UCLit Bibs meeting, UCSB 6/4/03

1) Introductions - John Bloomberg-Rissman was introduced as the new bibliographer from UCR.

2) Reviewed Agenda

3) Selection of 2004/2005 convener. John Novak will become the convener following the 2004 meeting in Santa Cruz.

4) Campus Reports - see attachment.

5) Ovid/MLA discussions. Rob is the Resource Liaison for MLA and has been in communication with Ovid regarding issues and problems. There was a general discussion among the group regarding the effectiveness of Ovid's interface as a platform for MLA. A new interface is being planned which may address the known problems. Even so some concerns remain about how well the interface meets the needs of humanities users as well as science users, Ovid's primary clientele. Rob is copying folks at CDL on his discussions with Ovid. The group agreed that it would be worthwhile to continue to review the effectiveness of the current vendor for MLA during the next year. Vendor issue reports are maintained by CDL.

MLA is planning a retrospective indexing project. Questions were raised about indexing practices and record content. Other bibliographer groups have invited vendors to meet with them and it was suggested that our group might arrange to do so with MLA. Rob will see if a meeting with Barbara Chen can be arranged for ALA's midwinter conference in San Diego.

6) Melvyl-T. UC Music librarians and the UCB humanities librarian's council have expressed concern about the way the new Melvyl handles uniform titles. Since this is an area of concern in literature studies as well, Frank will send a letter to SOPAG expressing our support for the proposed enhancements.

7) Anglophone project/Commonwealth literature. CDC is polling the bibliographer groups to find out which groups have last-copy agreements and any other agreements that might lend themselves to a future shared print collection. Rob reviewed the assignments for various campuses based on previous years minutes. They are as follows:

UCB - India, East & South Africa

UCD - Caribbean, New Zealand, Wales, and Scotland

UCI - Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand

UCLA - Ireland, Southern/Mid/North Africa

UCR - Ireland

UCSD - New Zealand, Caribbean, Pacific Islands

UCSB - Canada

UCSC - Philippines

The group will review CDC's specific questions via email once they are made available. At our next meeting we will plan to talk about tools for identifying this material.

8) EEBO/TCP - Cecily Johns gave an overview on the status of this including memberships. She advised the group to make a strong recommendation to JSC if we are interested in joining.

9) JSC list - The group discussed and ranked a list of databases for submission to JSC when they put out their annual survey request. We came up with the following list, ranked in order of preference:

20th Century American Drama (ProQuest)

ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale)

Empire Online (Adam Matthew)

EEBO-TCP (University of Michigan)

Black Thought and Culture (Alexander Street)

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries (Alexander Street)

Women Writers Online (Brown University)

Times Literary Supplement, Centenary Archive (Gale/TLS)

Frank will submit the list to JSC when their survey request comes out.

10) Yankee GobiTween service - Rob suggested that members consider implementing GobiTween which allows members of a consortia to see what decisions other members have made about approval items. Many members were interested. Rob will follow up with Yankee regarding implementing the consortial view.

11) Paper Quality - Rob raised a concern that the quality of paper being used by British publishers, in particular Faber and Faber, is of inferior quality. He will draft a letter to the publisher expressing UC-wide concern which he will circulate to the group with a copy to the UC Preservation Advisory Group.

12) Last copy journal project - In light of print cancellations being undertaken in response to the availability of online packages like JSTOR and Project Muse, Michaelyn raised the issue of the need for archival last copies of print journals. This in turn led to a discussion about missing content from titles included in packages like Project Muse. Diana had several examples of titles where critical content was not included in publications that should be available cover to cover. In order to facilitate a last copy project we should establish a list of core titles. As a first step Diana start a spreadsheet of core titles using Project Muse titles and the University of Illinois English literature journal list as a basis for future discussion.

Respectfully submitted, Frank Gravier (UCSC)

CAMPUS REPORTS

UCB - $650,000 in serials have been cut, a list of titles is available from Michaelyn. 50% of the cut was done with Kluwer, Muse titles. Some concerns were raised regarding publisher sustainability with Muse cancellations. A website describing the cuts is available on UCB's site. A "hard freeze" on hiring is in effect, however positions for Judaism, Government Publications and Data Services librarians are being recruited.

