Library Management Team

Library Management Team
Notes from the October 29, 2003 Meeting

Attending: Ross Atkinson, Lee Cartmill, Karen Calhoun, Claire Germain, Anne Kenney, Janet McCue, Jean Poland, Sarah Thomas, Ed Weissman, Pat Schafer

1) LibQUAL Survey
Pat Schafer presented a selected summary of the results of the 2003 LibQUAL survey. The survey was conducted in the spring of 2003. Among the results:

Cornell ranks highly in comparison with its ARL peers. While this is good news, it is most important that we focus internally and use the results to see where we need to make improvements.
Respondents continue to report a decline in on-premise use of the Library. At the same time, respondents report an increase in electronic "visits." Also, there is a decline in the number who report "never" using the Library.
Overall, there is a greater gap between the respondents' perceived levels of service and their desired levels of service in the areas of access to information (e.g., having the information that is needed, providing it in a convenient way) and personal control (e.g., making electronic resources accessible from home or office, easy-to-use access tools that allow them to find what they need on their own, making information easily accessible for independent use) than with affect of service (e.g., helpful, dependable staff) or library as place. In fact, the perceived levels of staff knowledge and service exceeded desired levels in certain categories. There is some variation in these perceptions by type of user (e.g., faculty, graduate students and undergraduates.)
The only area in which perceived level is less than minimum level is "making electronic resources accessible from home or office." It will be interesting to see whether the switch from the proxy server to ezproxy and the implementation of cuweb login as an alternative to sidecar, will make a difference in this regard in future surveys.

Pat, Nancy Skipper, Linda Miller and Pete Hoyt all worked on LibQUAL. Pat indicated that the investment in time was not "huge" and that Cornell would be able to insert five custom questions into the 2004 survey if we participate. We have not committed to a fourth year of LibQUAL but we have until December to decide whether to survey next spring. Sarah said that she is concerned about inducing "survey fatigue" in the Cornell community. She would like to have a distillation of the survey made available on the Library Staff Web site along        with a chronicle of the actions we take to respond to the areas where the survey results indicate improvements are needed. Sarah would also like to see an article in the Cornell Chronicle and other forms of outreach concerning the survey results.

2) LARIS Public Services Report
        Anne presented the LARIS Public Services Report. She said that the recommendations represented the consensus of the Public Services Executive Council.

3) Workforce Planning Process
        Sarah reported on her meetings with the LARIS Lead Team on October 20 and the university's Workforce Planning Oversight Team on October 27. She went over her preliminary observations about what has been learned about the Library during phase 1 of the LARIS workforce planning initiative, opportunities for improvements and the positive impact they would have on the University, and the challenges in implementing the recommended improvements. Sarah will be refining these observations and will present them to the LARIS Lead Team on November 24. The Lead Team will then decide on the phase 1 recommendations it will make to the Oversight Team. Final recommendations are likely to be submitted in January.

4) Announcements
a) Ross announced that the Library and the CU Press will be sponsoring an Editors Forum on November 13. Its purpose is to bring together faculty on campus who serve as editors on important scholarly journals. Attendance will be by invitation only, and most of those attending will be faculty. There will be a keynote by James Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia, a panel discussion by some Cornell editors, and then presentations by Sarah and by John Ackerman, Director of the CU Press, about alternative publishing options. The Library and the CU Press will also announce their partnership in supporting the publication of electronic and print journals.
b) Karen announced that the MARCIVE records covering government documents, have been loaded in the Library Catalog, bringing Cornell into compliance with the Federal Depository Library Program.
c) Sarah reported that the Library received a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to ensure access to mathematics over time through the cooperative management of distributed digital archives.

Edward Weissman