AGENDA

1. Introduction and Welcome to New Members

2. Campus reports

3. CDC Liaison Report (Howard)

4. Electronic Resources:
Nominations for Resource Liaison for LION, ABELL, Early English Books Online: discussion of current offer, possibility of Tier II?
Other products
Response to this year's JSC survey

Lunch.

5. Belles Lettres Collecting Areas for "Commonwealth" Countries: Do we need to re-assign to campuses? Do we need to seek input, and/or buy-in from CDO's some of whom may be unfamiliar with the project? Assessment of where we are.

6. New business

7. Tony Bliss on The Bancroft

MINUTES

In attendance: Nancy Kushigian (Davis, chair), Cathy Palmer (Irvine), Ray Soto (Los Angeles), Frank Gravier (Santa Cruz), Nancy Koller (Riverside), Clinton Howard (Davis, CDC liaison), Rob Melton (San Diego), Michaelyn Burnette (Berkeley, recorder)

1. Introduction of attendees and guests. This was Rob Melton's first meeting with the group; he is familiar to many of us from his many roles in ALA including a term as Chair of the English and American Literature Section.

2. Berkeley: We have an(other) University Librarian, Tom Leonard. He was an Associate Dean of Journalism and former chair of the Senate Committee on> the Library when waylaid and asked to be acting UL while we searched for someone to replace Jerry Lowell. We're glad he was persuaded to stay on permanently; well, permanently is too strong a word to use about any UL at Berkeley. He was promised additional funding for the next three years, but over half the funding was to come from State monies, and the outlook is cloudy about our getting the funding. If the State keeps spending its money on electricity, then we may have to start canceling serials again in a year or two. We're still hiring librarians; the url for information about our vacant positions is:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/LHRD/librec.html

Lots of seismic work being done on the campus and in the libraries. As part of Tidal Wave II, there's a push to enlarge summer school; however, enrollment this summer was not as high as hoped in spite of lowered fees. Riverside: The Rivera Library is coming alive after having been in a weird, partially dormant, totally chaotic state for nearly 3 years. First all 5 floors at one end (about a third of the building) were sealed off and retro-fitted and renovated. The middle section was next, which meant two circulation/check-out desks - and if a patron happened to be in Unit I and needed reference help -- or needed some material in another classification -- the poor person had to exit unit one, walk all around the huge outdoor construction site (entire quad in front of library) and re-enter unit three. The same was true for all of us staff as well, of course. If any patron wanted to study, it was necessary to walk across campus to the new Science Library. Less used materials were placed in dead storage at SRLF (including all but highly selected microforms) and A-C; all P's except PQ, PR, PS, PN; U-V; most Zs; and folios were all in remote storage in old Phy-Sci Lib. and were paged 4 times a day. Special Collections was temporarily relocated to the old Bio-Ag Lib. Now everything is coming back, and the entire collection is being shifted and relocated -- one more chaotic summer in which finding any given book will be a challenge as many are in transit across campus or from one floor to the other.

The other bright note is that UCR has gained some new librarians -- not new slots, merely replacements. David Rios is the new AUL for the Sciences; Jerry Black and Geethanjali Yapa are new Science Reference Librarians. In the Collections Division we have a new bibliographer for Latin America and numerous social sciences and humanities disciplines -- Rhonda Neugebauer. She is most recently from Wichita State, and previous to that, Arizona State, and University of Kansas. She is well published in Latin America subjects, active in SALALM and IFFLA, and has organized numerous trips to Cuba to connect and cooperate with librarians there. Our former Head of Special Collections, Sid Berger, left for a sister campus (another one of those terrific gains for UCLA) and is now the Director of the California Center for the Book. We are very fortunate to have Melissa Conway as our new head of Special Collections. She is a scholar of renaissance studies with a Ph.D. from Yale, and other advanced degrees from McGill and Catholic University of America. She has published extensively in French and Italian as well as English, and has, for the last eight years been the curator of a very valuable and growing private collection of rare books, manuscripts and art in the Washington, D.C. area. Before that her work as been either permanent positions or as a consultant at the Library of Congress; Assistant to the Curator of the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale; the Folger Shakespeare Library; for Oxford University Press; St. Thomas More House of Studies; and the National Museum of Art.

