Library Committee

The meeting convened at 10:00 AM in 109 Gilkey.

Voting members present: Richmond Barbour, Diana Fisher, Dylan Keon, Robin Pappas, Melissa Santala, student representatives Colleen Boardman (grad) and Danielle Palatin (undergrad),
Ex-officio members present: University Libraries – Faye Chadwell
Guests: Library staff: Anne Marie Deitering, Kerri Goergen-Doll, Cheryl Middleton, Michaela Willi-Hooper

Early English Books Online (EEBO) Acquisition

Barbour opened the meeting with congratulations to Goergen-Doll and the other librarians for their acquisition of a database of major importance to scholars in the humanities: Early English Books Online (EEBO). This invaluable resource provides, in full digital facsimile, the entire 125,000 volumes listed in the Short Title Catalog of Books Printed in England between the 1470s and 1700. Its availability at OSU constitutes a clear incentive to faculty recruitment and retention and provides a great resource for students, with pedagogical implications yet to be explored. Goergen-Doll explained that she was able to negotiate an affordable arrangement with EEBO that enables its retention without substantial annual payments; she also described some of the meta-data possibilities of the resource, which provides ways to exploit the digital medium beyond the reading of facsimile pages of text.

Petition to Reinstate Library Research Travel Grants

The next item of business was the committee’s bid to persuade the provost to reinstate the Library Research Travel Grant (LRTG) program funded by his office. At the last meeting, Chadwell had supplied the group with a draft of the FSLC’s letter and data in support of a failed initiative to persuade then-Provost Randhawa to increase the annual allotment from $10,000 to $20,000. Not only did that 2011 proposal fall on deaf ears, but in 2013, Randhawa cancelled the program altogether. Now that the new provost, Edward Feser, has taken charge and is pondering forthcoming budgets, the committee believes it timely, notwithstanding the financial challenges ahead for OSU, to propose the restitution of a program that, over the 20+ years of its existence, paid dividends far beyond the sums expended on faculty research. Working from the FSLC’s 2011 petition, Santala has drafted a new letter of appeal; she and Barbour will revise it for submission within a few days to Provost Feser, Senior Vice Provost Capalbo, and Vice President for Research Sagers. The amount of $20,000 in funds dedicated annually to LRTGs will be requested.

Update on Potential Library Budget Cuts

By Chadwell’s report, Valley Library faculty are the lowest paid in Oregon. This concern sharpens the challenge of implementing the cuts that the university’s budget will require. She reported that spending on collections for 2018 had been projected to increase by some $400,000 to $5.8 million, yet overall cuts of 2% ($312,000) to 4% ($624,000) loom. She will implement these cuts by drawing down on collections, supplies & services, and holding faculty and staff positions open. The problem looks manageable for 2018, but she sees it as a high priority to hire a STEM outreach librarian. Given the inflation built into serial collections, 2019 does not look good.   

Potential Changes to Workflow for OSU’s Open Access (OA) Policy

Willi-Hooper reported that the present workflow for OA has been effective but labor-intensive. Staff retirements, the forthcoming migration to ScholarsArchive@OSU, and opportunities for further automation to monitor copyright liability all recommend greater efficiencies in the workflow. The library plans to: 1) replace the proprietary database with an open source software; 2) ask faculty to verify that their uploads are copyright compliant; and 3) explore ORCID and DOIs to supply biographical and publication information on the form. Barbour remarked that putting faculty at greater risk of copyright violation, an evident outcome of the change, may inhibit faculty participation. Chadwell and Willi-Hooper minimized the concern. The only sanction publishers have sought against observed violations is the request that a source be taken down.

Report from University Librarian

Re-purposing Library Space

Chadwell described an initiative to reinvest in the library, a building heavily trafficked by students (35,000 visitors per week), to make it an anchor for “student success” on the quadrangle it shares with the Student Experience Center. Plans are afoot to re-purpose space by moving some collections off-site to make rooms available to student workshops. Maps, government archives, STEM journals, and other collections are now digitized and need not remain on site. Barbour observed that it would be a great loss to disrupt the literature collections on the fourth floor; Chadwell answered that the fourth floor remained sacrosanct, but that some areas on the third and fifth floors would be re-deployed.

• Writing Center: Deitering described plans for the Fall 2017 migration of the Writing Center from Waldo Hall to Valley Library, where writing consultants will implement a new “studio pedagogy” model to help students write and conduct research in real time.
• A data-visualization Center will be developed along with a classroom in place of the photocopy room.

Atomic Era Collection

Chadwell hopes to acquire a premier Atomic Era Collection to complement the Pauling papers that already make Valley Library a world-class site for atomic research. The envisioned collection would surpass that at the Smithsonian.

The meeting concluded at 11:00 AM.