Cornell University Library Staff Web Page

Back to StaffWeb Index | Back to Council Index

Cornell University Library

Council of Librarians

Minutes, Meeting of March 19, 1997

Information:
Cornell University Library has received an OCLC Gold Record for the 36 millionth record in WorldCat. This record came through CJK retrocon, and it is for a 1927 survey report on coal mining, the first Chinese record to hit a millionth milestone. The plaque for this honor will probably be displayed in Wason since the record describes a volume in that collection.

Sarah Thomas has been nominated for the RLG board of directors.

Agenda Items:

1. Library Management System (LMS) - Sarah Thomas/Lynne Personius
Sarah: The steering committee for selection of a new LMS has been set up, and any member of the Senior Management Group is also welcome to attend. The committee has held two meetings so far. The committee will be considering the many implications of this decision and may be talking to people at universities where a new LMS is also being sought (or where a new one has just been selected). It is anticipated that there will be various opportunities for staff from all sectors of CUL to get involved in this decision, one which truly affects all parts of the Library.

Lynne: An evaluation committee has also begun work. This group comprises staff who reviewed responses to the RFI two years ago, plus additional individuals who bring expertise from new areas such as electronic reserve, other digital library initiatives, and the offsite storage facility. This group is organized by functional area -- circulation, for example. There is an expanded group organized around each area of focus, and these expanded groups are working on requirements documents for the LMS. The goal is to complete these requirements documents by the end of March. Good progress is being made and completion on time is likely. A list of these evaluation groups, and of their members, will be published in an upcoming issue of the Kaleidoscope, in an article which will also lay out the decision-making process that we have planned.

Meanwhile, the committee is also reviewing the marketplace and spoke to many vendors at ALA Midwinter. We will probably invite selected vendors to come to Ithaca for two day visits this spring. A list of specific questions will be provided to all vendors to insure consistent points of measurement.

Sarah: We will need between 1.2 million and 2 million dollars to fund the LMS, and she is optimistic about securing funds. The money is not in the budget for FY '98 so the aim will be to get at least part of the funding in the budget for FY '99. Once expenses anticipated are documented, we can judge which pieces will be needed first. We won't have to commit the whole $2 million up front.

Lee: The issue of cost allocation is being raised with the statutory units and tubs.

2. Resource Reallocation - Sarah Thomas
The budget is flat except for some increases for salary improvement and collection development. We have things we need to do for which we have not received budgetary support. Sarah has been meeting with Catherine, Ross, Lee, David Corson, Tom Hickerson, and Claire Germain to look at what needs to be accomplished and what tradeoffs may be necessary. The priorities are:

  1. Offsite facility -- a 1995 estimate for staffing the facility with 3 1/2 people plus miscellaneous operating expenses was approximately $175,000. What is this in 1997 dollars and where will it come from?
  2. Preservation -- one of the nation's leading preservation operations receives disproportionate funding from grants. It is underfunded from the University. CUL had been receiving supplementary support from the Provost but that will not continue. Where will we find funding to support preservation?
  3. Digital library -- achieving the vision. This includes digital archiving; we cannot continue on an ad hoc basis with storing and maintaining our growing data holdings. We must insure preservation and long term access to this data. The storage costs will go down but we'll have more and more to manage. Meanwhile, we should budget for our support of National Digital Library Federation initiatives. We also need better equipment, such as high end workstations and color printers. In addition, there is an increasing demand for LTD services leading to a need for additional programming staff. If we're going to be digital library leaders we must invest in it.
  4. Adding summer evening hours for Olin -- a relatively small expense but one that promises substantial political benefits.

About half of funding needs are for the offsite facility and preservation and most of the rest would be for digital library development, with a portion for Olin hours.

Discussion followed regarding approaches to setting these priorities. The focus of the discussion was on the endowed side; Lenore reminded us that most of these priorities are of University-wide importance.

Recorder: Susan Barnes

Back to StaffWeb Index | Back to Council Index

rev. 7/24/97 dih