Library Management Team

Notes from October 12, 2005 Meeting

Attending: Lee Cartmill, Karen Calhoun, Claire Germain, Tom Hickerson, Anne Kenney, Janet McCue, Jean Poland, Carolyn Reid (Weill Medical College), Kris Alpi (Weill Medical College)

1) Carolyn Reid, Director, and Kris Alpi, Associate Director, of the Weill Cornell Medical College Library (WCMC) joined LMT for the first half of the meeting. They reported on the following:

a) The Library is in the midst of a user survey which is required by federal auditors to document research usage in connection with the College's indirect cost rate. The survey also provides information for the billing of services provided to affiliated institutions--Rockefeller University, Hospital for Special Surgery, and Memorial Sloan -Kettering Cancer Center.

b) The Library is in the final stages of upgrading its library management system to Innovative Interfaces' Millennium software product release.

c) While in Ithaca, meetings were held with the manager of Cayuga Medical Center's library. Cayuga Medical Center is one of WCMC's affiliated teaching hospitals and, when WCMC medical students are on rotation there, they have web-based VPN access to WCMC materials which are not available to the general Cayuga Medical Center community. CMC provides clinical rotations for up to two medical students at a time.

d) Meetings were also held with Vet Library staff to discuss shared resources and new Z39.50 interfaces, with library technical services staff to learn about CUL's electronic resources management system, and with the life sciences working group and steering committee.

2) Janet and Jean presented a report entitled "Lessons Learned From an Exploration of Consolidated Science and Engineering Libraries".

Janet and Jean talked about their findings in response to a request from Sarah to identify the motivation of various universities that have brought their science and engineering libraries together or that are planning to do so. They reported that each university has unique reasons for combining libraries, usually some combination of deteriorating physical facilities, departmental need for library space, and improved services. They reported that these conditions do not currently apply to CUL.

3) Announcements:

Tom announced that CUL had received a Save America's Treasures grant for $250,000 for the Native American Collection acquired from the Huntington Free Library. The grant will be used to preserve, catalog and digitize the collection. Cornell was the only library to receive a grant in this round of funding.

Edward Weissman