October 13, 1997
The Social Sciences Team met on Monday, October 13, from 2:00-3:30 p.m. in Statler Hall room 278. The following team members were present: D. Block, P. Dankert,. A. Gray, J. Harris, G. Lawrence, B. Marston, D. Schnedeker, C. Spicer, S. Szasz Palmer, J. Stiles, B. Walters, B. McGinnis (presiding).
1) NEW TEAM MEMBERS
Scott Childs, who was not able to attend the meeting, has been appointed selector for Law. New team members Caroline Spicer (Western Europe) and Bill Walters (Mann, Numeric and Spatial Data) were introduced and welcomed.
2) INTRODUCTIONS AND UPDATES
Team members introduced themselves and gave brief updates on current developments in their respective areas. Highlights of reports are given below (listed alphabetically by selector's last name):
David Block, Anthropology & Ibero-America announced that Collection Development (Room 504) and Gifts/Exchange are now part of Olin Library. *For a list of who is presently doing what in terms of selection, refer to the following web page: http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/cdselector.html *He's now mobilizing to go talk to faculty about offsite selection.
Phil Dankert, Industrial and Labor Relations, is presently evaluating whether to switch labordoc from compact disc access to the web. Since January 1996, 14,956 volumes (mostly duplicates and canceled serials) have been withdrawn from ILR in preparation for the move to the library's new building.
Ann Gray, CISER has recently acquired public opinion research data from several online sources, including RPOL on Lexis-Nexis, which includes text public opinion surveys and marginals of responses. Reference staff in libraries with Lexis-Nexis terminals are asked to provide assistance to users who want to access the RPOL data. Plans are underway to bring up a web page with information on how to access public opinion polls.
Janie Harris, Government, Economics & Sociology announced that the Collection Development Department (Room 504) is now administratively part of Olin Library.
Greg Lawrence, Government Documents, Mann Library said that there are now 4.5 fte in Mann working in collection development, selecting primarily by genre but with some subject overlap. In addition to Lawrence and Sam Demas, the following individuals are part of the Mann collection development team: L. Stewart, monographs; B. Walters, GIS & numeric files; J. Weintraub, internet serials & reference. Mann is presently working with the Smithsonian Institution to develop a conference there that will focus on issues related to preservation of information selected in electronic formats (for example, should information be downloaded from the web? How to preserve and assure long-term access? How to handle census information?)
Brenda Marston, Women's Studies is now administratively part of Olin Library. Marston distributed a copy of her outline of fundraising ideas, prepared in R. Atkinson's request for fundraising ideas at the General Selectors meeting. She had previously prepared a list in response to a request from S. Thomas for ideas for a specific donor.
Boodie McGinnis, Hotel. Earlier this year, Hotel purchased subscription to the following Moody's databases on cd-rom: Moody's Company Data with EDGAR, Moody's International Company Data, Moody's International Company Reports. Hotel has cooperated with ILR and JGSM to purchase subscription to Disclosure's Global Access. Hotel is also contributing funds to support the purchase of UMI's Proquest ABI full-text and image database. The Hospitality Database is no longer being published through Wiley. It is hoped that the database will be available through the web in the future; for now, indexing continues as a cooperative effort of former members of the CHRIS consortium.
Don Schnedeker, JGSM. In cooperation with Hotel and ILR, JGSM has purchased subscription to Disclosure's Global Access, which provides a wealth of information about publicly owned companies. He previously posted a message to CU-Lib with a CU library password for access to this resource. JGSM Library's web page has recently been significantly updated and includes a comprehensive Business Reference Index; in the near future, a "frequently asked questions" section will be added. Major weeding project is ongoing in preparation for the move to Sage. Schnedeker recently distributed e-mail to appropriate selectors asking for recommendations about how to handle USITC publications. He will discuss further with Szasz-Palmer, Harris, and Stiles. JGSM does not plan to continue maintaining their international company files in paper format. They are considering cataloging older reports as a collection.
Caroline Spicer, Western European Social Sciences. Half of Spicer's time is allocated to coverage of Western European Studies this year while Sarah How is away. A project is underway to bind the official records of the United Nations that have previously been housed in the lower level of reference in the public area. Effort is being made to try to improve access to masthead documents through weeding.
Julie Stiles, Government Documents, Olin Library reported that Olin is now a full EU(?) depository, which means the addition of a large number of documents each month. EU has no provision for withdrawing documents; once a library receives them, the library is expected to keep the documents and make them available. In selecting documents, she tries not to duplicate items in other libraries. She consults with other selectors and/or puts items on the review shelf, trying to think where the item(s) will be most useful campuswide.
Susan Szasz Palmer, OKU Reference & Uris. Trial access to Congressional Compass is now available via (URL). Decision on America History and Life is still pending. Trial access to Lexis-Nexis Universe will soon be available. The approval plan being used for Uris is working well overall. Uris is no longer acquiring cookbooks, and selected cookbooks from the Uris collection will be transferred to Hotel. McGinnis needs to review the cookbook collection and determine which will be transferred.
Bill Walters, GIS and Numeric Data, Mann Library. All Mann bibliographers are now working on updating collection development policies. The final document will be mounted on the web. NY State environmental data will be mounted on the web. Mann has noted an increasing demand for spatial data; it is expected that a latent demand for such data will emerge. Walters and Susan Greaves are working to assess the demand for such information and to provide networked access to the most widely used geospatial data.
3) MEETING SCHEDULE
Following discussion, it was agreed that the team would meet monthly to discuss pressing concerns and/or work on group projects such as completion of the CPCR's. Three times during the academic year, meetings will include updates from individual bibliographers on what's happening in their respective areas; otherwise, communication about what's happening will be handled through e-mail. McGinnis agreed to try to find a suitable meeting time by polling team members via e-mail. (Note: Following the meeting, members were polled and it was determined that the best meeting time for the majority would be the third Tuesday of each month at 9:00 a.m. Meeting location still to be determined.)
4) CPCR's
Discussion ensued about how to best proceed to complete the team's CPCR's. Individual selectors have used different levels of detail in outlining their areas of responsibility, and the team needs to decide together the level of detail that is needed overall. For this team, there is more potential for overlap than for some other teams, so the final document may not be identical in level of detail to that of other teams. There may be need for annotations, etc., in areas where there is potential for overlap.
It was agreed that priority agenda for the November meeting will be further discussion of CPCR's. Team members agreed to review their own CPCR's and the entire document in the meantime. Effort will first be made to set aside those areas where there does not seem to be overlap so that discussion can focus on ironing out who has primary responsibility for overlapping areas and discussion of how to finalize the document.
Reporter: Boodie Newsom McGinnis
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