Present: I. Abalos, M. Burnette, E. Byrne, J. Carter (recorder), J. Ceballos, C. Delgado, B. Dupuis, D. Holz, A. Malik, P. Maughan, S. Mendoza, J. Roberts, V. Shih, J. Spohrer, D. Sullivan (chair), A. Urbanic, K. Wayne
Guest: T. Leonard
1. Tom Leonard
Announcements & Updates: T. Leonard reminded the council that it was possible to tour the Doe Annex construction site. Contact F. Yasaki if you are interested. The East Asian Library building is progressing well. The Library hasn’t yet received its budget from the campus. The digitization project with the Open Content Alliance is currently being staged at NRLF with about 1200 books a week being scanned. The Regents may support a plan to digitize at a more ambitious pace. Janet Broughton, a philosophy professor, has become the new dean of Arts and Humanities in the College of Letters and Science. George Breslauer (Political Science) will be the campus's next Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, succeeding Paul Grey. On the topic of recruiting new librarians raised by the Social Sciences Council, T. Leonard suggested that the subject councils come up with some generic language to use in job listings that best describes those we would like to fill our positions. We can choose to focus only on positions related to arts and humanities. On August 4, there will be an Early Bird Plus to welcome our two new AULS, Chuck Eckman and Beth Dupuis. A tour of the new public spaces in Doe will be part of the program.
Questions & Discussion:
• T. Leonard stated that the Library had achieved significant savings from the START program, but he did not expect that the end of the program would have a serious negative impact on the Library budget.
• Spending down collections funds is moving us in the right direction. Endowment funds should also be considered for spending down.
• The Berkeley Capital Campaign will continue in the “silent phase” for another year or two. It’s theme, “Thanks to Berkeley …” will need to be fleshed out by the Library to include emphases that are library-related and appealing to donors (e.g., undergraduate users, protecting Library treasures). The Library can aspire to raise $75 million by the 2012 culmination of the campaign.
• It was suggested that the Open Content Alliance project consider formats other than books and broaden its subject coverage.
2. Announcements
D. Sullivan: CDL has called for requests for Tier 1 and 2 purchases. D. Sullivan has submitted a request for a Latin database, J. Spohrer added that he will submit a request for an Italian database, and J. Roberts reported that the music bibliographers will continue to pursue the music databases offered by Alexander Street Press.
K. Wayne: UC Berkeley is the #1 user of ARTSTOR.
A. Urbanic: The Library has contracted with Praxis to film its Russian independent newspapers.
E. Byrne: Avery Index is now available through CSA. A CSA representative will be here August 12-13 to give generic training sessions for all CSA databases. RefWorks users will also be meeting next week.
J. Carter: The ATLA Religion Database, Philosopher’s Index, and Index Islamicus are also joining the migration to the CSA platform.
3. Function Council Reports
none
4. Task Force on Custodial Collections – J. Spohrer
J. Spohrer reported on the work of this task force, whose charge is to “make recommendations regarding the acquisition of special collections materials at Berkeley, who maintains those collections, how cataloging should be funded, and what custodial role The Bancroft Library or other special collection unit plays in their preservation and access.” He will send the full charge via email to Council members who request it. The task force has met twice, and will produce a report by November. The attention of the task force has been focussed on how much work is created for Bancroft’s technical services unit by the influx of special collections materials – much of which they regard as outside the scope of their collection development mandate. Questions were raised by the Council concerning the mission of Bancroft, the scope of its collections, and whether it was desirable to have a parallel operation to process materials that Bancroft regards as outside its scope. A suggestion was made that there be an all selectors meeting to discuss this topic. J. Spohrer will take these thoughts back to the task force.
5. Developing topics for our meeting with AUL for Collections, Chuck Eckman
The Council came up with a list of possible topics for its meeting with the C. Eckman. D. Sullivan and our two Collections Council representatives (J. Roberts and K. Wayne) will meet to review and prioritize the list.
Next meeting: September 7, 2006, 10-12pm, Room 303. Guest: C. Eckman
Go to Arts & Humanities Council minutes