Here are the final minutes, including all changes and additions rec'd to date.
Yrs, Margaret
 

UC English & American Literature Bibliographers Group
Meeting
May 24 1999, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Shields Library, UC Davis

BRIEF MINUTES

Present:  Michaelyn Burnette (B), Rafaela Castro/Nancy
Kushigian (D), Cathy Palmer (I), Reinhart Sonnenburg (SD),
Margaret Gordon (SC), Clint Howard (CDC liaison).

Absent:  Ray Soto (L), Nancy Koller (R), (SB).

1.  Sonnenburg opened the meeting by reviewing the agenda and
adding the following topics for possible discussion:
approval plans, MELVYL problems, MLA vs. ABELL.  Gordon
volunteered to serve as recorder.  Burnette volunteered to
verify the name of the SB member and forward needed
information to Gordon to update the UCLITBIBS reflector.
Kushigian was asked and agreed to succeed Sonnenburg as
Convenor, effective immediately following the meeting.  Her
willingness was much appreciated.

- Both the NRLF and SRLF are currently accepting fewer
volumes than anticipated:  the former, because of deferral of
unit III;  the latter, because of problems implementing ORION
II.  This will exacerbate the storage problem.

- There is pressure to integrate undergraduate collections
into research collections, partly because of the increasing
availability of duplicate full-text collections via databases
such as MAGS and Academic Universe.

- All but UCSC reported a noticeable drop in Reference Desk
activity, presumably caused by increasing use of digital
resources.

Campus reports:

a.  UCB.
b.. UCD.
c.  UCI. (Palmer)

"A list of serials subscriptions requested by UCI's Arts and Humanities
Bibliographers is available at:

  http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~ahsroad/the%20road%20to%20ahs1.html#artsand

The journals have not yet been ordered.

We have not had to cancel any journals in 98/99.

We are running out of room in our Main Library and there are no plans to
build or otherwise provide additional space.

Our new University Librarian submitted a very ambitious budget request to
the campus in March.  It includes funds for both collections and staff.

UCI is interviewing for two vacant positions--Head of Cataloging and
Engineering and Computer Science Librarian."

d.  UCLA.
e.  UCR.
f.  UCSD.  (Sonnenburg)

"The budget situation is good this year and no cancellation projects are looming.
American literature benefited from a one-time infusion of  $ 10,000 (which was
sorely needed).

I managed to subscribe to a handful of literary journals that figured
prominently in recent Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Awards.

Space issues are being addressed by a Task Force (of which I am co-chair)
charged with eliminating our local storage facility ("Annex") within the next
5-6 years. The early phase of this project will be a much needed "Spring
cleaning;" as we move along, bibliographers will have to make decisions about
weeding, transferring to SRLF, or recalling items to our regular stacks.

Another Task Force in which I actively participated was charged with examining
the services we provide to  our undergraduates. One major outcome was the
phasing out of our traditional  Undergraduate Library. It is likely to be
replaced by a heavily computer-oriented facility, probably with a very limited
reference collection. Details are still being worked on. The circulating
collection of UGL (which used to be advertised as "a 40,000 volume book and 160
subscription periodical collection focussed on supporting and supplementing
course reserves and the classroom generated information and research needs of
first and second year students") will be integrated into the respective
libraries (Social Sciences & Humanities; Science & Engineering; BioMed).  The
task force felt, and our library administration ultimately agreed, that it no
longer made sense to maintain an undergraduate library in a location that was
remote from classroom buildings and was being increasingly ignored by its
intended clientele. In terms of collection development, I believe that this
decision will make for less unnecessary duplication of resources, and will
actually allow us to strengthen our holdings in popular fiction etc."

g.  UCSB.

h.  UCSC.  Gordon reported that UCSC received $337,000 in
one-time funding, about half of which was carried over for
next year, as well as $143,000 in permanent funding, $40,000
of which was allocated to a combined humanities/arts
selectors group.  The $40,000 was divided among new
monographic series (with an emphasis on Cambridge), new
serials (87 titles were added, filled, or put on an ongoing
budget line - see list to follow), and historically
underfunded discretionary allocations (e.g., film and video,
music CDs).  The faculty startup program continues to provide
$6000 for each new humanities appointment.  Library subject
year in discretionary income.  Continuing budget problems
include:  continued and expanded CDL funding, which has no
permanent budget-line;  on-site storage (titles published
before 1994 and with no circulation since 1994 are at risk);
continued expansion of new graduate programs, e.g., in
Engineering, Politics, Philosophy, and American Studies,
without concomitant library support.

3.  CDL issues.  Howard reported on the results of the
selector group surveys and the criteria that were used for
selection:  no CD-ROMs, a focus on numbers of people served,
a bias toward "non-predatory" publishers, an emphasis on
tools such as PCI that add to the research value of UC
library collections.  Literary sources did quite well, partly
because unexpected STIC difficulties opened a small funding
window.  The expected STM-industry partnerships have not
materialized.  CDL negotiating and budgetary resources remain
limited.  This opens up opportunities for independent action
by selector groups.  The future emphasis will be on
incremental consortial contracts, allowing for some campuses
to partner while others opt out, and also on obtaining
extended offers (18 months+), that allow sufficient time for
partnering.

