Members Present: Schottlaender (chair), French, Kruger, Lease, Miller, Shelton

Members Absent: Vermeij

Staff: Johns, Lawrence

Meeting Objectives

1. Review and discuss issues related to the archival retention of research library materials, and frame implications for UC collection management planning.
2. Review and discuss three planning scenarios for alternative collection management strategies.
3. Consider issues related to continued expansion of the Regional Library Facilities, and strategies to address those issues.
 

1.  Preliminaries
    a. Welcome and introductions
    b. Review of charge
 

Background: · Roster · Charge (SLASIAC Resolution B: Continuous Strategic Planning for Universitywide Library Collection Management) · Meeting Minutes from previous CMPG Meetings (2/1/01 and 4/26/01) · Alternative Roles for the RLFs

Schottlaender reviewed the charge to the Committee, with particular emphasis on the second sentence of the Background section of SLASIAC Resolution B, which reads, “At the same time, the emerging environment of integrated print and digital collections demands re-examination and reinterpretation of the traditional mission of the University of California Libraries to archive, preserve, and provide access to materials in its collections that are of enduring research value.”  It was in the spirit of this portion of the charge that Schottlaender invited Abby Smith, Director of Programs at the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), to discuss with us some of the key findings and recommendations from the CLIR report that she recently co-authored, The Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections.

2.  Archiving of Library Collections
 

Background: The Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections, Council on Library and Information Resources, November 2001 [Previously distributed]

Smith began by noting that CLIR has an enduring interest in the needs of scholars in relation to library resources, an interest whose focus has shifted now that access to these resources is no longer equated with ownership.  An aspect of this shift is concern for the persistence of essential print resources in an environment that is increasingly preoccupied with information technology and digital information.  In undertaking the work leading to The Evidence in Hand, CLIR explicitly focused on materials that were not rare and unique and therefore might be selected for discard from the collection, and asked with respect to these materials what aspects of the physical items are indispensable for teaching and research. The Task Force recommended that custodial institutions set clear priorities for retention of unique and unusual material, and believing that libraries cooperate readily and voluntarily, recommended a collaborative distribution of responsibilities for retention that would be transparent to scholars. The Task Force also found that concepts of ownership of materials, particularly those in secondary storage, are no longer relevant to scholars, as long as the materials can be located and accessed in a reasonable period of time.

The development of reliable repositories of research material, whether in print or digital form, cannot be mandated by a higher authority. It will be necessary to develop a system in which the advantages of participation are manifestly clear to individual libraries and to the scholars that depend on them, i.e., in which access is equitable for all and no institution is penalized for its participation. The collaborative storage program of the Five College Libraries (http://www.fivecolleges.edu/academlib.html) represents a good example of these principles. The institutions have a long-standing relationship, all faced pressing space problems at the same time, and the presidents of the institutions supported a shared storage solution based on establishment of a separate non-profit entity to which ownership of stored materials would be transferred.

In discussion, the following points were raised:

• Shared off-site storage, rationalization of shared collections, elimination of unnecessary redundancy and transfer of ownership raise problems with traditional library metrics (e.g., the ARL Statistics) that can only be overcome when major custodial institutions share a consensus to act.
• Rationalization of shared collections depends critically on the willingness of cooperating institutions to rationalize their collective academic program offerings.
• Notwithstanding the traditional importance of extensive on-site collections, some institutions (e.g., the Getty Research Institute) are successful with very limited local collections, having become expert at obtaining for their Fellows the materials they need from other libraries to support advanced study, effectively building research collections “on the fly,” although this can be an expensive proposition.
• The capability to move research collections to people (i.e., among campuses) when needed could be valuable in response to academic planning and program development initiatives, and might be an aid to faculty recruitment.
• A planned strategy for retention would consider both the research value of defined portions of the collection, and the risks of various retention strategies.  The reliable and persistent availability of copies of particular titles from other institutions would be an important part of the risk assessment.

Schottlaender identified four issues that framed subsequent discussion:
1. Redundancy

a. Redundancy in research library collections results from the traditional “ownership = access” imperative that has informed the development of these collections over decades.  With improved bibliographic access, better and faster inter-institutional delivery systems and the emergence of networked digital information, this unplanned redundancy may no longer be necessary.
b. There is little understanding of the extent of overlap in research library collections, although some studies put the level at 60 percent or so.
c. The issues of “good” redundancy (needed to protect against risk) and “bad” (unnecessary) redundancy are different for monographs and serials.
d. The issue of redundancy for risk management needs to be understood in the contexts of the availability of materials in other "custodial collections" nationally, and of the availability, utility, and permanence of different formats (e.g., print, microform, digital).

a. Deposits to UC Regional Library Facilities (RLFs) are currently primarily driven by local space needs.
b. Some RLF deposits are driven by preservation considerations; the physical environment of the RLFs is conducive to long-term preservation, and campuses sometimes choose to deposit special collections materials and other items for this reason.  Cost-effective conservation could be a rationale for additional use of the RLFs in this way.
c. RLFs are also highly secure relative to campus stacks; some materials are deposited for reasons of security.

a.  Strategies are needed for cost-effective preservation, conservation, and security that leverage the existing capabilities of the UC system.