Unfortunately I have to mention the budget which is never any better, but is often worse, as is the case this year. No new money to the base for 4 years -- including all the monies designated by the state legislature and UCOP -- the only UC library not to enjoy those enhancements to the base budget. We were just given $271,000 one time money from the Chancellor to "beef-up" the social sciences and humanities. None of this can obviously go for serials or electronic databases which have on-going maintenance fees since serial cancellation is nearly a foregone conclusion this coming year. (If Ray is worried about that at UCLA, you can imagine with what UCR is faced since there has been no budget increase to cover inflation for year after year.)

Our campus is growing by leaps and bounds and most of the campus resembles one giant construction site. Parking lots are encroaching upon University citrus groves and experimental agricultural plots. Faculty is growing, but a minimum of two year caps are put on positions of retiring faculty in the humanities and social sciences due to a giant debt incurred by the dean's Office prior to the arrival of the new Dean two years ago. I guess Lecturers are truly working overtime here. Several retiring faculty I've talked to just shake their heads and try and not feel guilty for leaving. Several come back to teach a particular class for which there is no replacement. The one notable purchase I've made for the literature faculty is the Electronic Beowulf from U of Michigan Press. The other purchases for the English Dept. are mostly films since many of them have joint appointments with Film Studies. A great many have a research emphasis in queer studies, and thus the traditional areas of English and American literature are being replaced by a curriculum for which we have very little money to do more than purchase some monographs -- no serials or any electronic material which are continuations. But, of course, I'm not stopping to collect in the more traditional subject areas. We are continuing to collect Irish literature per our arrangement.

Santa Cruz: Frank reported that Margaret is working to set up endowments to supplement state funds.

Los Angeles: Personnel-- Ellen Broidy moved from UCI to UCLA in September 2000 to be the new head of the Bibliographers Group. Another egregious case of stealing each other's domestics that we do so well in the UCs. In this case I'm very happy to be on stealing end. She's been totally fabulous to work for and with. She brings lots of years of experience of collection development and, even more, lots of years of the vagaries of UC funding that changes the rules and amounts from year to year. Otherwise, we've been very stable for the past year. Next year may bring some changes to the UCLA group, as some graybeards of the group begin to contemplate retirement.

Money-- We began the year with the optimistic flush of the improved State budget, which trickled down to an extra 7.5 increase percent across the board for each bibliographer and each area. That translated into an extra $6,000 for English and American Literature for me, bringing my discretionary total to $80,004. And this was supposed to be a permanent increase to the budget. Before the energy crisis, at the beginning of December, the library got an additional collection budget augmentation which totaled almost $120,000 for all the YRL Bibs combined. Ellen asked us to submit proposed titles, with justifications, to her for purchase. I was able to buy two largish microform sets: Adam Matthew's _Masculinity, 1560-1800: Men Defining Men_ (Part 1), and also _Colonial Discourses: > Series One: Women, Travel & Empire, 1660-1914_ (Parts 1 & 2). This will certainly help out with two faculty here who specialize in Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies, and has banked some gratitude for me.

Electronic Projects-- Cindy Shelton, our new AUL for Collections, wanted us to begin to experiment with e-books, so she set aside $25,000 to purchase titles from NetLibrary e-books. All bibliographers across campus were asked to go through the list of titles NetLibrary had available, and to select those of interest to our programs. I was fairly disappointed in the list and chose mainly titles from Harold Bloom's series about canonical writers--really collections of critical essays that seem suitable for undergraduates wrestling with Scott Fitzgerald, or Emily Dickinson for the first time. I suggested about 27 titles which were eventually whittled down to ten. They are cataloged in ORION2 with hot links to e-books. I have no idea how much they are being used; I haven't seen any statistics yet, though they've been available since the end of December. The deal is that Cindy would fund them for the first year, and if we want to continue them after that, they will come out of our individual budgets. If the budgets are steady or reduced next year, I don't believe I'm willing to pick them up.

