, and past gross inadequacies. These will require detailed justification. A recent example of these types of requests was the N.B. Department of History submitted to P. Furmanski targeted proposals for South Asia and African history collections to reflect new hires and new areas of academic strength in the department. RU Admin released an additional $3,000 for each of these areas. The university librarian matched the fund this year and will continue this support ($3,000.) for additional 4 years. (The N.B. FAS office has also agreed to contribute $9,000 for two years to help build up the South Asian collection.) The need for a South Asia Research Guide was mentioned.

(It was noted that The School of Social Work has contributed for the last 3-4 years $10,000-$20,000, annually, for collection.)

B. Sewell will appoint a CDC advisory committee to work on the budget request consisting of at least the campus collection development coordinators. He will also consult with campus directors. He will institute "mini-grant requests" for collection funding in which selectors will submit targeted proposals that can be used in the budget proposal as well as to inform campus fund code allocations.

RUL will work with university administration to get much early notification of annual collections budget allocation, hopefully in July.

Fund Code Task Force will be established to recommend improvements that will facilitate the allocation process, fund monitoring, and fund utilization.

ACQUISITION REPORT:

• Domestic order delay: 2 weeks
• Foreign order delay: 3 weeks (represents the time between receiving/processing the order and sending the order to vendors)
• 2 sessions of Collection Manager Training took place in December.
• Preparation for approval books RFP is nearly complete.
• NetLibrary: M. Page is reviewing the titles for deselection based on usage and currency. There is a need to revise the titles in the package to justify the annual maintenance fee of $4,000.00.
• "EBSCO A-Z List" will replace "Serials Solutions." Prototype demo will be at Public Services Council on 12/22.
• "OCLC Batch Action" using ISBN is helping to speed up the ordering. Should include ISBN # on orders.

Problems with over encumbrances and overspent funds:

* Over spent funds have not be a major problem since each campus has established "transfer funds" to cover over expenditures.

B. Sewell distributed an analysis of the encumbrance problems: foreign materials funds, funds of less than $1,000, periodicals, monographic series, publisher package funds. It was noted that while a number foreign materials funds had high encumbrances last year, one reached the encumbrance threshold to cut off ordering and receiving. Funds with allocations $1,000 or less were problematic. Various issues related to periodicals (subscriptions), mono series (recurring or standing orders), and publishers packages were noted. Further discussion will result in recommendations to address these issues.

Announcement:

K. Denda is leaving for sabbatical for the spring 2004. Triveni Kuchi will replace her during this period.