Selectors have arguably two broad resource pressures. One is that their ability to use one of their two primary funding sources--funding and time--to offset the other is never possible, because both are usually in such short supply. The other broad pressure stems from the fact that the corollary expenditures of other resources that they necessarily trigger through their selection decisions are largely invisible to them. Those other resources include space (stacks and computer), but also the time of other services, most notably processing and preservation. We need therefore to develop some method that will allow selectors to take those corollary expenditures into account when making their decisions. One option would be a kind of extended budget, that would ration such things as space and processing time for each selector-but that would be very difficult to create, and it would greatly reduce flexibility. The other option would be to have some kind of early warning system, so that selectors could be informed of pressures before a crisis stage is reached. John noted that processing units do have specific priorities that selectors should be aware of. Scott said that CTS is now doing a full review of its present capacities and the amount of work it has to do; it is likely that CTS will be coming back to selectors in response to this review with suggestions for some procedural and work flow adjustments. Don said that selectors can also reduce some resource pressures--e.g., by identifying older, low-use material for weeding. Sarah suggested that we at least create a process that would allow selectors to identify newer materials that could go straight to the Annex. David Brumberg agreed that this would be useful: many of these would likely be items that need to be obtained quickly, lest they be lost, but that we would not expect to be heavily used. I will check on this. We will also continue to look for methods to coordinate corollary expenditures more effectively.
All selectors are being asked to meet with their departments and programs early in the fall semester, in order to (a) discuss the current and future condition of the collection, as well as (b) some of the reasons for that condition, and to (c) solicit input from faculty on managing that condition. Because all of the disciplines are different, with different values and different pressures, the content of such meetings will be different from one discipline to the next. Selectors should discuss not only the shortfalls in funding, but also the problem of increasingly rising costs--not only the budget, in other words, but also issues in scholarly communication that affect the budget. If selectors would like to bring someone along to any of these meetings, CDExec members, depending upon their schedules, would be glad to provide this accompaniment.
The pressures on the budget for next year are part of an ongoing trend that has been developing for some time. I sense, however, that we are crossing a kind of line this year--for at least three reasons:
These three recent developments, then, warrant a special effort on the part of the library to inform faculty about the current condition and potential future trends of the collection.
If I were speaking to faculty myself, I would begin with a brief reference to the ongoing national trends, using the famous ARL "Graph 2" as a basis. This provides a clear indication that the top research libraries in the country are buying less materials than they did fifteen years ago--and at enormous increases in cost. I would then relate that to the specific trends at Cornell: the budgets of the CUL libraries on the Ithaca campus have increased over the past sixteen years by 149%, and yet we subscribe to only 5% more serials than we did 16 years ago. The statutory libraries (on the Ithaca campus) have seen budget increases of 117% over the past 16 years, and yet they subscribe to 14% fewer journals. During this same sixteen years, the Ulrich's database shows that the number of periodicals published has increased by 138%.
Part of our problem is, therefore, a budget that is growing much more slowly than the costs of the materials we need. Until this year, we have received reasonable increases. On the endowed side, we have usually received increases of 5% (and in recent years we have also received significant increases in endowment payouts). These increases have not, however, been as high as some of our peer institutions. Columbia has regularly received 8% increases each year. The same annual increase, if I am not mistaken, has been provided to the MIT library. I will provide selectors separately with further information on the 2002/03 budget increases of some other peer institutions.
The small budget increase this year placed us in a position in which we were obliged not to increase most subject lines at all. We put over half of the increase in centrally funded databases and the central approval plan, which benefit all subject lines--and we used the remainder to shore up a few lines that were in special need. But most lines have had to make do with no increases.
This slow growing budget is, however, only half of the problem. The other half are the rapidly growing costs, which far exceed inflation. Different disciplines will experience these costs in different ways. In general, if I were presenting this myself, I would first emphasize the costs of hybridity. It is essential for CUL, as it is for all research libraries, to build a strong digital library--but we have received no extra funding to do that. We must use our regular funding for both digital and traditional materials. The importance and availability of digital materials vary from one discipline to another; so we must maintain strong research collections in both forms. This is very expensive, not only for collection development, but also for processing. In collection development, we have adopted the strategy of not reducing individual subject lines, and instead building the digital library with new funding each year. When that funding increase is very small, as it was this year, it places us in a very difficult situation--especially since price increases of databases tend to be greater than for traditional items.
I would also talk about the problem of commercialization, using the current discussion with Elsevier as an example. For monographic subjects, the very high and problematic costs of netLibrary could also be noted. The MLA letter should also be cited. The best summary of the current problems in science publishing are the publications of Jean-Claude Guedon, which are on the ARL Web site. I distributed the URLs for these papers, and will also send them to selectors by e-mail. The shorter paper, "Beyond Core Journals and Licenses," might be worth printing out and distributing at the meeting. It should also be noted that Guedon will be visiting Cornell, and the library's invitation, on 11 October.
Depending upon the subject area, I would also draw faculty members' attention to a few of the alternative publishing efforts that have grown up--to show that libraries and scholars are doing what they can to alleviate such pressures. The SPARC project is certainly worth mentioning, as well as the Budapest Open Access Initiative.
If faculty want to discuss issues beyond collection development, selectors will need to play that by ear. If you can easily provide responses, that is fine. Otherwise get the faculty members' names who are interested in these other issues, and assure them that they will receive a response from the library in short order--and send me those questions.
It is possible that some non-science faculty members may be concerned that we are privileging the science collections. This is in fact not the case. There are certainly differences in budget levels, but there are also huge differences in costs. I distributed pages from the current Bowker Annual, showing the relative materials costs for different subjects. Note, for example, that the average history journal costs $72, while the average chemistry journal costs $1,520. In 2000/01, we spent 13% of the materials budget on humanities materials, 21% on social science (including Law and JGSM), 38% on science (including Cornell Med), 10% on area, and 18% on general (including the central database and approval plan lines). As for fund 519 (central databases), John has calculated that in 001/02 43% of the budget was spent on non-science databases, 21% on science databases, and 35% on databases that cover both sciences and non-sciences.
Selectors asked that I work on the creation of a Web page that would include a statement by me of the key issues facing the collection, as well as links to some of the primary documentation. Selectors would then be able to refer faculty to that site. I will try to figure out how to do this as soon as possible, but I would ask selectors please not to defer their meetings until I get that done.
Minutes recorded by Ross Atkinson.
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08/28/02 vwb