We have been asked to participate in the Collection Management Initiative (CMI), and among the Bibs Group we have submitted titles in economics, history, and literature. I volunteered four titles that have fairly extensive runs in JSTOR and Project Muse to be experimental titles at UCLA, namely: _American Literature, _Callaloo_, _ELH_, and _MLN_. Cindy dropped _American Literature_ before submitting the titles to whomever is managing the project, because there was a three year gap in the electronic coverage that would have required us to keep the volumes for those three years on our stack shelves. I'm hoping they are selected by the managing group, though I recognize they don't get as much use as other journals such as _PMLA_ or _Shakespeare Quarterly_ here. I look forward to hearing who squeals first and loudest. I think the only electronic database I added this year was Brown University's _Women Writers Online_, and it has gotten some fair usage. Beyond that, I've only activated the electronic versions of some journals whose print subscription allows us to at no additional cost. Print Serials-- here is the list of 14 serials titles which I began this year, usually because of a faculty request:

New Serials Subscriptions since 6/2000
American Drama
American Indian Studies
Anglo-Saxon Texts
Best Spiritual Writing
Celtic Studies Association of North America Yearbook
Cuadernos de Literatura Inglesa y Norte-Americana
Enterprise and Society
Faultline: Journal of Art & Literature (UC Irvine)
Femspec
Journal for the Study of British Cultures
Occasional Papers of the Humanities Institute (Stonybrook, NY)
The Profession [MLA journal for language teachers]
Studies in Renaissance Literature (Woodbridge, Suffolk,England)
Text and Performance Quarterly

Irvine: New Departments
The biggest news from Orange County is that the UC Irvine Libraries have created new department head positions and that I am one of the new department heads! The two positions are Head of Collection Development and Head of Education and Outreach. Lorelei Tanji, formerly the Fine Arts Librarian has accepted the Head of Collection Development position and I am the Head of the newly created Department of Education and Outreach. I've attached a word copy of the position descriptions for those of you who are interested. While I am happy about the opportunity to enhance the libraries' education program, I will give up my collection development responsibilities in English, Comparative Literature, and Classics with genuine regret.

New Positions - Our University Librarian is following Berkeley's lead in recruiting for new positions. Gerry Munoff has created a pool of 4-6 Research Librarian positions to be hired over the next 6-8 months. The plan is to conduct one search for four to six Research Librarians as soon as possible, with an advertisement that will attract a wide range of well qualified junior librarians. Assignments for these positions will be based on our needs as well as the qualifications, skills, and experience of the candidates. The distribution of effort for each position may vary, but we will expect each assignment to include reference, collections, and instruction responsibilities. The number of appointments will be based on our current approved positions and an assessment of new positions we will be able to establish in the coming year. My collection development assignment will go to one of the new librarians, as will Lorelei's and most likely Ellen Broidy's. So if you know of anyone with a background in English, Comparative Literature, Classics, History, Film Studies, Drama, Studio Arts, Dance and/or Art History who would like to be considered, let me know!

New AUL - Carole Kiehl will begin as Associate University Librarian for Technical Services, effective 1 August 2001. In addition to her library-wide leadership,> management, and decision-making responsibilities, Carole will provide leadership and coordination for all of our technical services, including Acquisitions, Cataloging, Preservation, and Systems. Carole comes to UCI from Old Dominion University Library in Norfolk, Virginia where she has held increasingly responsible positions over the last seventeen years.

