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8 May 1998
RWA Notes
1. Materials Budget. The current budget is generally on target--although only 55% of endowment funds have so far been spent. There is a major pressure now in the two main central funds, the approval plan and databases. As had been discussed previously, we will need again to support databases with 2% of the 5% increase.
The Hum/Soc Sci approval plan is now in the red, mainly because we carried over a $30,000 deficit last year. Because the large general endowments are healthy at this point, I am hopeful that we will be able to transfer the deficit costs in the approval plan, so that we do not need to allocate appropriated funds this year for that purpose. That will allow us to rebalance the approval plan line, so that we should be able to get by with a regular increase of 4% or 5% to that line. In addition, the Science Team has decided to combine their approval plan with the humanities/social science one--which will help everyone. We are assuming we would want this to begin with 1999 imprints.
I distributed a copy of the latest version of the database core list, produced yesterday by the Database Review Task Force. Although there are some changes, the databases are mainly those that we have had this year. If that is the case, why do we need again to use 2% of the 5% increase on these central databases? Mainly because our OCLC contract was absurdly underpriced, so that this year we will need to pay regular prices. Also, we got some other good deals the first year, which will not be repeated; and, in a few cases, we never purchased last year some databases that we had committed to, because they were not yet available. Selectors who want to make suggestions about adjustments to the core list should contact me or their team representative on DRTF.
I distributed a sheet showing adjusted base budgets, with some minor changes from the Web version. The adjustments reflect a reallocation (transfer) of base budget funding; this reallocation is based on the amount above the 5.5% increase that selectors have received in their endowments. In some cases, however, the restrictions on the endowments are "too narrow" to permit such a reallocation. I distributed a copy of the December version of the endowment projections, that I used to calculate the reallocation. On this copy, I have circled those endowments that I have considered too narrow to warrant reallocation. This reallocation will create ca. $125,000 of appropriated funding. With the $30,000 from Day Hall, the $50,000 in recurring funding from Sarah (to pay back the materials budget for charges on endowments not in the budget), the $90,000 from Sarah in one-time funding, and the $20,000 additional funding in the general endowments, we are approaching the $330,000 needed for the 5% increase this year.
The budget request forms have been distributed by David Rising, and are due back to him by 20 May. If no request form is received, we will assume that the selector is requesting no increase. The team budget hearings will take place in the last week in May. Because Boodie is currently out of the Library and will not be back until that week, David Rising is assisting her in scheduling the Social Science Team hearing. Yoram asked whether selectors should request one-time funding as usual. The answer is yes: despite the use of the general endowment surplus to cover the approval plan deficit this year, and the need to pull out $20,000 for reallocation in 1998/99, we need to protect our ability to provide one-time funding for special purchases, because this allows selectors to acquire truly needed material that would not otherwise be affordable. Janie asked about the amount of calculation that will need to be done by selectors in preparing their requests.
My advice is simply to base the request for the percentage increase on the adjusted base budget, and not to spend much time trying to recalculate past trends to relate to the adjusted budget. We are, in any case, only talking about an available 3% to allocate, so it is not worth spending large amounts of time developing arguments for increases. As always, what will count most in the allocation decisions will be changes in use, needs, and publishing trends in the individual subject areas.
2. Changing Serial Funding. For many selectors, this reallocation will amount to a reduction in their appropriated funds, which will then need to be balanced by the increase in endowed funds. This means those subject areas that are particularly heavy in serials (mainly, I think, the science and professional subjects) will need to shift some of their serials from appropriated to endowed funds, if they are to avoid deficits in their appropriated lines. Scott Wicks has asked that CTS customers make these changes by 1 August at the latest, because these fund changes will need to be communicated to our vendors in time for them to incorporate that information into our online invoices.
3. Insider Trading. In order to avoid questions or difficulties during periodic financial audits, we need to pay special attention to those situations in which we are buying material from, or selling it to, individuals directly connected with Cornell. This is even more critical when the selector is in effect selling something to the University, and is being reimbursed from the budget lines for which he or she is responsible. In the course of this discussion, we arrived at three basic rules for such situations.
a. If you buy something for the collection, using your own money, and then are reimbursed, always be sure to get a receipt at the time you purchase the item; and then include that with the transaction that is sent to Accounting. In that way there will be no questions about how much you originally paid.
b. If you buy or sell something to or from a Cornell person--and especially if you are selling something that you own yourself--always include clear documentation on how the price was determined. Provide some reference or explanation.
c. In any cases of doubt (again, especially when you are selling something you own, which is being paid for by a budget that you control), always obtain authorization from your supervisor, whoever that may be; by doing this, you ensure that your supervisor is officially verifying the transaction. All such documentation should be included with the information sent to Accounting.
Judith raised the question of using personal credit cards for the purchase of library materials, or the so-called procurement cards now issued by the University. At Linda Westlake's suggestion, we decided to defer this discussion until we could consult Scott Wicks on this.
4. Disposition. One of the recommendations of the Disposition Task Force was to create a central guideline on the disposition of library materials, that would be produced on the basis of input from each of the units. Since the Task Force found the methods of disposition used by different units to be varied but all quite reasonable, we can write this central guideline by asking all units to provide either the documentation they now use, or to write a paragraph describing how they are currently carrying out disposition.
I asked whether, as part of this process, units would also provide a statement about how they decide (the criteria they use) to withdraw. This would be separate information, to be used as a basis for future discussion, and would not be part of the disposition guideline. I think there was agreement that this would be possible, provided the question (of criteria for withdrawal decisions) is posed at the unit level.
5. Collection Evaluation. The purpose of this discussion, which was very wide-ranging, was to begin to talk about the responsibility of collection development for materials subsequent to their acquisition (i.e., collection management in the broad sense). Does the quality or utility of an item in the collection change over time--and, if so, does some action need to be taken by collection development in response? I think we will be obliged in future to spend more time reviewing what we have already selected, and that this will be driven by the economics of size; as if there were some line we will cross, beyond which the cost of maintaining what we already have begins to affect our ability to continue to grow--so that continuing to grow entails spending more time on decisions about maintenance. There was a strong sense that this is indeed a collection development issue, and that the knowledge or rationale that informed the development of the collection should also be taken into account in making decisions about maintaining it. This is, of course, exactly what has just happened, as decisions have been made throughout the CUL system about which materials to transfer to the new Annex. And the fact that this large move of materials to the Annex is merely the first step, and that most library units, in order to maintain a steady state collection size, will need at some point to begin regularly to transfer material to the Annex--this will in itself require that more attention be shifted from collection building to the review of what we already have.
David Brumberg said that, from the historical perspective, many materials grow more valuable as they get older. Lenore provided the excellent example of 19th century scores of 18th century music. Those scores are filled with inaccuracies, they would never be used to play from, and they are presumably not very helpful in the study of 18th century music--but they have recently become very useful in the study of 19th century music, of how the 19th century saw 18th century music. If we had merely looked at the quality of their content, therefore, we would have discarded them long ago; now they are of very significant research value. -- We talked about possibilities of cooperative maintenance among institutions. Because cooperative collection development has not worked very well, there has been very little discussion or consideration of cooperative collection management. Judith said that recent technical advances now make cooperation much more practicable. Presumably everyone, like us, must send only those materials offsite that have converted records. This should allow us to do some kind of overlap study, to compare what we are all keeping in our offsite facilities. Some thought and analysis should be given to coordinating those collections. We concluded by talking about the politics of deaccessioning. We will keep this issue (defining collection development maintenance responsibilities) on the table.
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rev. 5/12/98 peo