GENERAL SELECTORS MEETING

19 September 2000

RWA Notes

1. New Selectors:  Lance Heidig has assumed responsibility for building the Uris collection. Lance will be a member of the Humanities Team.

2. Academic Assembly:  The Academic Assembly Steering Committee is looking for suggestions for future programs. CDExec will discuss this, so selectors with ideas should send those to team leaders. Alternatively ideas can be sent to members of the Steering Committee: Marty Kurth, Deb Lamb-Deans, Lynn Brown, Lorna Knight, Tom Turner. Academic Assembly is one of the best opportunities we have in the Library for professional development.

3. Pub Cats in 504:   David Block announced that there is insufficient room and time to maintain all of the publishers catalogs in Olin 504--so these will be culled. David asked for input from selectors on those items that should be retained.

4. NetLibrary:  I explained that there was a conference call last week among the four netLibrary consortial members (Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Middlebury). We decided that, because of demonstrated use, we want to continue the partnership, and that we will each again put up $20,000. Records for all in-scope netLibrary materials will be loaded early next year into the public catalogs of the four participating institutions. When a user at one of the four institutions accesses a netLibrary item we have not yet purchased, that item will be purchased automatically. Paper copies of the great majority of these materials will already be available in our four libraries. We are therefore deciding in effect that we are leaving to the users the decisions on which of these items we will duplicate in electronic form. The exception will be business materials: selectors at Cornell and Dartmouth (and possibly Columbia) will collaborate on selecting a core business collection. Lance asked about whether selectors could select netLibrary materials, as if they were users. I said this should preferably be done only if there were a clear and demonstrated user interest (e.g., as a result of a reference interview).

5. Collection Priorities:  I distributed, as I do every other year or so, copies of the CUL Collection Priorities, which have now been in place for nearly ten years. It is assumed that all main-stacks selectors in CUL are generally adhering to these priorities. These have now been posted at www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/collectionpriorities.html .

6. Stewardship Program:  Marisue Taube said that, while it is very important that selectors continue to acknowledge new endowments in writing, it is also necessary to report to donors periodically on the use we have made of their endowments. The Library Office of External Relations is therefore beginning a program, which will involve contacting selectors for information on how particular funds are being used. The selector will receive word from External Affairs approximately one month before this information is needed. Several good examples of how the fund was useful are preferable to an exhaustive list of purchases. This will be primarily for endowed units, since it is assumed that the statutory units are already doing this work themselves; however, Marisue said, if statutory units want advice or help on such a program, they should contact her. Because the central development office in Day Hall is also starting such a program, it is possible that selectors may receive such requests for information from them; Marisue asked that selectors forward such requests on to her, so that she can explain to Day Hall that we will be taking care of this. External Relations will be notifying selectors soon of the endowment funds that will be part of this program.

7. Fund Reports:  Lydia Pettis explained that she has created a collectiondevelopment database for all selectors to use on their desktops. This database will produce five reports from Voyager, including a fund balance report (the equivalent of NOTIS report 9) and an expenditure report (similar to the old report 17). It will take a few minutes to set up this program on each machine--but once the parameters have been set, Lydia estimated, it should take no more than ten seconds to run the report. This is how selectors will receive these reports in future: each selector will run his/her own report, rather than having paper reports periodically generated and distributed. In order to generate these reports, selectors will need (a) Access 97 (with the Voyager 2000 release, we will all need Access 2000) and (b) ODBC drivers. Lydia said she is willing to assist all HSS and EMPS units with this installation, and she will be glad to work with Mann ITS on assisting Life Sciences libraries. Normally she or someone else will assist with the actual installation, however this program will also be available through the Digilib server, so that the more adventurous selectors are welcome to download it and install it themselves. All selectors will need to use an ID and password to access Voyager information through this program--for purposes of database maintenance; Lydia said that Bill Kara's security group will work on this. Lydia said she was prepared to provide demonstration classes for selectors, although the program is probably simple enough that this may not be necessary. Lydia also said that a reports users group will begin meeting on Wednesdays, 3:00-4:00, in Olin 106; any selectors interested in learning much more about Voyager reports are welcome to attend.

