The meeting was called to order at 3:30 p.m in the Civil Rights Reading Room in the Law School by Chair Jack Pratt. Also in attendance were Wesley Calvert, Stephen Dumont, Felipe Hernandez, Roger Jacobs, Theresa Krier, Mark Pilkinton, Dave Smith, Marsha Stevenson, Gordon Wishon and Jennifer Younger.

The minutes of September 19, 2002 and October 11, 2002 were approved.

Younger reported as follows. The position for the associate director of user services was offered and accepted with March 1, 2003 the proposed starting date. A new library service "MyAccount" is functional and should save the time of faculty in dealing with renewing library materials. Harvey Bender and John Adams were attending a meeting of the Biological Sciences Department concerning library subscriptions to science journals, and therefore were unable to attend the UCL meeting. Stevenson reported that while the investigation continues on the issue of recalled books, the data so far show about two thirds are returned on time. She will provide an update in spring and proposals for any next steps to address the problem of recalled books not returned on a timely basis.

On behalf of the University Libraries Professional Development Committee, Stevenson invited UCL to co-sponsor the lectures by Michael Keller, university librarian at Stanford University and publisher of Stanford's HighWire Press, who will be on campus in early December 2002. He will speak on the future of research libraries and scholarly communication in academia.

The discussion moved to the Report on the University Libraries Strategic Planning which was sent via campus mail to all committee members. Younger drew attention to several areas of the report, including the four strategic challenges, the continuing need for the library to grow and the strategic areas in which the library operates. She explained briefly how the challenges articulate several roles and expectations for the library, which at times will compete in their demands for resources. The strategic challenges are:
• achieving excellence in meeting information needs across all disciplines and in providing services to all campus constituencies,
• building rich and unique research collections in areas that support Notre Dame's aspirations to be a scholarly destination,
• defining our role and place within the global network of research libraries in acquiring, cataloging and preserving the record of scholarship for future generations, and
• creating a Catholic identity in a research library.

There is still work needed on the library's strategic planning report, especially consultation with colleges and departments on their needs and priorities for collections and information resources.

Younger provided an update on the recently-announced cancellation of paper copies of journals received electronically. The announcement was made in a letter to all faculty dated October 24, 2002 from Younger. It said: "The library will soon cancel print versions of journals that we receive electronically through many of our publisher digital journal packages. These targeted packages include titles primarily in engineering, science, business and social science from five publishers: Academic, Elsevier, Kluwer, Springer and Wiley. Together, they provide access to 2,993 journals. We will cancel 891 print journal subscriptions that are duplicated in these packages. No core content in the form of scholarly articles will be lost. In order to free these funds for this fiscal year, these cancellations must be submitted in early November. Our receipt of these printed journals will stop as of the end of calendar year 2002."

Smith pointed to the concern about availability of this information in perpetuity and subsequently to the more positive way in which new content (in the journal packages) offsets the loss of paper. In response to a question about what happened as a result of the 6% reduction in serial commitments (6% of the FY 01/02 expenditures) done in April 2002, Younger said that approximately 520 subscriptions were cancelled for a savings of nearly $400,000. Of the 520 cancelled titles, the library estimates that about 40% are duplicates where a paper copy was cancelled but the electronic version was retained, while the remaining 60% were unique serial titles. Although the $400,000 was nearly 10% of the serials expenditures for FY 01/02, the projected expenditures for FY 02/03 were still higher than the budget; thus the decision was made to cancel more copies of journals received electronically in October 2002. Each year inflation reduces the purchasing power and additional cuts can be expected in following years.

Several suggestions were made to find out the effect of these cancellations from users, including
putting a box labeled "What are you missing?" in current periodicals reading areas. The Mathematics Library staff were complimented on their work in informing students and faculty about new ways of "browsing" journals and thus smoothing the transition to electronic-only journals.

The next meeting is Thursday, January 23, 2003, at 3:30 p.m. in Room 222A Hesburgh Library.

Notes respectfully submitted,
Jennifer Younger