a. The concepts of shared print collections, strategically-planned "custodial collections," and elimination of "unnecessary redundancy" all invoke the issue of how research libraries count their holdings, the uses made of such statistics, and how these metrics need to change to account for shared resources.
b. With respect to materials currently or prospectively located in RLFs, and in view of the excellent bibliographic access to and fast request fulfillment and delivery services for RLF deposits, there appear to be four options as to how "shared" RLF materials could in principle be counted:

i. Each campus counts all RLF holdings as part of the local collection
ii. Each campus counts no RLF holdings as part of the local collection (presently, each campus continues to count its own RLF deposits as part of its collection)
iii. Each campus counts Universitywide library holdings (RLFs plus all other campuses) as the local collection
iv. Same as iii, but with exceptions as required (e.g., the Five College Libraries allow UMass to retain title to materials stored in the joint facility in respect of state law forbidding the transfer of state property to private parties).

There was also considerable discussion of a concept that emerged at a recent meeting of the UC Libraries' Collection Development Committee. Over the last few years, the libraries have experimented in a limited fashion with sharing of specialized expertise, e.g. personnel who can develop collections in and catalog materials in Slavic languages.  Such sharing, when feasible, allows a campus to maintain a collecting program in an esoteric subject area of interest to campus faculty without having to hire full-time staff with skills that are scarce, expensive, and difficult to recruit.  A successful example has been a sharing arrangement in Slavic between Berkeley and UCSB. By extension, specialist personnel with responsibility to develop and process collections for more than one campus might be named "University Bibliographers," with defined responsibility to develop a "shared collection" in their specialty area. This strategy might have several benefits: a) save money for campuses with limited collecting programs in specialized areas, as described above; b) serve as a helpful recruitment tool for these kinds of specialists; c) highlight and reinforce the commitment to a "shared print collection" strategy in a way that is clearly beneficial to all participants; and d) overcome some of the traditional obstacles to "coordinated collection development."

Schottlaender summarized the structural elements of the morning's discussion with two diagrams (click on the links for .pdf versions of the diagrams). Figure 1, "Print Redundancy Avenues," maps the various sources and levels of overlap that might occur among collections within the UC system.  Figure 2, "Redundancy Types," sets out three dimensions of redundancy (necessary/unnecessary, book/journal, and with or without a digital analog), and identifies the particular domain of the Collection Management Initiative, which deals with journals having digital analogs for which print redundancy within UC is probably not necessary.

3. Update on the Collection Management Initiative
 

Background Material: · CMI Project Description · CMI Quarterly Status Report (Feb. 6, 2002) · CMI Status Report (April 5, 2002)

Schottlaender provided a brief overview and status report on the Collection Management Initiative (<http://www.ucop.edu/cmi/>).

4.  Scenarios for Collection Management
 
 

Background Material: · Scenario 0: Role of the Regional Library Facilities · Scenario 1: Shared Print Journal Collection · Scenario 1 Cost Model and Narrative · Scenario 2: Shared Print Collections · Scenario 3: Digitization of suitable titles not yet available in digital form

Scenario 0: Role of the Regional Library Facilities. Johns briefly reviewed Scenario 0, which describes the current role and operation of the RLFs.

Scenario 1: Shared Print Journal Collection.  Scenario 1 describes a program in which one or more print copies of journals available Universitywide in digital form are relocated to RLFs, and campuses are at liberty to cancel their print subscriptions and rely solely on the digital to meet current needs. Smith noted that the Five College Libraries are building complete sets of shared print journal runs, without consideration of availability of digital. Shelton noted that if complete and dependable shared print runs of journals were available, it would greatly facilitate campus cancellation decisions, as they would no longer need to coordinate with other campuses or to check national availability for each title under consideration for cancellation.

Scenario 2: Shared Print Collections. Scenario 2 extends the concepts of Scenario 1 to selected print collections other than journals, and without the necessity of availability of digital equivalents. The Task Force endorsed the Government Documents variant of this scenario, but felt that the University Press variant would not be useful, as most University Press books are of high value and frequently used on the campuses. The group also endorsed the variant which characterized the existing holdings of the RLFs as a shared collection, and commented that the Reference Materials variant would be most applicable to reference works published serially (e.g., abstracting and indexing series).

Scenario 3: Digitization of suitable titles not yet available in digital form. The group questioned whether digitizing the kinds of materials described in this scenario would result in space savings sufficient to justify the cost, and Miller felt that one variant described in this scenario, a digital undergraduate core collection, would most likely not repay the effort, as this kind of collection is modest in size and cost and can be easily acquired in print form.

5.  NRLF Phase 3/advocacy for RLF capital projects
 

Background Material: · King to Atkinson, 3/7/02 · Zelmanowitz to King, 2/26/02 · French to Zelmanowitz, 2/19/02 · Extract, Meeting Notes of the Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee, 2/22/02

After discussion of the situation surrounding the deferral of Phase 3 of the NRLF in the 2002-03 Capital Budget, the group endorsed a proposal to draft a letter from Schottlaender, as chair of the CMPG, that would focus on the impact of deferral on the campuses as a rationale for restoring the project to the 2003-04 Capital Budget. This letter should be addressed to the Chair of SLASIAC with the recommendation that it be forwarded to the Provost of the University, and that it should be shared with Chancellors through appropriate channels.