GENERAL SELECTORS MEETING

1 March 2001

RWA Notes

1. MyUpdates:  The MyUpdates feature of MyLibrary is now available. This is a service that allows users to specify subject areas, so that they can be notified automatically when new titles in those areas are available in CUL. Selectors are encouraged to try this new service themselves, and to inform faculty about it. It will allow users to monitor how the collection is being built in their areas of interest.

2. Multiple Format Serials:  Lydia, Scott, Marty Kurth and I have started planning a report that will identify titles CUL holds both in electronic and in traditional form. Once we know that, we can begin to consider whether we want to retain paper subscriptions (especially if there are any duplicates) for all such cases. We can also decide, on the basis of this report, if we want in all instances to continue to maintain paper backfiles on central campus, when there is an electronic version available.

3. LibQual:  Christian Boissonnas, Pat Schafer and Nancy Skipper reported on the Library's participation in LibQual--a three-year ARL project, intended to produce a reliable instrument which libraries can use to obtain feedback on library services from the user perspective. The project is being coordinated by Texas A&M, and 42 ARL libraries have signed up to participate. While the survey for this year cannot be tailored to fit local needs, and will not provide information about individual unit libraries, the information collected will be discipline-specific, in the sense that respondents will identify their general disciplines. The survey this year will be sent to selected faculty, graduate students, undergraduates--and to all Library staff. It will not be sent to any staff beyond the Library. On 29 March, an e-mail will go to everyone who will receive an invitation to fill out the survey, and then on 2 April the actual e-mail invitation will be sent. Not all participants will be given the same questions to answer, in order to assist the project in determining the most effective questions. Originally only twelve disciplines were be listed for respondents to chose from, but since engineering and architecture had been grouped together, we were successful in requesting that those disciplines be divided--so there are now thirteen broad disciplines. Publicity for the survey will not be broadcast to the University, but will rather focus on those individuals who have been selected to participate. There will be an e-mail address provided, so that all respondents can ask questions or voice concerns. All such e-mail received will be individually answered. Pam asked how partial responses will be counted; Pat said she would check on this, since that would clearly affect the measurement of the response rate.

4. Voyager Reports:  Selectors are in general getting the information they need from Voyager in order to manage their budgets. Allen noted that the acquisitions module remains confusing, at least for selectors who do not use it every day, so that some additional information or training would be helpful. Mary said that it would be very worthwhile at some point to have a collection development module, which would bring together all of the individual programs that selectors need to use--rather than requiring selectors to move from one module to another. Yoram said some refinements in the acquisitions module would make it much easier to read. Also, he said, diacritics are not displaying correctly, which makes reading some foreign language citations difficult. (Lists of acquisitions from Voyager are sometimes sent to donors, and the lack of diacritics--or the replacement of diacritics with letters--could be very confusing.) Allen said he has found a way to make the diacritics display properly; Lydia said she will check with Allen on this, and will send the information to all staff.

   Martha asked about the content of pending commitments in the fund reports. These are commitments for orders that were sent from NOTIS, and that have not yet been received. These commitments are based on the $35 default price in NOTIS. For some selectors, this information is not useful (and some of these orders will, of course, never be received); but some other selectors are figuring the pending commitments into their total encumbrance.

   Leah noted that Lydia has produced two special reports for PSL, which might also be useful for other selectors. Lydia said she would add these to the selector reports database. Ann Augustine has also produced several useful reports, which she will send to Lydia. In general, when anyone writes a report that could be useful to other selectors, this should be sent to Lydia for possible inclusion in the database. John Saylor urged that a list of such reports be added to the StaffWeb. -- Lydia said she is working on several new reports, one of which is intended to serve as a serials price fluctuation report. It would be helpful, if these reports could be available in time for the 2001/02 allocation. In response to questions from Linda Stewart, Lydia said selectors who want to write reports for specific purposes may contact her for advice. Caroline noted that writing reports--which was something done for selectors in the old environment--takes time, which selectors are short of. Yoram said that the creation of the reports is easy, as long as they have been designed centrally and mounted on individual machines.

