INDIANA UNIVERSITY

WORKING GROUP ON THE RESEARCH SCHOLAR BASE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON LIBRARIES

REPORT

July 18, 1988

The charge to the subcommittee on Libraries was to develop working plans to implement proposals to "improve the Library [system] as a principal source of support for University research." These proposals are taken from the June 27, 1988 draft of the President's planning paper, "IU: One University--Indiana at its Best".

1. Substantially increase the budgets for book and serial acquisitions throughout the IU system

2. Enhance funding to acquire equipment necessary to access electronic information

3.Complete the implementation of the University-wide integrated on-line library information system, making information about the holdings of all libraries available to all faculty

4.Implement on all campuses the Library Information and Reference Network.

The four suggested steps were judged in part to be too narrowly focused. Furthermore, the subcommittee concluded that there were key elements missing from the proposed formula for improving the library system. Therefore, in line with instructions from Dean Morton Lowengrub to expand, refine, and make specific recommendations for implementation, we offer two additional proposals.

5.Substantially increase the level of fulltime staffing in the libraries system

6. Increase the efforts to preserve the collections and make them more accessible.

The four previously formulated proposals, if they are to have a significant influence on the effort to insure that IU is one of the few national research centers of excellence which will remain in the 21st century, are largely dependent on these additional initiatives.

1. THE COLLECTIONS.

No research library can maintain its utility without a significant, continuing, uninterrupted effort to build a research collection of books and journals. However, research librarians and scholars in the United States have recognized that it is no longer possible to build a truly comprehensive collection in any discipline. During at least three periods of time since 1970, the combined forces of inflation and devaluation of the dollar abroad have resulted in insufficient funds in the materials budgets (from which books and journals are purchased) to adequately meet the needs of the U.S. academic research community. The responses made by librarians in consultation with scholars during those periods have included:

1. to seek additional funds from university administrators

2. to divide the materials budget into a number of funds, with all "fund managers" (selectors) responsible for keeping the payments within their assigned budgets

3. to cancel subscriptions to serials, especially duplicate subscriptions

4. to forego the purchase of foreign-language materials

5. to shift monies from the purchase of monographs to the serials side of the budget (in some areas, effectively ceasing to buy books for a year or more)

6. to develop cooperative, resource-sharing agreements with other libraries

7. to substitute alternate forms of materials (microforms, electronic media, etc.) for traditional printed books and journals.

While a certain amount of healthy pruning and weeding of unnecessary materials from the collections of the IU libraries has occurred during the past 15 years, most IU faculty and librarians agree that we now face a severe crisis in collection building in the IU libraries system. The libraries have had to forego the purchase of much current monographic materials in all disciplines and to curtail the purchase of retrospective materials so important to research in the humanities. To illustrate this point, consider the fact that in the fiscal year just ended, book orders were placed for only 23,775 titles at IUB. In fiscal year 1983/84, 47,630 book titles were ordered. About three dozen countries produce in excess of 1,000 book titles per year, with their collective output totalling about 500,000 titles. A recent study of libraries in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) showed that only two ARL libraries added 40 percent of those three dozen countries' book output to their collections in the early 1980s. Twenty two of the ARL libraries added 20 percent, and 80 of them added less than 10 percent.1 In the year just past, assuming the world book output has remained relatively constant, the IUB libraries added less than 5 percent. During that same period, over 1,300 journal titles, with subscription costs well in excess of $130,000 were canceled at IUB. Approximately 20,000 serial subscriptions remain in the Serials Department of the IUB Libraries. Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory lists about 31,000 serials in the scientific, medical, and technical areas alone, a number which increases at a rate of about 5 percent annually. IUB has become the largest borrower of books and copies of articles through interlibrary loan among the libraries of the CIC (Committee on Interinstitutional Cooperation: Big Ten plus the University of Chicago). The volume of interlibrary loan requests became so great at IUB this past year that the Main Library Reference Department (which borrows all interlibrary loan materials for all IUB library patrons) instituted a limit of five requests per person per week for a period of three months.

