Librarians Association of the University of California

NRLB

DRAFT Minutes

Conference Call of November 19, 2002

Participants: Karen Butter (convenor; UCSF); Lan Dyson (UCSC) Gail Ford (recorder), Bernie Hurley (NRLF), Gary Lawrence (Library Planning, UCOP), Tom Leonard (UCB), Scott Miller (NRLF), Marilyn Sharrow (UCD), Daniel Greenstein (CDL), John Jewell, (California State Library), David De Lorenzo (LAUC)

1. Phase 3 Update
   
   1. Schedule: The passage of the bond proposition in November keeps the project on schedule. The anticipated construction start date is October 2003. With a 12 to 13-month construction period, occupancy of Phase 3 would occur in November 2004.

   2. Status report
      Funding: The bond did not fund "movable equipment", which includes items such as ladders to access upper shelves, equipment for digital preservation, etc. Equipment funding ($487,000) is scheduled for 2004-2005, but may require passage of another General Obligation bond in Spring 2004. It is also likely that no money will be forthcoming to fund construction cost inflation (CCI) experienced in 2002-2003. Hurley and Miller will watch that funds for the base building remain secure, and will report on what steps may need to be taken to bring the overall project in on budget. Members expressed concern that funding for Phase 3 not be diverted again by UCB. Leonard has been reassured by UCB administration that they want Phase 3 to go forward. Hurley pointed out that the campus has a vested interest in seeing Phase 3 completed, since Phase 3 storage is a crucial element in campus plans to seismically retrofit the Doe Annex.

      Storage rates: If Phase 3 construction is completed by November 2004, there may be a 2-8 week gap between when the remaining rated and unrated space in Phase 2 fills and when Phase 3 is available for use. This could result in NRLF having to defer receipt of somewhere between 7,000 and 27,000 volumes. If campuses are able to reduce deposits slightly to accommodate this, the Board will not have to face leasing space or arranging with SRLF to receive these materials. Dyson commented that he thought the problem might be slightly worse than depicted, since the projection uses lower deposit numbers for UCSC than have been in place for the last several years. Hurley and Miller will work with each campus to assess their ability to slow deposits, and will give as much warning as possible to campuses as Phase 2 nears capacity.

      Duplicates: NRLB discussed the fact that there are some duplicates at NRLF, although probably not many. (Exact numbers are difficult to determine since some NRLF records are very brief.) It is against NRLF policy to accept duplicates, and items that staff identify as being dups are returned to the depositing campus. Although there are not many duplicates, the fact that there are any tends to open the door for political skepticism. Studies in the past have demonstrated that the cost to identify, pull, and dispose of duplicates exceeds the value of the shelf space gained by doing so. Hurley suggested that this subject might be better addressed as UC discusses systemwide plans for a shared print archive.

      Butter congratulated Hurley and Miller for stewarding this process with such success.

2. Possible new RLF initiatives
   
   1. Shared Print Archive: Hurley pointed out that there are two pieces under discussion for creating a shared print archive: inclusion of prospective materials, and of retrospective materials. He noted that these projects may have considerable impact on both Regional Library Facilities, and he urged that the RLFs be fully included in discussions and development of these collections.

   2. Scanning tables of contents and indexes: Hurley reported that UCB is fully funding equipment and staff to begin a project to scan tables of contents and indexes for select UCB materials stored at the NRLF. The scanned pages will be available to both Pathfinder (Berkeley catalog) and Melvyl-T users via links (URLs) in the MARC record. The scans will comply with CDL digital capture standards and there are also plans to OCR the documents (hence searchable). UCB expects this to be of particular service to researchers wanting to access individual works that have been anthologized, for example. The service isn't yet fully operational, but might well result in usable catalog links early in 2003. The group encouraged Hurley and Miller to publicize this very important new resource when the program becomes operational. NRLB members also asked that NRLF present a business model for how the other northern campuses might fund scanning TOCs and indexes for materials from their collections.

3. Charging UCB and UCD for certain non-UC ILL photocopying
   Miller reported that NRLF now bills UCB Interlibrary Services and UCD Health Science Library for some copies made at their behest for shipping to non-UC borrowers. As more and more of NRLF's business moves to ARIEL and web delivery (now approximately 80%) revenue from print photocopying is small ($1300/year for UCB; $200/year for Davis.)

   After discussion, NRLB decided to suspend this kind of billing for one year, at which time use patterns will be evaluated.

4. Impact of Budget Reductions
   Responsibility for administering the NRLF was transferred from UCOP to the Berkeley campus in 1994. At this time, NRLF funds were also moved from UCOP accounts to Berkeley accounts, essentially moving responsibility for these funds from UCOP central administration to UCB. The Memorandum of Understanding that transferred responsibility for administrating the NRLF to Berkeley indicates that Berkeley is to keep separate accounts for NRLF funds to "permit unambiguous accounting of allocations to and actual expenditures by the Facilities." However, it does not stipulate that these funds cannot be reduced to meet campus-wide budget reduction targets, like those the campuses now face. UCB has levied a one-time 4% across-the-board cut on campus departments. For the first time this kind of cut has been applied to NRLF accounts, amounting to approximately a $40,000 reduction in the NRLF's operating budget for 2002/2003.

   The NRLB is extremely concerned at this reduction to the NRLF budget and will write a letter to Provost King expressing this concern. Butter will draft this document. She will also inform the SRLB that this letter is being sent to UCOP.

5. Non-UC deposits
   At the Board's request, Miller reported on the planning assumptions for non-UC deposits in Phase 3. NRLF Operating Principles state that at least 10% of the total space in each phase of the Facility be planned for non-UC deposits. If applications for the space are not received by the time capacity reaches 90%, the Board could direct NRLF to use this space for UC deposits. This same principle will be used for Phase 3.

   Lawrence reported that since 1991, there has been a uniform fee schedule used in charging non-UC institutions for depositing with both SRLF and NRLF. He has recently been advised that UCLA has asked SRLF to consider modifying this fee structure to stay in alignment with other campus policies and procedures. Lawrence will keep NRLB advised as this discussion unfolds.