Faculty Senate Library Committee

Meeting Minutes

11:00 -noon, Nov 15, 2007

In attendance: Paul Beck (Library), Barbara Bennie (Mathematics), Tim Gerber (Biology), Kathleen Lynch (Graduate student representative), William Ross (Management), Melissa Ruplinger (Undergraduate student representative), Sarah Putnam (Undergraduate student representative), Shauna Sallmen (Physics), Chia-Chen Yu (Chair, Exercise and Sports Science)

Consultant: Anita Evans (Library Director, consultant)

The meeting was called to order at 11:00 am. 

Most of the meeting was devoted to a presentation and discussion of the budget.

Murphy Library Resource Budget (John Jax, Jenifer Holmen, & Galadriel Chilton, presenters):  items 1-4 below

Item 1: No increase in funding for Murphy Library since 2001 has lead to cuts in collection development.  Murphy library staff is currently working on new and creative ways of maintaining resources and services in spite of drastic increases in journals, electronic resources, monographs, standing orders, and UW system resource sharing.

Item 2: Periodical collections.  Average journal prices are increasing 6-8%/year.

• Cuts in journals have occurred however there has been a cost savings by converting from individual print journals to electronic journal access through packaged deals with vendors (e.g., Sage Journals).  Therefore, while 92 titles were cut this year only 3 journals were dropped since the other titles are accessible through packages.  Access to additional new titles are one advantage to package deals.
• Journals will get more expensive if UW-L increases over 10,000 FTE’s
• UW-L Chemistry Dept is American Chemical Society (ACS) certified and must maintain specific journals to keep ACS certification.  UW system currently pays $500,000/year to keep the journals necessary for ACS certification of which UW-L must pay it’s proportional share.  If UW-L > 10,000 FTEs, that share will probably increase too.
• The monograph budget has been used to maintain the periodical collection.

Item 3: Monographs.  The number of monograph purchases/year has decreased over the last 5 years due to the flat budgets.

• Strategies for maintaining book purchases include:  leverage purchasing, Blackwell’s UW system collaborative book bidding

Item 4: Electronic Databases:  e-resource budget has increased from ($160,857 to 180,848) from 2003-present.

• Number of local e-resource subscriptions has decreased 40% do to increases in cost of resources; difficult to add more titles because of high inflation rate of resources which keeps library from adding new resources.
• Strategy for maintaining e-resources includes finding sponsors for specific databases.

Item 5:  Continue to pursue reallocation of differential tuition funds for library.  A Faculty Senate Library Committee subcommittee has been set up to work on a request for these funds.

Item 6: Academic oversight committee: Student committee has fully formed. Paula Knudson, Dean of Student Development & Academic Services, indicated that “The first two weeks will be training and selecting a student chair.”

Item 7: Graduate student organization has requested longer library hours esp. on Fridays and Saturdays.  Request to address the committee regarding this topic.  Evans provided a list of UW (comprehensive campuses) library hours.

The committee approved the meeting minutes of 11 October 2007.  M/S/P 8-0-0

The meeting adjourned at noon.

Respectfully submitted,

Tim Gerber (Biology)