Present: Camille Wanat, Margaret Phillips,
Beth Sibley, Allan Urbanic, MaryAnn Mahoney, Rebecca Green, Michaelyn
Burnette, Andrea Sevetson (recorder), Alan Ritch, Barclay Ogden, Lucia
Diamond, Mike Rancer.
Guests: Gail Ford, Fleur Helsingor.
1. Announcements.
A. The following people are going off Collections Council (pending
replacements being found): Beth Sibley, Camille Wanat, Michaelyn
Burnette, Lucia Diamond (for the Affiliated Libraries). All were
thanked enthusiastically for their two years of service. Replacements are
nominated by the subject councils, and have to be selectors. The subject
councils should all be meeting to decide on replacements this month.
B. UC Press Publications - A. Ritch will be meeting with Rebecca
Green, Margaret Phillips and Technical Services staff to get a handle on
how we receive UC Press material. He will then schedule a visit to UC
Press with Green and Phillips.
C. Ritch mentioned that there are many programs on e-books at ALA.
Anyone wanting to know about them should contact him.
2. E-Resource Statistics. (MP, GF)
G. Ford led the discussion on statistics for licensed web resources.
Statistics are not provided by all vendors, and they are provided in
different ways. Some vendors send webpages or spread sheets, others
provide URLs with our statistics on their servers and many of these sites
are passworded, others don't provide statistics. Still others require us
to go in and download statistics to place on our servers.
G. Ford has had a list of sites with links, but she knows it is not
complete - it is only the pages she has heard about. It also doesn't list
statistics provided to CDL.
Collections Council recommended that
* there be a page linking to statistics from UCB licensed
resources;
* there be a link from that page to the statistics page at CDL;
* the name of the selector-liaison for passworded statistics
be clearly identified.
We need to investigate how selectors are using the statistics. Ritch
opined that it is the responsibility of the selectors to consult and
analyze data where it is available.
Gail Ford will also investigate the Saberware (CD-ROM) statistics and
Phillips and Fleur Helsingor will notify Collections Council on progress
with these.
3. CMI Project Update.
Ritch led the discussion about our participation in the UC Collection
Management Initiative (an 18 month experiment to move runs of
electronically-available journals to NRLF to see how users responded to
this, and why they would recall the paper volumes). So far we have
identified approximately 25 experimental titles in Business, Economics,
and Demography, and a similar number of "control" titles in Physics. We
are expected to select at least 50 experimental titles.
Collections Council discussed strategies to broaden the experiment.
4. Collections Budget Update. (MR, AR)
Rancer distributed and commented on an updated collections budget forecast
for the next two fiscal years. He noted that there will be enough
carryover in the serials budget (over $600,000 unexpended) to cover
inflation for the next year. Under-expenditure in monograph funds is even
more dramatic. He projected that some $2.5 million will be carried over.
This large carryover, along with some $2 million unexpended endowment
funds, is viewed as a mixed blessing: while it provides some cushion
against the expected downturn in state support, it may be vulnerable to
the inference that we are unable to spend our current allocations, that we
need no additional funds, or, worse, we may be asked to return funds to
the campus. There were diverse estimates as to the value of the titles
already in the order stream but not yet posted to Innopac. Ritch reminded
the group that he had a list of expensive desiderata, both resources and
collection-related projects, which could quickly exhaust about half of the
carryover funds, if and when the longer term budget prospects became
clearer and more optimistic.
5. Collections-related reports from other groups.
A. JSCSC/CDC arena - UCB is trying to meet our co-investment
commitments for next year. Other campuses have been hit hard by the
current budget/energy crisis. In terms of new areas, Ritch noted that if
UCB doesn't join, often the proposal dies.
B. CDL Surveys- Ritch noted that Humanities and Social Science
Selectors should have received new collections surveys from JSCSC.
Cynthia Shelton (UCLA) is in charge of the Humanities surveys, Lucia
Snowhill (UCSB) has distributed the Social Sciences Surveys. These are
due in July. Ritch polled the Arts groups earlier in the year.
6. Other business.
LC Cards as selection tools.
LC is investigating the idea of distributing the information from
the LC/cip cards electronically instead of using the cards. Collections
Council all agreed that the cards worked the best at this point. Ritch
needs a broader survey (with good anecdotal information from selectors)
and will develop some questions for selectors.
Collections Council vigorously thanked Allan Urbanic for his work with
the students who sort and distribute these.
NEXT MEETING - July 3