Library Management Team
Notes from the September 15, 2004 Meeting

Attending: Ross Atkinson (by speaker phone), Karen Calhoun, Claire Germain, Tom Hickerson, Anne Kenney, Janet McCue, Jean Poland, Sarah Thomas, Ed Weissman

1) Announcements
Sarah distributed a copy of the position description for the Cornell University Library's Director of Communications and Media Relation. This new position will report to Sarah and will manage a team of approximately 2 FTE.
Ed asked LMT to send comments on the Report of the CUL Task Force on Digitization: Selecting Traditional Library Material for Digitization. After LMT's comments are incorporated, recommendations regarding copyright and archiving will be solicited.

2) Review of the CUL priority objectives
LMT reviewed the strategic priority objectives for January 2005- December 2006 taking into account the resource requirements. The list of priority objectives was revised as follows:

1. Develop an integrated framework for CUL's digital collections.
Provide integrated discovery and a set of best practices to underpin digital collection building, federated access and sustainability in order to give users at Cornell and around the world a powerful and easy way to search across our collections and to retrieve integrated sets of results.

2. Build an OAIS-compliant system for managing Cornell's digital assets.
In collaboration with CIT and external partners, establish within three years a fully functioning, administratively supported, and sustainable OAIS-compliant repository system for managing and preserving Cornell University's digital assets, extending beyond the Library to encompass university records of continuing value. This system must meet or exceed certification requirements currently being defined.

3. Work with faculty and librarians to develop strategies to incorporate information fluency competencies into the curriculum at all levels.
Students need to become adept at using the varied types and sources of information available to them in productive and responsible ways in their learning. Faculty and librarians must partner to define information fluency learning objectives for Cornell students at various stages of their student "careers" along with specific discipline-based information fluency learning objectives. We must then insure that our instructional program is successful in helping students meet these objectives.

4. Effectively market the library's products and services and expand outreach to new and underrepresented constituencies.
Faculty and students often fail to take full advantage of library services because they are unaware of their availability. Expanding outreach will increase the return on investment for Cornell.

5. Secure the resources to meet CUL's goals and objectives.
Increase the funds coming from individual and corporate donations and from foundations and other granting agencies.

6. Expand, coordinate, and simplify document delivery services to facilitate use of both digital and analog information.
Information users want convenient and seamless access to collections from Cornell and other institutions. Simplify the delivery request process to make it a seamless and unmediated service. This will save faculty valuable time and increase the use of library materials. Also, investigate e-reserve, electronic document delivery, and ILL operations and service standards to determine operational relationships to digitization for collection building.

7. Operate an electronic publishing program capable of systematic production and distribution of journals, monographs and multimedia compositions and foster alternatives to conventional publishing.
Universities stand to benefit from cost-effective alternatives to high-priced commercial publishing. Research and scholarship will reach a broader audience and extend the impact of university efforts, and the cost to acquire access to publications will decrease overall. We must ensure that our current initiatives--arXiv, Euclid and DpubS--attain sustainability and then build on the success of these programs as we look to expand into new areas of publishing concentration.

8. Respond to the crisis in scholarly communication by clarifying alternatives for publishing outlets for faculty and others at the university.
Increased awareness of issues relating to scholarly communication, especially the high costs to the institution, can transform the process and lower costs if appropriate information about intellectual property rights and alternative venues for disseminating scholarly finds is discussed and circulated. Clarify responsibilities for responding to the crisis in scholarly communications. Make clear what the library community in general and CUL in particular need to do in order to succeed in this area. Do the necessary planning and take the necessary actions to succeed.

9. Identify the skills and resources needed for library innovation and develop new competencies by retraining and recruiting.
Library roles are changing, and consequently, new skills are needed to achieve success. Analyze staffing trends by function, assess the quality of the applicant pools from past searches and identify where gaps exist between current staff and projected near term staffing needs. Develop strategies to bridge these gaps.

In the course of these discussions and, in particular, when LMT decided to defer the investigation of the next generation gateway (formerly objective #1), it also agreed to take steps to improve access to e-journals, a source of particular frustration for library users.

3) November 18 staff meeting
LMT briefly discussed the goals for the November 18 staff meeting. This will be an opportunity for participants to focus on the strategies for accomplishing the priority objectives, particularly where the strategies are less well-defined, and to specify how we will know if we have been successful.
Sarah said she would be talking about the Library's relationship to the University's mission and how the Library's priority objectives are related in her presentations to the staff on September 23 and September 29. She asked LMT to start engaging the staff in their units so that they are exposed to the objectives before the November 18 meeting.

4) Call to Engagement
Based on discussions at the Academic Deans meetings, Sarah listed several themes that seem to be emerging from the Call to Engagement exercise:

a) humanity in the age of technology
b) the individual, society and the environment
c) the library of life
d) global Cornell
e) the engaged student
f) one university

Edward Weissman