From: Milton Wolf <wolf_at_crlmail.uchicago.edu>
CENTER FOR RESEARCH LIBRARIES'
REPORT TO CHIEF COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT
OFFICERS OF LARGE ACADEMIC RESEARCH LIBRARIES
June 1999
I. International Coalition on Newspapers (ICON)
Progress Report:
· ICON Working Group's Final Report available online:
http://wwwcrl.uchicago.edu/info/icon/icon.htm
· ICON partnership with OCLC for a WorldCat union list of newspapers is
being negotiated; OCLC will subsidize part of the costs.
· ICON grants for preservation of international newspapers are being prepared.
· ICON Digital Newspaper Conference planned for Fall 2000.
· ICON Charter for founding the initial Core Group will be sent to:
The British Library
Center for Research Libraries
Harvard University
Library of Congress
National Library of Canada
New York Public Library
University of Florida
University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Southern California
University of Washington
II. CRL Area Studies Council (ASC) Progress Report:
· Proposed expansion of CRL's Area Studies Council work to develop a
compilation of
preservation studies and guidelines for international filming/digitizing
efforts, and to
coordinate the many overlapping facets, especially union listing, grant
proposals, and
cooperative preservation costs-including storage costs. Deborah Jakubs
appointed Chair.
· East Asian Area Studies Project is being considered; symposium planned
for the Spring of 2000.
III. CRL Mediated Collections:
Utilizing professional Reference Librarians and Subject Program Officers,
CRL will
explore offering "mediated" service to its collections by e-mail,
telephone, FAX, Ariel, etc.
This will enable scholars and researchers to access in greater depth CRL's
holdings when the CRL OPAC and online HANDBOOK are insufficient finding tools.
· Superseded Reference Books Project (SRBP): 4 of 25 initial core titles in
place; recruitment of Reference Librarian underway; some resistance from
library staff to divesting these materials, but weakening.
· Science Research Materials Project (SRMP): the SRMP Advisory Board met in
April to focus on the strong CRL collections of developing nations'
sci/tech materials, especially journals (over 4,000 current subscriptions
and over 30,000 retrospective ones). SRMP Advisory Board: Ross Atkinson
(Cornell University), Linda Musser (Pennsylvania State University), Bonita
Perry (Smithsonian Institute Library), Lucy Rowland (University of
Georgia), Susan Starr (University of California-San Diego), David Stern
(Yale University), Gary Wiggins (Indiana University), Patricia Yocum, Chair
(University of Michigan), Kathleen Zar (University of Chicago).
The SRMP will benefit science librarians and scholars in the scientific
disciplines through:
* A larger pool of acquisitions funds to support rarely held scientific
materials increasingly generated by scholarly societies and related
publishers from around the world.
* An environmentally controlled collection archive for access and
preservation.
* An enhanced ability to build and maintain local collections with the
assurance that complementary, rarely held materials in a safe, secure print
and/or electronic archive would be readily accessible to its local clientele.
* A widely accessible electronic and traditional delivery mechanism.
* An expanded opportunity to seek grants and endowments to collect and
preserve unique scientific information.
* A framework, complementary to efforts such as ARL's SPARC, for librarians
and scholars to foster cooperative projects to lower costs involved in
expanding the availability of science and technology publications.
IV. CRL Task Forces:
· Membership and Fees Task Force: currently examining questions dealing
with fixed fees for smaller academic members, group memberships, non-member
use of CRL, etc. Expects to issue its report to CRL Board in fall of 1999.
· Electronic Resources Task Force: has just submitted its
final report, which will go first to the Board's Planning Committee this
summer.
· South Asia Project Task Force: this CRL Task Force has worked to assure
continuing acquisitions of and access to South Asian materials for the
North American scholarly community; they are preparing a final report.
· Foreign Official Gazettes Task Force: working toward the development of a
national collection of record for these publications at CRL.
· State Documents Task Force: the report of the Task Force for a new
collection policy governing this collection, limiting CRL holdings to
pre-1951, has been submitted and only minor details, like the dispersal of
thousands of volumes now out of scope, need addressed.
