COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

9 April 2003

RWA Notes

Present: Ross Atkinson, David Block, Phil Dankert, Charlie Finger, Mary Ochs, Katherine Reagan, John Saylor, Yoram Szekely, Scott Wicks.

1. Patron Records. Martha Hsu met with us, to discuss the final report of the CUL Task Force on Patron Record Retention. The purpose of this report is to identify records throughout the CUL system that connect specific users to specific information. CUL wants to do what it can to keep such records to a minimum, in order to protect user privacy. CDExec noted two areas that are relevant to collection development. The first is that Voyager contains information on user requests for particular titles. CDExec would recommend that a program be written that would automatically remove user names from records at a specific point in the processing cycle. Second, most selectors keep correspondence with users, especially faculty. We noted that all e-mail correspondence is probably backed up, so destroying such correspondence on our desktop computers would not mean that it could not be later retrieved. We decided that the best approach would be simply to remind selectors to bear in mind that the confidentiality of such correspondence could be compromised, if it were subpoenaed by law enforcement authorities. Any correspondence with users that is not essential for services should therefore be discarded.

2. Elsevier. We talked briefly about the plan to cancel Elsevier journals for 2004. Such cancellation will be unavoidable, regardless of whether a NERL consortial contract is available or whether we need to develop a separate contract for CUL only. Selectors with Elsevier journals should work with faculty to prioritize those journals, so that we will be able to cancel the lower priority titles this summer. It is also our plan to cancel most paper copies. We decided that we need to double check to be sure that the license allows for us to lend (printed-out) articles through ILL, if we subscribe only to electronic versions.

3. Security Violations. On 7 April, Ed Weissman sent a note to CUCD, explaining the procedures a selector should follow when notified by a vendor that there has been a security violation for a licensed database. These procedures will be added to the collection development Web page. CDExec agreed that the procedures are very reasonable and straight forward. It is important to emphasize again that selectors should copy libit-l@cornell.edu on all correspondence. If selectors have any questions about any of these issues, they should contact Scott Wicks or Ed Zieba.

4. Harris. Katherine Reagan and David Corson are going to make a final pass through the Harris collection. Yoram and I will then develop an easy method to weed unwanted materials from it.

5. Paper/Electronic. Scott Wicks and David Banush have put together a list of aggregators of electronic publications, which we can use to generate a list of titles that are received in both paper and electronic form. That list will then be used for decisions on (a) canceling paper copies, and (b) discontinuing binding or check-in of paper copies that are retained. CDExec went through the Wicks/Banush list and eliminated those databases that contain groups of journals that are partial or unstable. The next step will be to produce a full list of electronic journals, with indications of which are also received in paper.

6. Approval Plans. When we combine materials received on approval and by firm order in CTS, we find that 55% are now received on approval, and 45% on firm order. As part of the CUL response to the budget reduction, LMT has asked that we look into changing that ratio to 65%/35%. We discussed prospects for doing this, recognizing that there remain some classes of materials for which approval plans are impossible. There are a few selectors in monograph-heavy subjects who do a great deal of firm ordering. We decided that Scott and I would have a special meeting with those selectors to discuss options. Mary asked that Linda Stewart and Bill Kara from Mann be included in this meeting.

7. Outputs. We spent some time talking about how selectors communicate with faculty about what they are selecting. As the budget contracts, this kind of interchange on a regular basis with faculty will become even more essential. We noted that collection policies provide the best summaries of this information, and also that we have set a goal to update all collection policies. It will make sense, therefore, to involve faculty in this process of policy updating. (Some of that work could even be done by e-mail.) In general, we need to work on shifting our focus from the dollar amounts in the budget to the types and levels of access we are able to provide with those dollars, as embodied in the collection policy statements. At the next CDExec meeting, we will begin to discuss a time table and guidelines for this policy updating effort.

There will be a General Selectors meeting in the near future—part of which, I hope, will involve a demonstration of the Web-based LC card product now being developed by Computer Science students.