March 30, 2010
3:30 – 5:00pm
Stauffer Library, Room 121

Present: David Burke (Stauffer), Laura Cameron (Geography), A. Chowdhury (History), Jackie Druery (Stauffer), Elizabeth Gibson (Stauffer), Susan Greaves (Stauffer), John Hartwick (Economics), Stephen Larin (Political Studies, Graduate Student Rep.), Henry Laycock (Philosophy), Judy Nesbitt (Stauffer), Barbara Reeves (Classics), Nathalie Soini (Stauffer), Joan Stevenson (Kinesiology & Health Studies), Wulin Suo (Business), Mary Claire Vandenburg (Stauffer), Lucinda Walls (Jordan Library), Martha Whitehead (Library Administration).

1. Welcome, Introduction and Adoption of Agenda
   • The agenda was approved.
2. Approval of the Minutes of 21 October, 2009
   • The minutes were approved.
3. Business Arising from the Minutes

   1. Item 6c: J. Druery reported on the question regarding the library's policy on requesting multimedia through interlibrary loan. Multimedia are borrowed directly by faculty through Interfilm; the Library's Interlibrary Loan Department does not borrow multimedia. Faculty are also encouraged to request that the Library purchase multimedia as we have a budget for these purchases. J. Druery also reiterated that streamed video is becoming more common as an option for purchasing media.

   2. Item 8: M. Whitehead reported on the question regarding library privileges for people in anomalous categories - an adjunct and someone on contract. Individuals in these and any other appointment category in the QUFA collective agreement have library privileges; library staff verify eligibility with information from Human Resources when issuing a library card. Individuals outside those categories may apply for a community borrower card. Anyone questioning their eligibility may ask to speak with the Head of Access Services at the Circulation Desk in Stauffer Library.

4. Library Management Update (M. Whitehead)

   1. University Librarian retirement

      Paul Wiens has indicated his intention to retire from his position as University Librarian effective October 31, 2010. A search committee chaired by Bob Silverman, Interim Vice-Principal (Academic), is underway.

   2. Budget

      The Library, like other units, is now responsible for covering all salary and benefit expense increases. This does not materially change our budget reduction targets: it means that the Library will need to reduce its budget by approximately $900,000 over the period 2010/11 to 2012/13. This translates into closing approximately 13 FTE positions, or a little more than 10% of the current staff complement. The hope is that these cuts will be attained through attrition and that layoffs will be avoided.

      The Library's budget document was prepared with the following objectives in mind:

      • Communicate the pressures of the new budget model, and the long-term and unique challenges it poses for the Library
      • Make clear the long-term impact of resulting cuts
      • Demonstrate the Library's due diligence in seeking efficiencies and attempting to achieve cuts
      • Initiate discussion of possible solutions
      • Secure portions of the academic transition fund and future reinvestment funds

      Subsequently, the Library has been asked to identify priorities for an allocation from the academic transition fund. A request has been submitted for completion of the Library Change process and for bridging staffing gaps, as well as $70,000 for acquisitions.

      The Library faces a challenge not experienced by the Faculties: we have no direct revenues from tuition fees or graduate student enrolment to offset any of our salary and benefits increases and other inflationary costs. Like other centrally-funded university units, we need to work with the university to establish a new predictable funding model. We do have some special arrangements with some Faculties and outside agencies. While we are grateful for support for particular positions secured through these agreements, this approach creates risk: should the contracts end, the Library needs to absorb the costs of the continuing appointments of librarians and staff funded by those contracts.

      The possibilities presented in the budget document were intended to generate discussion and prepare the University for the fact that significant changes will be taking place in the Library. The more significant of those changes, for example any involving major facilities changes, would need to be determined in the context of the university's academic plan and through a review process at the level of the Vice-Principal and Deans.

      Cuts to date have in part been accommodated by changes in the nature of our business; for example circulation statistics are down. However, we are now having difficulty maintaining access to burgeoning electronic collections.

      There was a question about whom to contact about glitches with electronic links. Reporting such problems is encouraged, and can be done through the the Ask a Question online form or by contacting the appropriate liaison librarian.

      There was a question regarding the extent to which the shift from purchasing hard to electronic copy has been a saving. It has meant a reduction in print processing and circulation activities, which has allowed closure of positions in some areas and movement of staff as needed. However, the challenge with electronic products is ongoing, including changing dates, links, etc, which requires considerable staff time.

