Attending:  Lee Cartmill, Joanne Davenport, Elaine Engst, Claire Germain, Anne Kenney, Ellen Marsh, Janet McCue, Jean Poland, Oya Rieger, John Saylor, Ed Weissman, Scott Wicks.
Guest:  Elaine Westbrooks

1)  Announcements
        Anne Kenney reported that she met with the Student Library Advisory Council on September  17 to seek feedback on a vision for the renovated Olin Library that the renovation team is considering.  The vision has a vertical perspective.  The lower levels are geared more to learning and social interaction.  As you work your way up to higher floors, the focus turns more to research and quiet study.  The 7th floor is for research only--a "research commons" consisting of seminar rooms, reading rooms, and research carrels and studies. This vision was well received by the 21 students in attendance.  Anne will be meeting with the University Library Faculty Board and will ask the Board to play a role in the allocation of faculty studies.  Also, a grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities will be submitted shortly seeking $500,000 for Olin Library infrastructure improvements.
        Anne announced that CIT had "bumped up" the installation of EzraNet in Olin Library.  Vice President for Cornell Information Technologies Polley McClure has made funding available to upgrade the data and phone wiring and their distribution infrastructure in 2008.
        Jean Poland reported that two consultants visited during the first week of September to look at visual resources services and support at Cornell including, in particular, the Fine Arts Library and the Knight Visual Resources Center.  She expects to receive the consultants report by early December.
        Jean also announced that the new Executive Director of NYLINK, David Penniman, will be visiting on the afternoon of October 10.  An open meeting with Dr. Penniman will be held.
        Claire Germain reported that the Law Library is welcoming two visitors from the Supreme Court Law Library in Brazil who will be spending three weeks at the Library.  The visitors will make presentations at the Starr Foundation Workshop for international law librarians, "Tapping into the World of Electronic Legal Knowledge," to be held at the Law Library October 7-11.
        
2) Metadata Services
        Elaine Westbrooks, Head, Metadata Services in Library Technical Services, provided an overview of her unit and reported on her plans, following recent personnel changes, to restructure Metadata Services in order to better support internal library needs while continuing to recover some costs by working with external clients.  Elaine has been meeting with units around the Library to learn about their projects and services and to discuss how Metadata Services might provide assistance.  She has compiled a list of projects currently being supported and potential new projects where metadata expertise is needed.  The Library Management Team enthusiastically endorsed Elaine's plans to change the unit's focus.

3) Library Services for Alumni
        Jean presented a proposal from the Public Services Executive Committee (PSEC) to review CUL's service goals for alumni in the context of the fund raising campaign and the issuance of Cornell net IDs to all living alumni.  Alumni Net IDs can not be distinguished from those of current students, faculty and staff so that reference staff cannot determine whether the sender of chat mail or email reference is currently associated with Cornell or is an alumni.   On the alumni page  < http://www.alumni.cornell.edu/netid/faq.cfm#8> the statement appears that with a Cornell NetID one can "access non-licensed library services (licensed services are not available to alumni)" but alumni probably do not distinguish between licensed and unlicensed resources.  A newsletter from the Western Regional Office promised "free reference and referral assistance" and "more than 600 web resources, including indexes, catalogs, almanacs, encyclopedias, & directories."  This  implies more comprehensive services than the Library currently provides.   PSEC also asked about the future of the Library's Alumni and Friends Access  < http://alumni.library.cornell.edu/> and whether free circulation privileges should be offered to all or, perhaps, only local alumni.
        Oya Rieger said that the Alumni and Friends web site received around 2,000 visitors each month but that there were very few alumni, perhaps 8-10 at any one time, subscribing to the Find Articles service.  This subscription service will be phased out since it is not meeting alumni needs.  Anne will ask Jennifer Sawyer, the new director of Library Alumni Affairs and Development, to take over responsibility for the website from the current steering committee--Oya, Scott Wicks, Fiona Patrick, Virginia Coles and Beth Anderson.  She will also ask Jennifer to make an assessment of the impact on the campaign of library services to alumni to inform decisions about alumni service offerings.


Edward Weissman