[reported by Michaelyn Burnette]

UCD

UCD Campus Report, June 2003

UC Literature Bibliographers

Budget: Because of a still-new Integrated Library System (Ex Libris), our

accounting system doesn't work very well yet (i.e. the generation of

reports is pretty much non-existent). Briefly, we are cutting print

versions of journals for which we have electronic equivalents, and are

beginning to go through our reference continuations. The library's policy

and cancellation lists are online at

http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/info/jrnltrans/ , though it makes for pretty

discouraging reading. Many faculty are articulating quite forcefully

their view that electronic and print versions are not equivalent and that

they prefer print in many ways. The review period just ended, and in H/SS

we had requests to save 189 journals. For literature, the vast majority

of these requests involved Project Muse journals.

Currently, librarian and staff positions are being protected, though as

retirements and the like occur it's unclear what will happen (or not).

Restructuring: The library is trying to figure out how to cope with a

growing year-round student population while spending less money. One

project is "rethinking reference." This got off to a rough start when it

was announced that we would merge our Government Information, Biology and

Humanities/Social Sciences reference desks into a single site--without

significant remodeling or relocation of our reference collection(s). The

deal was undone and we are now apparently planning to revise schedules and

adjust the structure of our evening/weekend reference hours. Training for

all involved is allegedly on the way.

Staff: The library is in the process of hiring a new Instruction

Librarian and a Head of Systems. New Hires include an Electronic Serials

Cataloger, Sarah John.

Websites: The library's web page has been redesigned. The best feature

is the list of "subject guides." These guides draw from a cold fusion

database so that it's relatively easy to maintain records and URLs. But

the best part about it is that bibliographers decide what databases or web

pages, etc. should appear under their subjects, including their own

individualized pages:

http://libcf.ucdavis.edu/subjects/

Major Purchases:

*International Medieval Bibliography (online)

*several Pickering & Chatto print sets (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century

Labouring-Class Poets, English Witchcraft, Varieties of Female Gothic,

Literature & Science, Conduct Literature for Women (2nd set), Eighteenth-

Century British Erotica)

Respectfully submitted in the "dry" 105 degree heat of Davis,

Rafaela Castro (American/Comparative Literature) & Diana King (English

Literatures)

Shields Library

University of California, Davis

UCI

Campus News

English and Comp Lit parting ways: this is the big recent news from UCI. Apparently the tension between the two camps led to a faculty vote and now we will have two departments where there was once only one. I doubt this will change my spending habits for the English department, but it may open up new avenues of collection development for the Comp Lit program.

International Center for Writing and Translation: This center is now a year old and I am now collecting heavily in works dealing with translation theory. The director of this center is Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a Kenyan activist, playwright, and novelist who teaches African literature on campus and is very interested in having the library purchase literary works in translation.

Literary Journalism: a new emphasis for the English department. I'm beginning to purchase materials in this area as well.

Library News

New AUL for collections. As you may know, Lorelei Tanji was hired/promoted to AUL for collections last year. She was formerly the head of the collections department. Currently, I know of no plans to hire a head of collections.

Space Planning & Compact Shelving: In the Main Library, we are installing compact shelving units in the basement. When finished, nearly the entire floor will be filled with compact shelves. Other plans are to move reference to the second floor (the entrance floor) from the first floor. Lots of assessment and debate are underway to see how this space will be configured.

Journals: Not too many new journals or magazines to report. I did subscribe to The Shandean and the backlog. I do not think we will be undergoing any serials cancellation project. Right now, we have been focusing on duplicate formats to send to SRLF.

Money -- no cuts last year, don't know about this upcoming year.

Big Purchases

IMB -- International Medieval Bibliography Online

IBZ & IBR -- English translations - International Bibliography of Periodical Literature and International Bibliography of Book Reviews

Middle English Compendium

[submitted by John Novak, UCI]

UCR

UCR Campus Report

June 2003

PERSONNEL

In the last six months the personnel landscape has changed significantly. Distinguished Librarian Dick Vierich, at UCR for over 30 years, a WW II vet, and LAUC Parliamentarian for several years, retired. However, as emeritus, he sometimes comes to work on special projects, which he never had time to do when working.

Two new science librarians have been hired and one Rivera reference librarian has been hired. Two AULs retired: Peter Briscoe and Venita Jorgensen. With John Tanno's departure for UC Davis slightly earlier, there was only one AUL left, David Rios, who has only been at UCR for a little over two years. Thus senior administration is nearly non-existent. There was no one to do personnel, academic or support staff; no AUL for Technical Services; no AUL for Collections; nor any AUL for Rivera Public Services. Two staff positions within Library Administration were vacated. BI was only possible by hiring a bevy of part time, substitute reference librarians. In the last 18 months we have lost 8 librarians and gained 4. (There are only 19 librarians with full assignments within all UCR libraries plus 3 who work in functions not related to the library operation, one assigned full time to Infomine, and 2 who are assigned part time to Infomine.)