The group reaffirmed its support for CDL's eventual
acquisition of the following very expensive resources:  Early
English Books (perhaps a shared port might be adequate),
improved MLA access.  It was agreed that OED was important,
but overpriced as marketed by Oxford UP;  other cheaper
interfaces are preferred.  Howard promoted the American and
English Literary Periodical Indexes, as another way to
increase the use of existing UC holdings.  UCB, UCD, and UCLA
are ready to pay the $27,000 price for the former, with a 25%
discount available, if a 4th campus signs up.

It was confirmed that the group could move ahead
independently on less expensive databases.  These were
identified as high priority and assigned for investigation as
follows:

- MEC (Kushigian)
 

[Update from NK: "Their last offer to us consisted of a system wide
(10 campus) offer of 5400/year.  That's about a 35% discount.If all
campuses do not choose to subscribe, there is an offer of 15%
discount for a group of 5-10 campuses.  That would come to (about)
650/campus.  I'm assuming we would all use the same license and that
payment and delivery would be handled by individual campuses."]

- Poole's Index (Kushigian)

[Update from NK: "it seems for now that the figures we should use to figure out what
a subscription would cost are:

2495/annum for level one and level 2 research libraries
1995/annum for doc1 and doc2 large libraries

OR $.15 per FTE per annum.

We could count on subtracting a certain "group discount" from this amount,
which would probably depend on who signs on....

Information on Poole's Index from Paratext is available on their website
(www.poolesplus.net).  From there, you may sign your campus up for a trial
run."]

- Victorian Database (Sonnenburg)
- Wellesley Index
- British Parliamentary Papers (Howard)
- Cambridge e-texts:  Chaucer, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary.

Academic Universe has been acquired by all campuses except
Riverside and Santa Cruz.  Although there are numerous
implementation problems, AU is heavily used and its impact on
library use has been transformative.  Howard noted that
although AU costs Davis $30,000/yr., he expects the cost per
use to be extremely reasonable.

Howard discussed progress on digitizing texts.  Standards
have been established.  Members were alerted to investigate
what campus archives of potential literary value had been
selected for the OAC;  for example, UCSC's Patchen archive.
Some CDL funding is available for these projects.  Gordon
suggested that members also explore grant funding - for
example, she is applying for a foundation grant to scan

2.  Campus round-robin.  Each member gave a campus update on
the state of the collection budget, new serials and major
purchases, cancellation projects, and other relevant news.
Sonnenburg asked each member to post a list of new serials
and major acquisitions to the UCLITBIBS reflector.  The
following general trends emerged from the discussion:

- The budgetary situation has improved for all, with no major
new cancellation projects in progress, although there was
wide variation in the amount of one-time collections funding
each library received and the way it was distributed at the
bibliographer level.

- Future collections health - and especially maintenance and
expansion of CDL and campus-based electronic resources -
depends on the continuation of enriched state support, either
through additional one-time funding or a permanent increase
to base.

-- Davis' continuing investment in timely and comprehensive
acquisition of British humanities monographs, through its
Blackwell plan, is unique in the north and a major benefit to
the entire UC system.

- The growth of web-based OP book services has revolutionized
OP searching and made retrospective collection development
more feasible and economical, even for Special Collections.

- There is a growing dearth of on-site storage, with
disproportionate impact on humanities study, which depends,
especially for undergraduates, on convenient monographic
browsing over a 20+ year publication span.  Local facilities
are at capacity at:  UCI, UCSD (300k v. in local storage),
UCSC.  UCOP's misperception that "it's all on disk" does an
especial disservice to literary study.  Howard described
Lucier's strategy to break the UCOP log-jam on new library
construction by presenting an overall space plan for UC
libraries, which would characterize and quantify what's
likely to be digital in the near future - i.e., large
scientific publishers, responsible for only about 10% of UC
library acquisitions.  It was agreed that diminishing local
monograph collections, are a major impediment to effective
literature collection development for undergraduates.

UCSC's DeCou lantern slide collection.  Howard noted that the
ultimate answer is to incorporate digitization into ongoing
library preservation operations.  Howard suggested that the
group consider identifying a smaller project than the
Kohler/Eaton projects on our list, perhaps a subset.  He also
asked that we each survey appropriate projects on our campus.

4.  Future activities.

a.  Kushigian volunteered to create a web site for our group
and asked us to email her relevant documents for posting:
previous minutes (recorders), CDL survey (Gordon), new
journal lists (all).

b.  Most of us seem to be following at least partially our
agreement to focus commonwealth collection development in the
assigned geographic areas.  It was agreed that this model
should also be used in the future for dividing up
responsibility for genre fiction, including mysteries,
science fiction, romances, and children's literature.  Davis
agreed to continue its focus on mysteries, especially gay and
women's mysteries, and on African American romance.  UCSC
focuses on cyberpunk and science fiction with a gay or
alternative gender theme and also has a special collection in
Multicultural Children's Literature.  Genre fiction will be a
major agenda item at our next meeting.

c.  The next meeting was scheduled for Monday, October 23, at
Santa Cruz, to be hosted by Gordon.

Minutes recorded by M. Gordon