5. Budget:
   1. 2000/01:  The current budget appears to be on track at two-thirds through the year. The major serials invoices have now been paid. Most lines appear in good condition, although the sciences are (as usual for this time of year) over 90% spent. We reviewed each of the lines in the general funds. I have about $8K left in the discretionary fund (f 511). The approval plan line is on track, but the postage fund will probably experience some deficit by the end of the year. The general endowment lines, which we use mainly to support one-time purchases, are well spent down--except for the Grosser endowment (P557), which we are reserving for the use of the E-Book Working Group. I asked that selectors let me know of any other commitments that have not yet been honored from the central funds, because the funding in these lines will soon be depleted.

   2. Encumbrances:  While the default encumbrance for NOTIS was $35, the default for Voyager is $0, and it is my understanding that we cannot change that. If a selector provides no dollar price on an order [or, I have now learned from Scott, if the selector provides a price in a currency other than dollars], the encumbrance will be $0. Because of the particular encumbrance programming in Voyager for continuations, CDExec decided some time ago that there should be no encumbrances for continuations--but having no encumbrances for monographic orders is problematic. It means that there is no way to tell that individual items have been ordered against a fund. We agreed, therefore, that selectors should always try to include a [dollar] price of some kind--even if it is a gross estimate--on their monographic orders in future.

   3. Endowments:  I distributed a spreadsheet showing endowment expenditures and surpluses in the materials budget during the 1990s. We have consistently carried over some endowment funding each year. If use of endowments does not increase this year, we will see a similar carry-over into the 2001/02 budget. David Brumberg pointed out that some endowments are narrowly restricted, making them hard to spend. Janie noted that some selectors hold endowments until the second half of the year, to be used when their appropriated funding begins to run out. Allen said that it is reasonable to hold a small amount of funding in reserve--which is certainly true, provided that it is indeed a small amount. In general, however, we do need to make better use of our endowments for two reasons. First, there are many materials which we need to buy, and which we could purchase with endowments. Second, with all of the endowment increases recently, endowments now account for approximately 20% of the total endowed library materials budget. We need to work, therefore, not only on how to use our endowments better for regular purchases, but also on how better to factor endowment earnings into the annual budget allocation. As we have discussed previously, we will reallocate significantly unspent unrestricted endowments, as part of the 2001/02 allocation; and we will also factor significantly unspent restricted endowments into the allocation of appropriated funding.

   4. 2001/02:  We have been informed that we will be receiving a 17.4% increase in our endowments for next year. I distributed a copy of the spreadsheet produced by Accounting, which shows these increases for each of the lines in the endowed library budget. For the endowed libraries, this 17.4% will mean an increase of $314,000--which is $224,000 more than we would have received, had the endowments increased by only the usual 5%. -- We do not know yet how much appropriated funding will be available for allocation. At least four factors will affect that amount. (1) The Law budget will no longer be part of the allocation process, but will rather be funded as a "pass through," i.e., whatever percentage increase is received from Day Hall will be added directly to the Law lines. Law will no longer participate in the budget hearings. (2) In order to achieve the goal (in response to the Digital Futures Plan) of increasing the central database line by $500K over two years, we will need to move $165K of any increase we receive into that line (last year we put in $335K). (3) In order to avoid an unacceptable level of cancellation in the Physical Sciences Library, $60K in one-time funding was added to the PSL budget this year. That $60K will need to be made part of the PSL base budget, beginning in 2001/02. (4) Depending upon pressures elsewhere in the Library budget, it is possible that some new materials-related expenses will be added to the materials budget.

6. Distributed Learning:  DL courses in ILR and JGSM are now being taught, and we are learning a great deal from our efforts to support those. Oya Rieger will be in charge of the new CUL Office of Distributed Learning, which will grow as the Library's DL effort grows. The Library will treat and support DL students, regardless of their location, as regular Cornell students, and will do everything possible to provide them with services parallel or equivalent to those given to residential students. It will most likely be subject specialists in the Library who will work most closely with faculty to develop DL courses. Phil Dankert noted, based on the ILR experience so far, that the exact nature of the collection and subject support that will be needed is still difficult to forecast. It is very probable, in any case, that once DL courses become more regularly taught, they will increase in number very rapidly--so we will need to be prepared.

We did not have enough time to discuss what we learned from the visit of Karen Schmidt and Mark Sandler. We will therefore schedule another General Selectors meeting in the near future to have that discussion.

Minutes recorded by Ross Atkinson.

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3/15/01, jwg