Library Committee

Membership and Attendance:

Richmond Barbour, Chair ’18 – School of Writing, Literature & Film
Chris Beaudry ’17 – Chemistry
Dylan Keon ’17 – Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences
Robin Pappas ’17 – College of Liberal Arts
Emily Shroyer ’18 – College of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences
Enrique Thomann ’18 – Mathematics
Dianna Fisher ’19 – Extended Campus
Justin St. Germain ’19 – School of Writing, Literature & Film
Melissa Santala ’19 – Mechanical, Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering

Ex-Officio Member: Faye Chadwell

Executive Committee Liaison – Bill Bogley
Cheryl Middleton – Associate University Librarian for Research and Scholarly Communication
Anne-Marie Deitering –Associate University Librarian for Learning Services
Don Frier – Library Executive Assistant

LURA

Richmond started by asking how the FSLC could help support the LURA more. The FSLC has always had someone on the LURA committee as long as Faye has been with the library.

Chris Beaudry volunteered.

Richmond asked if the FSLC could help support getting word out about the award in some way. Cheryl stated that getting the word out to the faculty and departments would help in the process. Thesis from BRR and primary source research from History tend to win. It would be wonderful if more classroom projects could be attracted. There has been one successful group project as well. The major criteria is the use of the library. Robin asked how much the Library has worked with Sujaya Rao to get the word out. The challenge in that is most of the students don't do writing until they are seniors. The division between the social sciences and humanities has worked better in the past, versus distinguishing between upper and lower division.

Claire Cross has scheduled a luncheon for all advisors – this might be a good venue to bring this up. Chris mentioned that the College of Science publishes a list of scholarships, and this could be included in that. The advisor C10 lists do get read, and that might be a good venue on which to distribute information as well.

Every nomination requires a faculty letter. The Library is already aware of some of the classes that have projects involving library resources, as librarians provide some instruction for those classes.

Travel Grants

http://oregonstate.edu/senate/committees/library/res/Attach/LRTG.pdf

A lot of faculty in the liberal arts found this to be an extremely beneficial opportunity. Richmond asked the committee what ways there are to make an argument to the new provost. The program was originally created from a one-time gift. When the money went away, the program went away. Cynthia Sager, the VP for Research, would likely be a good ally for this program. The Research Office sent out their report recently, and this is a piece that's missing.

Melissa asked about the delta between the amount of money that was spent ($60,000) and the 11 years that the program was going on given that the amount allocated per year was $10,000. Melissa said she would work on writing the document for the new provost regarding this program.

Funding Horizon for Serials

The Library is looking at some kind of cancellation for next year, but don't know how big it will be. The Library will be looking at projections starting in the new year. Faye is also hearing that it'll be a challenging budget year. She promised the Committee that she'll have some firmer numbers next term. Robin asked what Faye meant by cancellations. As a serials-heavy institution, those would account for some of the cuts.

Kerri talked about the status of serials. She gave some of the benefits and drawbacks from the contracts the library uses. The Springer deal is one of the Library’s bigger deals, and ends January 2017. The usage of the big deals across Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer was reviewed. The three-year deal with Springer is no longer in effect, or the big deal with Wiley, but there is still a long-term deal with Elsevier. Springer this year is set, with no addition to cost or loss of content.

Chris asked how large the Wiley sales representative’s area is. Kerri answered that they're in a few states. The Library is paying more for the yearly deal with Wiley than they did in the big deal; however, they’ve been able to pick out the content that matters to OSU.

Next year there will be another option to negotiate with Springer, and there will be a potential for a cut there. There's also the possibility that funding won’t be available to cover inflation or an increase in prices, because there is no involvement in a big deal.

Bill added that, as someone who is sitting on a couple of Promotion and Tenure boards, candidate evaluations are based on where they're published. As the Library confronts this area, who is involved in bringing up the impacts to the P&T process? When cuts were considered earlier, focus groups with faculty were scheduled to get their feedback. Grants are also instigated based on publication records, which is another area influenced by these business decisions. How can the ecosystem be made healthier?

Outreach through things like one-off forums is one way. Sustained engagement would also have value. Veterinary Medicine is a good example of difference and complexity – a college that has different needs.

The Association for Research Libraries has done a lot of advocacy in this area. OSU belongs to the GWLA, a group that buys content together. Has the University Innovation Alliance brought this up? Not that anyone was aware.

The idea of discussing the OA repository at the FSLC came up as a potential topic for a future meeting, especially considering what's happening with the University of Florida and Elsevier.

The Library is considering asking a member of the University of California system to come to OSU and relate how their response to the publisher inflation went.

Fundraising

Faye concluded by talking briefly about library fundraising. Originally, a .5 FTE fundraiser was dedicated to the Library. The FTE for that individual was slowly chipped away at, until it was eliminated. The Library is not the only OSU unit in this boat, but it is unusual as all of Faye's peers do have fundraisers. 

Minutes taken by Don Frier