   These reports had been identified as collection development's highest priorities. There are clearly other reports selectors would be interested in having programmed. Lenore said it would be useful to have a report which shows expenditure by format--but without information on individual titles purchased. Janie asked that percentages (e.g., the amount of the budget spent at a particular time) would also be very helpful. Selectors should make these suggestions to John Saylor, who will continue to be the collection development reports liaison. We will review these suggestions at CDExec, and then ask Lydia to put them on her list for future development.

   Lydia said that she would prefer to proceed with installation by unit. Units in HSS and EMPS that have Access 97 and ODBC drivers should contact Lydia when they are ready to install this program.

8. Things Ordered in NOTIS:  Janie pointed out that items ordered in NOTIS but received in Voyager do not include the fund suffix. In other words, if an L3 was used in the NOTIS order, that information will not be transferred to Voyager--because L3 information was replaced by fund suffixes; and if there is no fund suffix on the order (since it was ordered through NOTIS), none is being added upon receipt. Julie confirmed that this is the case. Statistics this year will therefore not be entirely accurate.

9. Digital Depository:  Anne Kenney said that she is leading an effort to design a central digital depository; this is part of the work we are doing on an IMLS grant, which we received to create an archival structure for our digital image collections. Anne said that this particular effort is consequently focused mainly on archiving materials that we have digitized ourselves. (We are working now also on a grant to the Mellon Foundation, which will focus on the archiving of born-digital materials.) The draft discussion of the selection criteria for this central depository, which David Block had authored, had already been forwarded to selectors. In general, most selectors seemed comfortable with these criteria. Mary made the point that there are now many key sources that we can no longer archive, because they reside exclusively on the servers of vendors. David Brumberg emphasized that these are historical decisions, in the sense that they will define what is of historical significance in future. I was concerned that we are using the same collection priorities that we use for main-stacks materials (i.e., item 5 above): these do not seem to me to be as applicable to long-term digital archiving. David Block suggested that we might eliminate the priority order, and simply list the criteria as issues that should be considered when selecting digitized materials for long preservation. We will conclude this discussion in CDExec.

10. Encumbrances:  When a standing order series was established in NOTIS, and the cost of the first volume was encumbered, that encumbrance was removed when the first volume arrived. In Endeavor, however, the price of the first volume of an SOS is automatically reencumbered every year, and such encumbrances were created by Endeavor when funding information was transferred from NOTIS. Julie confirmed that this is the case, but that it is only happenings with SOSs--not with serials. As a result, there are some very large encumbrances. CDExec asked Acquisitions to zero out first volume prices whenever new SOS volumes are received: this will eliminate such rolling encumbrances--although this work will be done only gradually, as new volumes are received. Selectors agreed with this decision. Yoram noted that purchases are blocked, when encumbrances are above a certain level. Since such encumbrances are being in effect artificially inflated, this could be a serious problem. Don expressed the view that an accurate encumbrance for serials would be helpful. I am hopeful that this will be possible in future. But in the meantime, because of the problems created by this automatic encumbrances for SOSs, encumbrances in Voyager will not be very useful.

11. Endowments:  We have been concerned for some years that endowments are not being spent. In 1999/00, we rolled forward nearly one-third of our endowments in the materials budget. We need now to do something about this, since it might give the wrong impression that we have more money than we need. David Brumberg said this situation is due in part to the fact that endowment income has increased so greatly--so that some selectors may not have realized how much they actually have in their endowments. I said that we will set a goal to do something about this in the current FY. CDExec will begin monitoring endowments this year. If at the end of the year, some unrestricted endowments have not been spent down (or encumbered), consideration will be given to reassigning such endowments to other selectors. If the selector is saving the endowment for something, that should be communicated to CDExec whenever this review takes place. Endowments need not be totally spent each year, but they should preferably be substantially spent.

Minutes recorded by Ross Atkinson.

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11/27/00, jwg