CHANGES

In the midst of less than bare bones staffing, the new UL has decided to do major reorganization and has appointed three Interim positions from within the 19 positions while she decides the final administrative structure and departmental structure. There is an Interim AUL for Technical Services and Budget Analyst; an AUL for Public Access Services and Special Projects (all libraries) and an Interim Head of Collection Development. (Notice that collections has no AUL and thus no voice in policy making or in budgeting.) Special Collections, which was formerly part of the Collections Division, now reports directly to the UL. Preservation, which also used to be part of the Collections Division, is somewhere in limbo.)

Other changes include the way collection development will be done. I cannot report on this fully since not a single bibliographer has been consulted. As I understand it through heresy, rumor and off hand remarks (and this may be partly apocryphal or could change by the UCR report six months hence) there will be coordinating bibliographers and selectors; but what their relationship to each other will be or what the evaluative function for peer review will be is not clear. Approval plans have apparently been changed but whether massively or in small ways none of us in collection development knows.

BUDGET

The faculty hue and cry to the new Chancellor about the massive under funding of the library was received positively. Chancellor Cordova gave the library a large lump sum this fiscal year which the new UL held until she knew just how much she might have to give back. Some might have had to be used for call backs to campus administration if UCOP asked for more cuts.

Eventually the UL was free to utilize the money. She bought new computers for technical services staff -- necessary to implement the new millennium component of Innopac. We have not been told what else it was used for except that she gave a sizable amount to collections. The members of the current collection development organization came up with $450,000 of high priority items in all formats - excluding serials or even outright purchase of any databases which required yearly maintenance fees. We met and together whittled it down to the $150,000 dollars the Interim Head of Collection Development said we had to spend. Later we were given more than triple that figure by the UL, but the Interim Head said it was going for prepays for the next fiscal year and that even those specific titles we identified would not be ordered until next fiscal year. Bibliographers were given no reason. Since the money is there, it makes it awkward to explain to faculty why they have to wait.

The new UL has said she will make sure there are no serial cuts at least through the coming fiscal year. This will undoubtedly be possible since the Chancellor has promised the library a sizable amount of money for each new FTE in all future years. Let's hope with the state's budget crisis, she can hold that promise.

[submitted by Nancy Koller]

UCLA

UCLA Report

June 2003

Where to begin...

Personnel

Current director of the Queens Public Library and former California

State Librarian Gary Strong will join UCLA on September 1 as the new

University Librarian. During one of Gary's visits to campus he met with

each of the divisional AULs and the department heads who report to

them. This was an opportunity to give a brief presentation on the

organization and mission of each department. He seemed quite

interested in the work the Collection Management Department does to

build and maintain the YRL collections. I was gratified (and relieved)

to hear him articulate the importance of insuring the continued

viability and visibility of these collections.

A "soft" freeze announced soon after completion of the interviews to

fill the Humanities Bibliographer position quickly hardened as the

campus and the library got a clearer picture of the extent of the

budget crisis (see below). Consequently, we were unable to fill that

position. Fortunately, due to a fortuitous combination of factors, we

were able to hire a new Southeast Asian Studies Bibliographer/Cataloger.

Budget

No news turned out to be bad news for UCLA. Along with Berkeley, it

looks as though we will be bearing the brunt of the current fiscal

crisis. For the first time (at least in my fading memory), the

collections budget is slated to take a significant hit. We have just

finished the first stage of a major serials cancellation project

designed to reduce duplication, whether in format (print and

electronic) or multiple campus subscriptions. All Elsevier and most

Project Muse titles are listed.

We developed a website for faculty that included both specific

information about the situation at the UCLA Library and more general

data on inflation factors and the cost of materials. The site also

contained the list of serials proposed for cancellation with an easy

feedback mechanism so that faculty could comment directly to a selector

about a specific title. To date we have received 120 responses from

faculty on the 1462 titles on the list.

While serials cancellations will go a long way towards helping us cope

with the crisis, they are not sufficient. Bibliographers will be even

more judicious in their selection of monographs and since the Catalog

Department is seriously short-staffed, we are people to be even more

selective when considering accepting gifts and other free materials.

