The meeting was called to order at 7:30 a.m. in Café DeGrasta by Chairman Harvey Bender. Also in attendance were John Adams, Gail Bederman, Wesley Calvert, Roger Jacobs, Mark Pilkinton, Margaret Porter, Walter Pratt, Larry Rapagnani, Laurence Taylor, John Weber, Jennifer Younger, observer Gay Dannelly and secretary Melodie Eiteljorge.

Welcome and agenda review:

Bender welcomed next year's graduate student representative, Wesley Calvert. He thanked departing members Maureen Boulton, Margaret Porter, Larry Rapagnani and Larry Taylor for their exemplary contributions to the committee.

Approval of Minutes:

The minutes of the meeting of April 11, 2002 were approved as written.

Director's report:

* Younger recently received a letter of complaint from a faculty member about a recalled book that was not returned until five months after the recall request. The library will follow up to ensure the person requesting the recall knew of his options for getting the book. Unfortunately, the circulation system does not process recalls separately from other overdue notices, which are generated only annually for faculty because all books loaned to faculty are due only once a year on October 1. The library will look at this issue over the summer.

This brought up the question of confidentiality. Currently, the library policy default is to give a borrower's name to another member of the Notre Dame community upon request unless the borrower has requested that his or her name be kept confidential. We do not give names to anyone outside the ND community. Younger will gather some use statistics on this and put the item on next year's agenda for further discussion.

* Copy machines. The library is in the process of purchasing 17 copy machines. This represents a big change because our copy business has always been self supporting and revenue producing. The situation has changed over the last three years as the volume of copies has decreased significantly. Now we are subsidizing copying services, buying machines out of our non salary budget. We don't know if revenue will offset the cost. We have shortened the length of the next contract from five to three years and have reduced the number of machines slightly. The decrease in copying is due to more materials being in electronic format. The Office of Information Technology recently implemented a quota system for printing at OIT cluster machines, because of significant increases in printing.

A question was raised about why the library would subsidize copying. Jacobs responded that one reason is to reduce mutilation. Committee members agree that students need copies of material to study from, mark up, take home. The library will also purchase one station at which University procards can be used to purchase vendor copy cards for use at individual copy machines. Committee members made further suggestions that the library support Domer Dollars for copy charges and that scanners be linked to some library computers.

* Dannelly distributed a listing of serials price increases for 2002 and a general estimate of price increases for 2003. She also distributed sample use statistics reports for electronic journals subscribed to by Notre Dame. She reported that this is the first time we've had use statistics for journal titles. This will be useful in identifying titles for review, subscription continuation and potential candidates for cancellation. Over the summer we will be negotiating with publishers. We are also working with the NorthEast Research Libraries consortium (NERL) to identify three levels for titles: what we must have, what we would like to have, and what we do not want.

Proposed Food and Drink Policy: Younger stated that we are striving to create comfortable research and study areas in the Hesburgh Library, while protecting collections for today's and tomorrow's users. Library representatives have discussed the proposed policy to allow beverages in spill proof containers and limited snack food within the library, and are currently discussing it with undergraduate and graduate student organizations. We want to implement this policy during the summer.

Two members from the Law School reported various impressions on the success of a similar policy in the Law Library. General agreement among those present is that the main problem with any food and drink policy lies in the area of enforcement.

The charge to a task force regarding library catalogs sharing the Aleph system: At their meeting of September 27, 2001, the directors of the members of the Michiana Academic Library Consortium (MALC) discussed and approved a proposal to investigate the benefits, issues, and methodologies associated with greater integration the catalogs of the University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary's College, Bethel College and Holy Cross College. This project has two principal aims:

- to provide for better access for users and more efficient resource sharing among the four member libraries, as well as improved access to other local and national resources, e.g., the Law Library of the University of Notre Dame. This outcome was specifically identified as a priority by the Report (November 26, 2001) of the Review Committee in the University of Notre Dame Libraries Self-study.

- to investigate whether there are alternatives to the current four catalog system implementation that would preserve effective local bibliographic access and, where needed, local functionality such as acquisitions, while at the same time reducing the maintenance costs and other overhead associated with such duplication.

The Task Force will also look at improved access to other local resources such as the Notre Dame Law Library.

Draft Report to Academic Council: The remainder of the meeting was devoted to discussion of and proposed revisions to the draft of the Committee's Annual Report to the Academic Council. The draft had been prepared by Jennifer Younger and Harvey Bender. Younger will forward a revised copy of the report to Committee members.

There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 9:00 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Melodie Eiteljorge
Secretary