Library Committee

Voting members present: Marit Bovbjerg, Kate Kerish, Janet Nishihara, Melissa Santala, Tim Zuehlsdorff
Voting members absent: Bradley Boovy, Erica Fleischman, Carolyn Fonyo, Hua-yu Li
Ex-Officio members present: Anne-Marie Deitering – OSU Libraries

Housekeeping: Identification of a Meeting Secretary

• Melissa Santala and Marit Bovbjerg will share the task.

Review of Faculty Membership for AY 22-23 and Consideration of Chair Recommendations

• Members with term ending 2022: Carolyn Fonyo, Kate Kerish, Melissa Santala
• Continuing members: Bradley Boovy, Marit Bovbjerg, Erica Fleishman, Hua-yu Li, Janet Nishihara, Tim Zuehlsdorff
• Chair requested recommendations for Library Committee (LC) members and chair: Marit Bovbjerg volunteered, but offered to step aside if anyone else wants the job, as she’s done it before.

Update from Chair Regarding Library Committee Presentation to the Faculty Senate

• Subcommittee: Marit Bovbjerg, Melissa Santala, Tim Zuehlsdorff
• The sub-committee was to identify top issues concerning the LC (tight budget and the rising costs of journal subscriptions) and present them to the Faculty Senate (FS) to gain support broader faculty support for the Open and Sustainable Scholarly Communication (OSSC) effort.
• Update: after the Dean of Library’s presentation to the FS on March 10 (attended by Melissa Santala) the subcommittee attended the March 31 OSSC advisory committee meeting and it was agreed that the FS was already very supportive of the OSSC effort and that an LC presentation would be redundant.
• The sub-committee will be dormant unless there is a major shift in the situation.

Updates from the Dean of the Library – Anne-Marie Deitering

• Budget update: initial allocation was expected at this time, but has not come through yet. They asked to keep their carry forward from unfilled positions (Director of Special Collections and Archive Research Center (SCARC) and two associate dean positions) and for $500,000 of bridge funding, but will still need to cut about $1.5 million from collections (~ 25% cut). They also asked for a new records management position. The new position will be an archives expert, meant to do outreach with colleges to encourage people to destroy unnecessary records and to educate people about their records retention responsibilities. This will protect the university from risks in the event of a data breach, and save time and labor in compliance with public records requests. OSU Libraries and Press (OSULP) intends to reduce collection spending by 0.5 -1 m dollars in FY23 through negotiations.
• Elsevier and other publisher negotiations: OSU is negotiating with University of Oregon (UO) and Portland State University in person at UO. Elsevier is coming into meetings differently (dressing down). (Details of initial negotiating position shared with the LC but will not be included here, since the minutes are public). The OSU library will no longer sign NDAs to keep process transparent. OSULP will be negotiating using the using principles available here:
  • https://library.oregonstate.edu/current-negotiations
  • https://guides.library.oregonstate.edu/c.php?g=1081992&p=7886157
• FS will vote on resolution next month on OSSC negotiating principles. The library staff would like this to cover all publishers, not just Elsevier. There has been a lot of support for the OSSC from FS and from every department Anne-Marie Deitering has visited. She plans to visit every school in COE and Public Health leadership team. Open & Sustainable Scholarly Communication Advisory Group (OSSCAG) faculty advisory members will disband since they have been on for three years.
• Open and interim positions: Kerri Anne Goergen-Doll has been interim associate dean for almost two years without back filling her previous positions. Anne-Marie Deitering noted that she’s been amazing in this position. Anne-Marie Deitering must come to a decision soon about whether to hired two associate deans or combine them into a single position.
• Library spaces (coming out of the pandemic)
  • The 6^th floor now houses graduate student services (called the Graduate Commons). It includes workshop spaces, spaces for Zoom interviews and conference presentations, a student writing center. Offices are set aside for students close to their defense, but their use needs to be reviewed. Some students that reserve the space don’t use it. The students get booted after 8 weeks of no use, but the library is considering exploring different models for reserving these spaces.
  • The 1^st floor has been re-organized. Offsite storage got moved from campus to a larger space on Research Way. Many old STEM journals and monographs from the 1^st floor were to offsite storage. The compact shelving area is still off limits as it is getting renovated, but the 1^st floor changes should complete by fall.
  • 2^nd Floor: The Learning Commons needs a refresh, we are starting to think about that space.
  • Donor gave money to maintain a permanent outdoor space in front of the Valley Library. For practical reasons this will likely be maintained for three-season use.
  • Student usage of library spaces has not come back to pre-COVID number yet. Library staff are considering first year outreach or another campaign to do bring students back as students may have lost (or never built) the habit of using the library.
• Open Access Policy from 2013 was reviewed. The language is gendered needs updating.

Questions and Responses from the Library Committee Members to Anne-Marie Deitering’s Update

• Marit Bovbjerg: Noted that masking policy is double edged when it comes to use of indoor spaces. Previously, mandatory masking prevented some people from going into spaces for extended periods of time (e.g., to study in the library), but now lack of masks prevents other people from wanting to use indoor spaces. Anne-Marie Deitering responded that it appears similar in the library. They considered creating a masked zone in the library. The idea was tabled, because the space is too open, making a masked zone impractical.
• Marit Bovbjerg liked the idea of updating the language in the 2013 Open Access Policy. She volunteered to take the lead on the changes, since she worked on the original document and will be on the LC next year.
• Janet Nishihara asked status of special collections search. Anne-Marie Deitering responded that announcements for job talks for four candidates are forthcoming. The committee is excited about the candidates. Expect to announce the new hire by the end of the May.

OSU Libraries & Press is Looking for a Director of Acquisitions

• There was a Repository Librarian search, but the position was filled by reassigning duties within the organization.