V. CRL Conferences:
· Symposium on International Scholarship was held April 15-16, 1999, as
part of CRL's 50th Anniversary Celebration. Featured speakers included
Robert M. O'Neil, Founding Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the
Protection of Free Expression; Pentti Vattulainen, Director of the National
Repository Library of Finland; Barbara J. Ford, Immediate Past President of
ALA; and Harold Billings, Director of the University of Texas Libraries.
Much of this was to examine CRL's role in international scholarship.
· A CRL International Conference on Creating New Strategies for Cooperative
Collection Development, co-hosted by ARL, RLG, CLIR and ICOLC, will be held
November 12-14, 1999 in Atlanta, Georgia. The Conference will develop an
action agenda and framework for its implementation, and publish the best
papers. Featured Speakers are:
¨ Dr. Myles Brand, President of Indiana University,
¨ David Shulenburger, Provost, University of Kansas,
¨ Gary Strong, Director, Queens Public Library,
¨ Jeff Groscost, Speaker, Arizona House of Representatives,
¨ Professor Tom Shippey, Chair, English Department, St. Louis University,
¨ Paul Kobulnicky, Vice Chancellor for Information Services and University
Librarian, University of Connecticut,
¨ Frederick J. friend, Director of Scholarly Communication, University
College, London.
VI. Collection Accessibility:
· Besides introducing "mediated collections" through reference service and
subject program officers, CRL's number one priority is making the
collections more accessible. Under a grant from the National Endowment for
the Humanities, CRL is engaged in a project to catalog all of its foreign
newspaper holdings. These listings are searchable through a web-mounted
database, which continues to grow. Also, several joint ventures are being
examined to digitize, or otherwise make more accessible, CRL's extensive
holdings of international dissertations.
· A new CRL brochure entitled CRL BEST PRATICES will be available at ALA in
New Orleans, which is designed to assist members in getting the most out of
their CRL membership.
VII. PURCHASE PROPOSALS, FY 98/99
The Center will acquire 10 of the 16 sets proposed as purchase proposals.
These are:
Allgemeinwissenschaftliche und literaschen Zeitschriften des 17. und 18.
Jahrhunderts. (Selected titles not duplicated in Deutsche Zeitschriften
des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts.)
Anti-Napoleonische Pamphlete.
Church Missionary Society archive. Section 1: Japan, Pts. 10-12.
Church Missionary Society archive. Section 2: Missions to Women, Pt. 4.
Church Missionary Society archive. Section 3: Central Manuscript Records,
Pts. 4-5.
Church Missionary Society archive. Section 4: Americas, Pt. 1.
Deutsche Zeitschriften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. (First year of two
year purchase.)
Board of Foreign Missions correspondence and reports, 1833-1911. Africa,
Latin America and Southeast Asian missions.
Papers of Booker T. Washington. Series 4-6. (First year of two year
purchase.)
Widerstand als Hochverrat, 1933-1945.
Three sets were rejected because five or more members have purchased for
their own libraries. The rejected sets are: Documenta Orthographica, Hsin
pien hung wei ping tzu liao = Red Guard publications, and Women composers
collection. This final set was rejected prior to balloting due to
confirmation that five or more members were buying and willing to lend.
Two proposals are still pending the availability of end-of-year funds. The
sets still pending are:
Comintern archive. (First year of seven year purchase.) and
Mailrapporten/Mail reports from the Netherlands East Indies, 1869-1940
[1945]. Pt. 3. One additional proposal was approved but ranked too low for
consideration for end-of-year funds. Early Canadiana - Pre- 1900 Monographs
will be resent to the membership under CRL's shared purchases program.
The approved multi-year proposals represent an expenditure of an estimated
$47,000. New purchase proposals of $90,000 are budgeted for FY 1999/2000.
The budget line for continuing purchase proposals for FY 2000 is $51,000.
Both Comintern and Mailrapporten are likely to wait until FY 2000 due to
availability of the product and/or
funds.