   3. Change Framework and Change Process:

      The Library 2012 Change Framework document has been shared with each of the library advisory committees and they have been apprised of the budget situation and the change process.

      The overall objective of the Library change process is to streamline back-of-house operations, such as cataloguing and administrative operations, so that we can continue to maintain public services that are tailored to meet varying user needs across all disciplines.

      Five task groups will report to the Library Change Steering Group: Technical Services, Interlibrary Loan, Collections Space, Operations Review, and Information Services.

      The work of the task groups is almost complete. An external consultant is being engaged to provide advice on the technical processes needed to ensure that users have timely access to information resources.

      In May/June the recommendations of all task groups will be reviewed by the Library Change Steering Group, and a plan will be developed for moving forward. Some changes will need to occur right away and others will await involvement of the new University Librarian and further engagement with the university community.

   4. Response to Where Next?

      The Library's response to the Principal's academic planning vision document will highlight themes relevant to Library services, such as inquiry-based learning. It will be submitted by April 15.

5. Collections Update and Discussion (J. Druery)

   1. Acquisitions budget update

      J. Druery reported that we are proceeding very well in spending the 2009/10 acquisitions budget. We expect to be neither over budget nor under budget by any significant amount.

   2. Departmental fund codes for 2010/11

      J. Druery introduced a pilot project for the 2010/11 budget year which will see the use of only one fund code for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Currently there are 97 fund codes in use but due to staff reductions we can no longer sustain that model. Maintaining individual departmental fund codes is time consuming both for staff in Central Technical Services and for the liaison librarians who spend time making decisions about which fund code should be used for a monograph purchase especially for interdisciplinary purchases (i.e. is it Business or Economics?; is it Sociology or Gender Studies?).The Library is currently spending 60% of its budget on electronic resources but is devoting far too much time to print resources. Departmental fund allocations have been reduced over the years as more monographs are received through the approval plan so considerable staff time is spent on tracking expenditures for relatively small amounts of money.

      Discussion ensued and focused on how we will maintain equitable availability of funds across departments:

      • Purchasing will be tracked by running reports by LC Classification number. Most English-language items are ordered through our main vendors - Coutts and YBP - and tracking by LC number is relatively easy in their databases.

      • There was concern that departments currently spend their entire budget and they could now spend more, beyond their current allocation. Running frequent reports will monitor spending. The time to monitor will be less than the time it takes to order using individual fund codes.

      • Spending patterns of past years will highlight anomalies and if it appears a department is spending too much they could be alerted and spending slowed down.

      • If departments wish to order very expensive items that would use a large portion of the fund we can consider purchasing those items out of other funds such as endowments funds.

      • Tracking by LC number does not take into account interdisciplinarity - it might look like a department is purchasing too many monographs but they may have been ordered by another department.

      • It was suggested that departments be given a target and track their own expenditures. Actual costs will vary due to discounts etc.

      • This as a pilot for FY2010 to discover anything that hasn't been anticipated and establish whether we can operate fairly with only one fund code. We have a generous budget for H/SS monographs and generally we do not have a problem: we purchase what is requested unless it is very expensive.

      • The new approach may not be ideal but with fewer staff we need to look for ways to decrease the amount of time spent on print resources and shift staff time to e-resources where we are spending ever increasing amounts of our acquisition budget. The results of the latest LibQUAL survey reveal there are many access issues around electronic resources and users of these resources are often frustrated by these problems.

      • The fund in question is for Humanities, Social Sciences, and Business. Engineering and Science, Law, Health Sciences and Education all have their own monograph budgets, which are considerably less than that of H/SS. The Bracken Health Sciences Library has never had separate departmental funds although they serve many departments and Engineering and Science will also be eliminating separate departmental funds in 2010/11.

      • If departments change in the future, it will be necessary to change the proportion of the dollar amount the departments are allocated. Liaison librarians keep up with changes in departments and the Library appreciates learning about any changes from departmental library representatives.

      ACTION: J. Philipps will send an email with more details about the pilot, the reasons for the change and about how she will monitor to ensure that all departments are getting the materials they need.

