Minutes of June 18, 2009 Meeting

Present:

R. Becker, M. Fetzer (Chair), K. Hartman, T. Izbicki, K. Mulcahy, L. Mullen, J. Niessen, C. Pecoraro, V. Pelote (via teleconference), G. Sandberg, G. Smulewitz, J. Still (via cell), A. Watkins, M. Weber

Excused:

G. Agnew, R. Sewell

The agenda was adopted with the omission of the reports of the AUL for Collection Management and Development and the AUL for Digital Library Systems.

The minutes of the May meeting were adopted with one amendment, a clarification of the report of the Gifts Working Group, which was amended to read:

Report of the Chair (Fetzer)

• Next year's LRC Chair will be selected after new members are seated in July. Ryan Womack will succeed Kevin Mulcahy as representative for New Brunswick collections. Andy Martinez will take the place of Glenn Sandberg.
  • The USC has been invited to the beginning of the August meeting of LRC at which Grace Agnew and Jane Sloan are scheduled to present on NJVid.
  • A future agenda item suggested is cross-disciplinary collecting.
  • The chair reported on the first year of LRC at the May 27th meeting of the Planning and Coordinating Committee. Among the issues she addressed were the size of the committee and the need to maintain focus on vision and strategy rather than on too much detail. A clarification was made that mid-year and annual reports should go to the chair of Planning and Coordinating and to all the AULs. One member of Planning and Coordinating expressed a desire for earlier distribution of the LRC minutes.
  • The Gifts policy and form were adopted. The policy is on the Libraries' website, and the form will be up soon. These documents and a revised form for the processing of gifts are proposed agenda items for a future meeting of NBCG.
  • The need to assess the collection development documents on the Selectors' Sakai site was discussed.
  • An updated list of the One-Time purchases of digital resources for FY 2009 was distributed. Sources of the funds used ($564,396.49 to date) include:
    • The money saved this FY by consolidating subscriptions and taking titles e-only
    • The greater amount set aside for inflation (10% of serials budgets) vs. an actual inflation rate much lower, including the capping of some prices by publishers and vendors.
    • Money encumbered but not paid because invoices were not received or because money was encumbered for paying OCLC for former RLIN resources that they had already billed separately.
  • Team Leaders recommended that Wilson OmniFile be retained. It is much used at Camden and Newark and for undergraduates in New Brunswick, and the increased costs for our individual subscriptions would erase any savings.
  • NJKI funding for Academic Search Premier and Business Source Premier is still in doubt; however, Rutgers has already paid for Business Source Premier for next FY.

Report of the Interim eBooks Taskforce (Weber and Smulewitz)

• Two separate issues were distinguished in the discussion. One is the handling of free e-books, including how to track them. The other is how to contract for and provide access to commercial titles. We already have some e-books from a variety of sources. We need to identify these and know how they are being handled.
• Among the issues involved in acquiring commercial e-books are:
  • Whether to acquire them via vendors, directly from publishers or through the Libraries' approval vendor. Is there any one model we can use in making these decisions?
  • Which disciplines need e-books, and are they to be treated as standard monographic acquisitions?
  • Should we always buy titles, or do some need to be leased?
  • How are e-books to be selected and by whom? This includes whether selectors will be able to buy individual titles not in a package deal.
  • What catalog records will we have for these titles? What other access issues will need to be addressed?
  • Can we afford the costs for large-scale acquisition of e-books, or even for a pilot project?
  • Can some version of the existing working group continue addressing these issues, possibly involving the Team Leaders or other persons as needed?
• The Council decided it needs an accurate list or typology of e-books we already have and how we are treating them. The E-Books Task Force will meet again and attempt to extract a list of questions that it is imperative for Cabinet to address so we can determine whether e-books are a priority and if they will be adequately funded.

The Council adjourned at 10:50 to permit attendance at the EBSCO serials vendor presentation.