VIII. TECHNICAL SERVICES and ACCESS SERVICES:
CRL has purchased the WebPac software from Innovative Interfaces,
and will
make it available to users in July. Currently, we are adding text to the
web pages and modifying them to reflect CRL information and policy. This
will be done shortly. Expect an announcement of availability shortly on
the CRL listserv, CRLONLINE.
For many years, CRL made its MARC bibliographic file and annual updates
available for purchase to libraries. The intent of this service was to
provide speedier access to CRL's holdings, and was done by tapeloading.
What with the advent of the Internet, the demand for tapeloading
bibliographic records has declined significantly. We are currently
experimenting with several members libraries a process of loading the
records via FTP. Once this process works smoothly and well, we will offer
this service in its new form. Due to the elimination of tape processing,
we hope to be able to issue FTP supplements on a quarterly rather than
annual basis.
The Cataloging Department continued to make contributions in support of
its commitment to the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) through
contributions to CONSER, BIBCO, and NACO.
Work continued on cataloging the foreign newspaper collection at
CRL. The
grant for cataloging foreign newspapers, funded by NEH, is scheduled for
completion in October 1999.
In addition to the regular cataloging activities, staff in the
department
were involved in cataloging (to include the creation of circulation records
and barcoding); processing the Superseded Reference materials; adding
subject headings and LC classification numbers to bibliographic records;
cataloging materials in the Slavic and east European Microform Project;
cataloging rare Russian monographs and serials; updating and maintaining
CRL databases on the web; and exploring possibilities and collections for
potential grants.
As of May 25, 1999, CRLCatalog, CRL's online public access catalog
contained nearly 506,000 bibliographic records.
ACCESS SERVICES
To date, the number of requests processed by the CRL Access Services
Department is holding steady with that of the previous year. Nearly 42,000
requests have been handled by Access Services staff with more than 70,000
filled either by items sent out on loan, filled by photocopying, fax, or
ARIEL. Patron-initiated circulation resulting from OHIOLINK requests is
nearing 2,500 and will show a slight increase over last year by year's end.
IX. NEW CRL MEMBERS:
The Orbis Library COnsortium has joined CRL as a group member under a
trial arrangement through June 2001. In addition to current CRL members
University of Oregon and Oregon State University, Orbis is composed of
twelve additional colleges and universities of the Northwest.
X. PERSONNEL:
Milton T. Wolf, Senior Vice President for Collection Programs, will retire
effective December 1, 1999.
Susan Rabe will become a Program Officer for Repository Collections this
summer.
James T. Simon, formerly an IREX Program Officer, has been appointed
Program Officer for Area Studies Programs.
XI. OTHER NEWS:
EXHIBITS
Other upcoming activities for CRL include an exhibit at ALA in New
Orleans (Booth 522), and later exhibits this year at the Modern Language
Association and American Historical Association.
FEES
In view of an analysis of our non-cost recovery, and consistent with rising
costs, inflation, and Board policy, the Center for Research Libraries must
announce a microfilm price rise to $42 per reel for Center members and $75
per reel for non-members effective July 1, 1999. Our fiche duplication
charge will be $5 per fiche.
A fee for non-member use of the reading room, starting August 1, 1999 is being
proposed to the Board's Executive Committee in June.
USE OF THE CRL WEBSITE
Use of the CRL Website has increased by 10% over the year (more than
50,000 hits). The average number of hits a month is nearly 4,600 with an
increase over the last four months alone of an average of more than 5,500.
The databases searched most frequently are the OPAC, CRLCatalog (more than
20,000 hits this year), the Foreign Newspapers database (more than 7,000
hits this year), followed by the Civilian Conservation Corps database
(3,000 hits), the Ethnic Press database (2,000+ hits) and the Current CIS
Serials (1,000 hits).
Milton T. Wolf
Senior Vice President for Collection Programs
The Center for Research Libraries
6050 South Kenwood Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60637-2804
TEL: (773) 955-4545 EXT. 334
FAX: (773) 955-4339
INTERNET: wolf_at_crlmail.uchicago.edu
http://wwwcrl.uchicago.edu
Received on Wed Jun 16 1999 - 17:34:43 EDT