   3. Print journal cancellation results and plans for summer 2010 (J. Druery)

      J. Druery reported on the work of the liaison librarians to cancel print journals that are available electronically. We cancelled the print versions of 66 titles that we are also receiving through consortia agreements. An additional 104 print titles were switched to electronic access only. A list of the titles affected will be circulated.

      We expect to know by the end of April if any funds will be available to purchase new journals as a result of these cancellations. We will be purchasing 32 new titles that faculty have requested. However, we have had no budget increase, which translates into a budget decrease. This summer we may work on assessment of print journals which we receive only in print. Cancellation of these titles will require extensive consultation with faculty as these journals would be cancelled outright and would no longer be available at Queen's in any format. Over the long term we think about collections space constraints as well.

      Discussion ensued:
      

      • Is there a commitment to move journals out of the library? There are two parts, current and bound journals. Many bound journals are available in JSTOR or other secure archives such as the Scholars Portal. There isn't a plan to move all journals out, but the project last summer was looking for overlap (journals we have in both bound and stable electronic forms) in order to consider if some print could be cancelled rather than acquire two formats.

      • Will print issues that are not available online be kept for historical purposes? Journals which are not available electronically would not be removed. We are working on a collaboration with other universities in Ontario as well, so that even if a bound journal is available online, it would be kept if it's the last print volume in Ontario.

      • What is the future of acquiring print versus electronic? Currently 60% of the acquisitions budget is spent on electronic and this will likely increase. It was noted that we still have a disproportionate amount of staff time spent on dealing with print journals and we need to allocate more staff time to ensuring users have reliable access to electronic journals.

      • How much use is made of print journals compared with electronic journals? We have never done a quantitative analysis of this but last summer when we were working on the print journal project it was clear that some paper journals had never been used as they were in pristine condition. It also depends on the discipline; in some disciplines key journals are still only available in paper but this is becoming less and less the norm.

      • Is there a charge for hits on electronic journals and books? Our license agreements provide access to all the Queen's community and we do not pay "by the hit."

      • Why is it that early dates of electronic journals are often available but not to the Queen's community (e.g. often the 1980-1995 years are missing online)? The back issues can be very costly and we have to weigh using our budget to purchase resources we do not own against purchasing electronic back issues we already own in print. However, the LibQUAL survey results include requests for electronic issues back to the beginning issue of a title so the Library is aware that this is a concern.

      ACTION: The list of print titles cancelled in favour of stable electronic access will be circulated, noting that we still have electronic access to the cancelled print journals.
6. Services Update and Discussion

   1. Preliminary user survey results (M. Whitehead)

      Queen's 2010 LibQUAL survey was run in February. The response rate was higher than for the 2007 LibQUAL survey, and a greater proportion of graduate students completed the survey. The survey relates to three dimensions of service: information control, library as place and affect of service. Preliminary survey results have been posted: Preliminary Comparative Analysis of 2010 and 2007 surveys. Further analysis will be compiled this summer when data is available from other Canadian universities for comparison. The Library will report to the university community in the fall regarding issues identified and how they will be addressed.

   2. Summer plans for catalogue interface improvements (M. Whitehead)

      A new version of QCat is available and we have a target implementation date of July 2010.

   3. Inquiry@Queen's Undergraduate Research Conference and Undergraduate Research Journal
      (J. Druery)

      The 4th Annual I@Q Undergraduate Research Conference was held March 4-5 in the Queen's Learning Commons. There were 65 presenters; 10 poster and 54 oral presentations from across the disciplines. J. Druery thanked those who had encouraged their students to take part and who came out to support the students. We are hoping to be able to produce the 2nd issue of the Undergraduate Research Journal this summer. Publication in this journal is not limited to I@Q students, although students who presented at I@Q will be invited to submit. Please encourage students to submit papers for consideration. J. Druery will distribute information shortly about how to submit.

7. Other Business

   These concerns were raised and will be followed up by the Library:

   • borrowing limit of 100 books for faculty (likely historical and should be revisited)
   • one of the new self-check machines does not desensitize properly (these machines are available as test installations and comments are being collected in order to help evaluate their potential)
   • commissionaires have been observed being condescending and unpleasant to students

8. Next Meeting

   Dates for the 2010/11 meetings of LACHSS will be established in the summer.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:45pm.