John began the conference call with a summary of the SULC directors meeting re: the CMC: essentially, the directors see the CMC as a working group rather than an oversight group who may provide new avenues to action for collaborative collection building and management in the SUL. Continued review and refinement will be needed to clarify the relative roles of the CMC and other SULC standing committees; e.g., should the ECC subcommittees function as state-wide bibliographers? The directors noted their intent in creating the CMC to be a collections group with a broader focus than e-resources, e.g., cooperative collection development issues that supersede format. One suggestion was that the chair of the CMC might sit on the SULC. The CMC is looking for more direction from the SULC. Althea Jenkins requested that the CMC collect collection development decision-making models that are currently being used in the SUL. Helen requested that we obtain from the SULC directors a better sense of priority for the series of charges we have before us.
The topic of serial cancellations next came up since if we plan to cancel, we need to do so by the end of August/middle of September. FSU, USF, UWF have all undertaken serial reviews, including both paper and electronic. USF is waiting on final budget figures before implementing additional cancellations of print; USF does not plan to cancel electronic resources. UWF will cancel paper, but not electronic; has already cancelled paper for Academic and Project Muse, next year, APA and OUP? [[Please add plans from other schools that I neglected to put into my notes]]
Discussion of the upcoming Elsevier and Kluwer contracts for the next contract period beginning January 1, 2003. John noted that the CMC needs to try and address the larger picture of these publishers throughout the SULC irrespective of format. Helen underlined the need to have the ECC respond to the contract proposals first from the view of electronic access, and then once we have that response, the CMC could reach some consensus on the relative numbers of print versions needed throughout the SUL versus electronic access to the publications. John suggested - in response to news that USF has already canceled its print versions of Elsevier titles since 2000 - that he would request that each institution indicate at which stage it currently finds itself for continuing print and/or electronic versions of Elsevier and Kluwer publications.
John noted that Kluwer was to have had a proposal for review by July 8 (which is not yet received) and that Elsevier would also be putting such a proposal together. Elsevier would like to make presentations to both the SULC directors and the CMC/ECC to explain its new pricing structure.
Re: current state of materials budgets: no paper copy of a budget yet in place for any institution, although several have been told what the budget will be, almost uniformly, lower, at least at the recurring level. There are indications from several schools that there will be non-recurring additional funds provided by the university administrations. Some libraries have already concluded their initial review of serials for cancellations as well as review of electronic versions.
John will email three questions to the CMC representatives and gather the responses for review by members on the CMC email list.
- Which libraries have cancelled (or plan to cancel) paper for Elsevier and Kluwer? Any other major publishers whose paper versions are canceled/to be cancelled for 2003?
- Do written policies and procedures for collection development exist at each institution, and if so, are they on the Internet, and if so, what is the URL? Tony mentioned the ARL Spec Kit for Collections, done in early 90s. How much of that endeavor is still relevant for 2002 and beyond?
- What are respective materials budgets, at least the projected budgets, and what percentages are they devoting to serials? And of those percentages, what is the division between paper and electronic?
Our next conference call will be August 12 at 11 am.
P.S. I'd like to suggest that we adopt the same method for taking notes that the ECC - at least - uses, i.e., the representative from each school will take turns in alphabetic order of institutional name. Is that okay?
Re: Roy's question on a representative from FSU's medical school: at present the committee includes Anne Bardolph (FSU-Law) to represent the SUL law schools and Lenny Rhine (UF Health Sciences Center) to represent the SUL medical schools, and each of them will communicate to their respective colleagues at the other institutions having law and medicine. This arrangement is subject to further discussion, and perhaps should be on next month's agenda?
Conference call concluded at noon.