Collection Development

Not all that much out of the ordinary to report on the collections

front. We acquired:

Colonial Discourses, series 2: Imperial Adventures (Adam Matthew)

Masculinity, 1560-1918: Men Defining Men and Gentlemen, part 2 (Adam

Matthew)

Files of the Communist Party of the USA in the Comintern Archives (IDC)

Gutenberg-e (and just renewed for 2003-2004)

We currently have a trial of Adam Matthew's Empire Online

New OPAC

The decision has been made but as far as I know it is not public yet.

I will, however, consider bribes.

Academics

Women Studies is continuing to discuss departmentalization. With a

large number of majors and a growing Ph.D. program, it has becoming

increasingly difficult to maintain the high activity level without the

perks and "legitimacy" conferred by departmental status.

The Center for the Study of Women is searching for a new director. The

budget cuts have made the task more difficult as the top candidates

expect (and deserve) a level of support for the Center which may be

hard to achieve in the current economic environment. Members of the

advisory committees for both the Center and the Women's Studies Program

will be meeting with the Dean of Social Sciences later this month to

present the case for enhanced funding.

I have been working with the Library's eScholarship Resources liaison

to develop a presentation for the History Department. After a failed

attempt to have them come to us, we have decided to offer a session in

conjunction with a department meeting in early fall.

I think that's it for now.

Ellen

[submitted by Ellen Broidy]

UCSB

UCSB Campus Report

UC Literature Bibliographers

Annual meeting June 4, 2003. UCSB.

BUDGET

We are moving cautiously and reminding our faculty that the budget is

tight. However, we did come out a bit ahead this year because we had some

funds earmarked for replacement that we were allowed to use for big-ticket,

one-time purchases back in early spring.

We also had money that we had expected to lose in a mid-year take-back that

never happened; this was spent on one-time encumbered resources such as

furniture, carpeting, and collections-related prepays.

There will be no new or supplemental money for collection fund allocations.

In past years we've had carryover money, which this year we were asked to

spend right away so that we didn't appear to be fiscally irresponsible when

a huge surplus showed at the end of the fiscal year. Thus, we increased

our rate of spending to eliminate or substantially reduce any carryover

money and have all funds zeroed out by year's end. March 31 was the

deadline to order anything at all and it has been strictly enforced.

COLLECTIONS

Serials Format Review

We reviewed titles in any journal packages that would allow us to save 25%

or more by canceling the print.

Sarah Pritchard wrote very delicately worded description that went out to

campus in early spring (http://www.library.ucsb.edu/format/). After

bibliographers reviewed the list of journal titles, faculty members were

encouraged to give feedback and recommendations for those that they would

like to see kept in print. The response was small and very reasonable:

subscriptions for just 51 out of 667 journals will be kept in print

format. We will continue to use this system to review additional journal

packages annually.

Vendors in this go-round included: Academic, AIP, Blackwell, Cambridge,

Elsevier, MIT,

National Research Council of Canada, Project Muse

Major Purchases

The rush to acquire one-time, big-ticket items before the acquisitions

freeze on March 31 became something of a buying frenzy. I was concerned

about becoming indiscriminate ("Yes! I'll take everything you've got,

Pickering and Chatto!") and ended up making several lists to help me

prioritize. I also wrote to the English faculty and graduate students

asking for recommendations, and was able to buy everything that they

requested. Some examples:

-The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo. multi-volume set by Brepols

Publishers

-Pickering & Chatto items, including British Future Fiction, Conduct

Literature for Women, 1640-1710

Mary Shelley's Literary Lives

-The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry (CD-Rom)

-Women's Language and Experience, 1500-1940, pts. 1-2 (microfilm)

Santa Barbara is the only campus to have bought into the EEBO-TCP

(http://www.lib.umich.edu/eebo/proj_stat/ps_partners.html). I believe this

is on our agenda.

PERSONNEL

Personnel new hires

Head of Access Services. Eric Forte was recruited from the ranks at UCSB

where he was

the Reference Coordinator and collection manager for Economics. He will

continue to manage the econ. collection.

AUL for Technical Services. Gail McClenney's first few months here

coincided with our mad rush

to spend our collection budgets before March 31. She has been tremendous.

Latin American & Iberian Studies Librarian Anne Barnhart arrived November

1st 2002 from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. In addition to her LAIS

duties, Anne has taken on the Religious Studies collection.

Library Fellow Liza Posas arrived in January and is managing the

linguistics and Native

American collections. She is also helping Cecily Johns with the dramatic

arts collection. Liza

succeeds Carmelita Pickett who left in May to become African American

Studies and Special

Collections librarian at Texas A&M.