New Books and Journals - Because of the healthy collections budget, we have been fortunate to add significantly to the collection over the last three years. Working in partnership with Special Collections, I was able to make some purchases of both older and rare materials to enhance our collection. These include the galley proofs of The Ultimate Good Luck by Richard Ford (Pulitzer prize winning author who graduated from UC-Irvine's Creative Writing Program in 1971) and other first editions of interest to the department. But every silver lining has cloud. Our Main Library is at 98% capacity. We are adding compact shelving in the basement to help with space needs and actively sending materials to SRLF which will provide some short term relief. The ultimate goal is to find funding for a new building, or more realistically, a major addition to our current Main Library. Australian Materials At the time that the UC Lit Bibs conceived the Belles Lettres project, I agreed that UC-Irvine Libraries would collect Australian materials. Thomas Keneally was the Writer-in-Residence at the time. I have continued to be on the alert for Australian materials and add them when I find them. To be honest, my approach has been mostly passive. I select current fiction and poetry from Australian authors and presses when I find them through our Yankee American and British approval plans, and I select current materials about Australian materials in the same manner.> CDL A&I Databases Transition Steering Committee - As you know, the MLA IB is one of the databases that will no longer be available through the Z39.50 interface because of the need to select a new vendor for the MELVYL catalog. Because I was a member of the TSC, I participated actively in the evaluation of vendors who provide the MLA IB. MLA is available through OCLC's FirstSearch, Ovid, and SilverPlatter. The TSC has made its recommendations for preferred vendors for each of the databases to be transitioned. The recommendations remain confidential until CDL negotiates a final contract with the preferred vendors.

Davis: Nancy reports that she's still there in spite of Berkeley's efforts to lure her away. Her duties at Davis have changed so that she will coordinate local and commercial digital products. There is an RFP to outsource the scanning and markup for the rest of the British poets. She is trying to identify faculty with interest in digitization. The Ladino project and a Native American-Mayan database were created by faculty members. Davis has two positions, one for Women's Studies and another in the Social Sciences.

3. CDC Report from Howard
UC will be receiving no new money from the State. There may be revisions in the current budget in June and/or July.
The CDL is negotiating large science-technical contracts. For the first time, CDL has good use statistics. The current UC contract with Elsevier is $7 million. CDL is talking with Ebsco about electronic titles from smaller publications of non-science materials.
Brief discussion of vendors used for US/UK materials. Berkeley uses YBP. Davis has Blackwell and is getting PromptCat; YBP is used very selectively. Riverside has YBP after having Blackwell for twenty years and uses Kenny's for Irish titles. LA has YBP for US, Lindsay and Howe for British, Kenny's for Irish; the date the title is first available determines which vendor sends. Ray noted that Yankee will do a price differential for paper and cloth. Rob said that YBP will so a consortial screen, but it would have to include all libraries. The International Specialized Book Service will cover Commonwealth publications.

4. Electronic Products: sharing of ideas of priorities for JSC survey. Possibilities include: Patrologia Latina and Acta Sanctorum (Chadwyck-Healey) (Sam Dunlap of SD would be willing to negotiate for Tier 2), Scottish Women Poets (20% off if 5 UCs subscribe), American Screenplays Online (coming soon from Alexander Street Press), International Index to the Performing Arts (now full-text so more expensive), Gale's Literature Resource Center (Cathy will get information on pricing). EEBO, TLS. Nancy Kushigian will send out a draft of our JSC response for comment before submitting.

5. Anglophone Project: Irvine will continue to cover Australia and New Zealand; Los Angeles and Riverside will do Ireland; Santa Cruz will continue with The Philippines; San Diego will cover the Caribbean but drop West Africa; Berkeley will do India, East and South Africa; Davis will cover Wales, Scotland, New Zealand, and Australia. Who will cover Canada?

6. New business: Rob agreed to become Coordinator for the group 2002-03. Nancy Koller invited us to meet in Riverside in spring/early summer 2002.

7. Tony Bliss brought in some of the treasures of The Bancroft collection and emphasized the need for cooperation between special collections curators and English and American literature selectors.