Attended by: Elizabeth Byrne, Chuck Eckman (Chair), Gail Ford (recorder), Jim Gordon, Mary Ann Mahoney, Gary Peete, Margaret Phillips, Theresa Salazar, Beth Weil, Jill Woolums, Kathryn Wayne, Susan Xue. Absent: Scott Miller, Barclay Ogden, Linda Vida. Guest: Suzanne Calpestri
1. Announcements
2. Berkeley Research Impact Initiative
3. Budget Requests: Arts, Humanities, Special Collections and select Area Studies
• The Budget Advisory Group (BAG) will develop some scenarios for how/when to “cut off ordering” to avoid overspending from funds.
1. Announcements
• Chuck distributed a spreadsheet entitled “ADMIN Compact on Collections Budget FY2008-2011” that he discussed with ADMIN at their most recent meeting (more on this in item 3 below)
• The Stanford-Berkeley Cooperative Collection Development Conference is scheduled for October 30 from 10am – 5pm. Berkeley is hosting this event and The Faculty Club. The goals for the day are to establish or renew relationships among selectors and to discover and discuss ideas for how collaboration between us could occur. Ideas from the day will be collected, put back out for further conversation, and are expected to engender commitment and action at both campuses.
• Eighteen requests for new faculty funding have been received and approved for $3000 each.
• Chuck intends to reinstate “cut offs” on spending when expenses+encumbrances near available balances. This was a past practice that was discontinued when huge carryforward balances in the 19900 funds enabled balancing at the end of the fiscal year. However, now there are no central AUL discretionary carryforward funds to “bail out” funds that go in the red, so we want to cut off spending in advance of that outcome. We’ll be discussing the particulars of this more at future meetings, with several cautions in mind: we don’t want to stop the ordering processes unnecessarily, and we want to watch out that we don’t create unintended carryforward balances.
2. Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII)
Chuck welcomed Suzanne Calpestri as our guest – Sue is a member of the Scholarly Communications Advisory Group (SCAG) together with Margaret, Beth Weil, Gail and Chuck. This group drafted BRII and will be overseeing its’ pilot year. CC made several comment which SCAG will consider:
• BRII might be too close to BRIE (the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy) Would we be wise to change the name?
• should we include differential support for different types of “open” access?
• should this or some other Library-sponsored program be in place to reward high-impact, low-cost publishing options (one way we could recognize and support society publishers, for example.)
Chuck will be presenting a draft of BRII to the Academic Senate Committee on Libraries in early November. SCAG hopes to make the effective date for this program be January 1, 2008. Chuck will be preparing talking points about the program, which he will share with selectors so that they in turn can present the program to their faculties.
3. Budget Requests: Arts, Humanities, Special Collections and select Area Studies
Chuck reminded CC that we will be balancing the CC budget over the next four years relying on funds from the campus, Library development, and Library general one-time funds. Development and Library funds are being offered with the understanding that selectors will be contributing a like amount from their non-19900 funds. Chuck shared a copy of the “ADMIN Compact on Collections Budget FY2008-2011” that shows that the AUL and selectors are to find $2M in their non-19900 funds to help balance the collections budget over the next 4 years. This compares to a commitment from Development to raise $3.725M and from ADMIN to find $3.95M.
Chuck framed the “annual report and budget request process” by saying
• the process this year replaces a similar process that worked well in the past; this year’s execution might feel a bit rocky since it’s new but that we will learn a great deal that can be used to smooth out the process for future years;
• the process will hopefully help us fold into one process what has been a series of disconnected calls in the last few years: inflation, exchange rate, chronic underfunding, new funding needs due to changes in campus programs.
• the arguments he has found most compelling are those linking requests for funds to documentation of changes in local programs, inflation, exchange rate. “Historic patterns of spending” seemed less compelling since the failure to enforce a spending cutoff during the period of large carryforward balances has enabled or facilitated what appear to be a lessening of careful budget management among some funds..
Chuck also mentioned that Barclay was preparing a proposal for how to fund binding in these times of severely restricted funds – and that CC would discuss October 16.
Kathryn, Elizabeth and Theresa were responsible for preliminary review of this set of annual budget requests. Individual cases evoked these questions/comments
• large existing free balances might mitigate requests for one time major purchase money
• large annual income from endowments might mitigate requests for increases to m-fund bases
• a ranking of 1 generally meant, Yes, we think the argument provided supports the amount of money being requested
• a ranking of 3 probably means the argument did not seem strong enough to result in funding
• a ranking of 2 was more problematical – this included cases that seemed to make sense, but might be associated with a requested amount that seemed too high.
• it was difficult to know what to do in cases where Berkeley has an historically strong collection, but a diminished user population.
• it was difficult to know what to do in cases where very rare material was being sought, even though the user population might be very small.
Discussion of annual requests will continue October 16 and following.
Go to Collections Council minutes
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