Serials Cataloguer Elaine McCracken joined us in October 2002. She was

most recently a

reference librarian for a documents delivery service.

Arts Librarian Ellen Kempf will begin June 16 2003.

**History Librarian We interviewed five candidates for this position, none

of whom quite fit

what we are after. There was some concern that the wording in the job

advertisement put too

much emphasis on having a subject specialty; we found that the

library-related skills for most candidates were lacking. After going back

to our short list and interviewing two more candidates, we have asked to

have the job posted again.

**Head of Cataloging The initial search did not produce a satisfactory

pool. The search has been put on hold and will be extended.

New Research Institutes

The American Cultures Center, which was established last year and is being

facilitated by the English Department, has changed its name to American

Cultures and Global Contexts Center (http://acc.english.ucsb.edu/). The

Center includes a seminar room and a research conference room with a small

reference library. I have consulted very informally with the graduate

student in charge of maintaining the Center and its library.

The English Dept. currently has 12 Americanists among the faculty, with

plans for new hires this year and next.

The Film Studies Department PhD program has been approved at UCSB and is

being discussed at the Regents' level. A graduate program in film and

television translates to a lot of acquisitions work for Patrick Dawson, our

film studies librarian, and may affect of number of other humanities

collections as well.

Summer Sessions

UCSB is again offering two sessions of summer school, from June 23 through

September 12. This has a definite impact on those of us who teach library

skills classes, so some of us will be team-teaching in order to still get

away for a summer vacation.

LIBRARY NEWS

New Building

Definitely our biggest news. The architects have been chosen (Hardy

Holzman Pfeiffer & Associates) and the Detailed Project Program (DPP) is

being written. The 'new building' at this point may be either a separate

structure or, more likely, a form of wrap-around addition to the existing

library. The current building will undergo extensive remodeling and

renovation.

Space Planning

Ongoing. We have done major weeding and reclassifying in the Z's, and will

be significantly changing the layout of the Science and Engineering Library

on the 2nd floor. In the spring we added new tables with power and open

port access on the 4th floor, and will be installing compact shelving in

the Gov't Information Center.

Early this summer we will merge the Information and Reference Desks on the

1st floor.

Davidson Library 50 years old. A nice web retrospective at

http://history.library.ucsb.edu/.

Jane Faulkner

UCSB Collection Manager, Literatures in English

June 2003

UCSC

Campus Report - UCSC

Budget - Like everyone else we are still waiting to see the outcome

of the state budget crisis. For FY02 the campus spread the State cut

to library materials across the campus-wide budget, exempted the

collections portion of the library's budget from the campus budget

cut and made permanent augmentations of close to $300,000 to the

collections budget. Given the period of intense growth underway at

UCSC the library is extremely grateful to the campus for this support.

As the library faces future budget cuts administration is committed

to protecting staff and the collections budget. As a result we are

looking at a period of belt-tightening in our supplies and equipment

budget and hoping to take advantage of salary savings from

retirements and other departures to see us through the next fiscal

year.

Personnel - On July 1 University Librarian Allan Dyson is retiring

after 24 years of service at UCSC. A recruitment is underway for a

new UL.

Rita Bottoms, Special Collections Librarian, has retired from UCSC

after 37 years of service.

A new section has been established, Special Collections and Archives

which will be headed up by Christine Bunting. Christine will also

continue as the Head of Collection Planning until the new University

Librarian has the opportunity to appoint her replacement.

Space issues - With the passage of Prop. 47 funds have become

available to proceed with plans for the McHenry Library addition.

The completion date is scheduled for 2009.

Miscellany - The library is the recipient of a collection of

correspondence from Raymond Carver to UCSC Professor of Education and

Creative Writing David Swanger. The correspondence is from the

period 1977 to 1984, just about the time Carver was becoming

nationally recognized as an innovative short story writer.

The library has also recently received a grant from the Heinlein

Foundation which will provide for organization of the Robert Heinlein

Archive housed in our Special Collections department.

[submitted by Frank Gravier]

UCSD

Budget news is o.k. so far. A 6.5% serials cancellation was undertaken and mostly achieved through cancellation of the print versions of electronically available journals. The book budget remains stable. There is no hiring freeze, in fact staff is growing. Special funding opportunities have been postponed. In November Rob was appointed curator of UCSD's Archive for New Poetry. UCSD is undertaking a $1,000,000,000 capital campaign, and Rob is optimistic of support for the poetry collections. The goal is to develop a comprehensive collection of American poetry. Eileen Myles is the new director of the writing program.

[reported by Rob Melton]