October 28, 2003

Members Present: Bill Covey, Michele Crump, Martha Hruska, Erich Kesse, Cathy Mook, Betsy Simpson, and Phek Su

1. Announcements

· A joint SUL/FCLA meeting will be held on November 3-5^th, 2003. A workshop will be held on November 3, 2003 to train individuals who will be ALEPH trainers.

· Martha Hruska and Erich Kesse attended a SOLINET workshop on Friday, October 24^th entitled “Applications of Metadata Harvesting in Scholarly Communication Portals: Findings from the MetaScholar Projects (AmericanSouth and MetaArchive).” It focused on MetaScholar, an ASERL project to harvest and collect materials from the American South.

· Tatiana Barr, Jeffrey Barr, John Nemmers, and Robert Shaddy attended an ARL workshop on a related topic in September. A forum will be scheduled in early November to discuss new ideas/approaches on how to provide access to the libraries’ special collections materials.

· 98% of the materials being reviewed for re-class have been returned with 24,247 identified to be re-classed. The re-class project is being conducted in Library East Room 100 until Thanksgiving. At that time all materials to be reclassed will be moved to the old Documents area on the second floor of Library West. The Collection Management and Resource Services Departments will assist with the move.

· Last week Cathy Mook attended a workshop on Digital Preservation at Cornell. She would like to have an open staff session to discuss what she learned.

· Suzanne Kiker hired Beth Zavoyski as a Senior LTA (Jack Fisher’s old position) in the Monographs Unit. She will begin October 29^th.

· The Library of Congress has been discussing I-Archives. OCLC is pushing to move forward.

· ARL statistics – The number of classes being taught is up. The e-metrics initiative is being moved forward. Steve will be asking Erich Kesse, Michele Crump, Betsy Simpson, and a CM staff member to work with SPIT on statistics for electronic resources.

2. Updates/Status Reports:

a. Budget/Positions/Materials Budget

· Budget

o Holding tight.

o The library directors, Barbara Oliver, and Rob Roberts met to talk about salvaging out Library West materials.

o At the end of last year Preservation received extra money for binding in order to clear out a backlog. There may be money at the end of this year for the same type of project. Cathy Mook noted that it isn’t realistic to hire someone last minute to do this type of project. At the next Binding group meeting, they will survey whether the branches are caught up with Binding.

· Positions

o Maribeth Manoff did not accept the Web Services Manager position. Martha Hruska is working on a plan to assign the duties for this position to a current staff member. This would be a temporary part-time assignment for six months starting in November.

· Materials Budget

o There is $2,525,870.17 remaining in the Materials budget. A notice was sent last week to remind selectors that the catalog would be closing. Orders can still be placed after the catalog closes however the orders will not appear and will have to be manually entered after the ALEPH installation.

o Erich Kesse and Cathy Mook have not received their departmental credit cards and have had to reopen purchase orders.

o Steve Shorb assembled the ARL statistics. There was a notable decline in the amount of money spent on monographs. Spending for serials and electronic resources increased.

b. Systems/Networking

· There has been a request to enlarge the communications closet at the DOT storage facility. Wall plate service from CNS is a possibility at the DOT storage facility.

c. Moves/Building issues

· Demolition at the DOT storage facility is supposed to begin in the very near future.

· ILL and Collection Management have moved.

· Professional movers will be hired to move the main collection.

· The mailroom will move to MSL sometime in December. Departments in Library East will pick up mail from an area behind the Library East conference room.

d. Projects

· John Nemmers is creating Encoded Archival Descriptions (EADs).

· Phek Su and Betsy Simpson are helping to migrate Ringling forward.

· The Aerials II project is 20% complete.

· There have been some developments in digitizing newspapers.

· Ephemeral Cities – Erich Kesse must attend a meeting in December in Washington and then the grant money will be released. Work has begun on this project using cost share funds. The project is scheduled to end October 2004. The project called for a position to serve as serve as a grant coordinator although no one has yet been hired.

3. Discussion

a. SUL Joint Meeting issues see http://www.fcla.edu/FCLAinfo/jcom/03/meetingdocs.html

4. Other