At the libraries (excluding the Law, Dental, and Medical School Libraries), subscription costs for serials have increased 170.2 percent in the last nine fiscal years, while the total number of subscriptions has increased only 8.9 percent (from 3,902 to 4,250) in the same period. The cost of serials at the Indianapolis Law Library increased 174 percent in the last ten years, while the number of subscriptions rose just 7.7 percent.

The university administration has not been unresponsive to the pressures on the libraries' materials budget. Nevertheless, the increases, while consistently far in excess of the percentage increments given by the legislature to IU for the total budget, have not been sufficient. Therefore, the measures we suggest below are aimed both at increasing the financial support of the collection-building process and ensuring that the available funds are most effectively put to use in support of the research process at IU.

a. The university must guarantee that there is in the IU libraries system a basic research collection in support of each area of scholarly inquiry which has a corresponding teaching program at IU.

The importance of the IUB and Indianapolis libraries collections to research throughout the system must be stressed. The Indianapolis libraries encompass collections which are considerably stronger in certain areas than those at Bloomington. This is true not only in research areas served by the professional school libraries (medicine, dentistry, and some areas of law), but also in disciplines like social work, engineering and technology, and philanthropy. Nevertheless, many, if not most, faculty at Indianapolis and other campuses of IU continue to rely on the Bloomington collections for most of their research needs. In some areas, the Indianapolis libraries serve as secondary and back-up research collections for Bloomington. There is clearly a need for better cooperative collection development among the libraries of the IU system.

Systemwide, the basic research collection should satisfy 75 percent of the research needs in any discipline supported by IU. Library bibliometric studies consistently show that there is a relatively small amount of core materials in all disciplines which satisfy this criterion. Librarians and faculty throughout IU must reach a consensus on what constitutes a basic research collection and the extent to which that collection should be duplicated among the various units of the libraries system. If there are gaps in the basic collection, those must be addressed as the highest priority in the acquisition of materials throughout the system. It is believed that a substantial infusion of funds, as much as 25 percent added to the current library materials budgets, is needed simply to insure the capacity to support a basic research collection and to fill in the gaps in the existing collections. Once those gaps are filled, as a general guideline, IU should strive to collect ten percent of the world's book output each year.

Better cooperative collection development throughout the libraries system is needed for the serials necessary to support the basic research collections. By splitting the materials budget into many funds, independently managed by many librarians, we have forced the librarians into making decisions about serials subscriptions which may have been sound from the perspective of a single discipline, but which have resulted in the cancellation of journals of fundamental importance to researchers in other, often interdisciplinary, areas of research. A broader view should be taken of the total basic research collection needs at IU. Agreement must be reached on what constitutes a basic serials research collection for each discipline, and funds must be earmarked in support of those subscriptions. The capability to deal with periodic price increases of those basic serials must be enhanced. It is very difficult for a single library fund manager to cope with a fifteen percent increase in serials subscription costs in a year when the fund has been increased by 7.5 percent. Perhaps the cost increases of those basic materials could be absorbed if folded into larger serials funds which collectively are likely to exhibit a smaller overall rate of inflation in a given year. These funds might be divided among traditional science, social science, and humanities categories.

Certain library materials are truly basic to the research needs at IU, and they should be acquired, regardless of the cost increase. In a sense, the cost of the basic research collection is analagous to the cost of utilities. Price increases for utilities are generally viewed as unavoidable and fully funded. Likewise, inflationary cost increases for serials and books which form the basic research collection should be fully funded. The key to this approach is a realistic appraisal of the cost of a basic collection for research needs at IU. The basic research collection should satisfy 75 percent of the need in any discipline.

b. Provide funds for more specialized research materials (beyond the basic collection) by discipline or area in harmony with the priorities set by the university administration.

Funding of research materials beyond the level for the basic collection should reflect the importance of the program or discipline to the university. It is essential that the university not send mixed signals to the libraries on what programs or disciplines should receive the greatest support in the materials budget. We suggest that for those programs which clearly rank among the top ten percent of departments/schools in the nation, sufficient funds should be allocated so that approximately 90 percent of the need for materials is satisfied within the IU system libraries. Thus, all researchers, depending on the importance of their departments or programs to the university, should realistically expect that, on the average, from one out of four to one out of ten times their needs for books and journal articles or other printed materials will not be met by materials physically housed within the IU libraries system. In comparison to faculty in the most highly-rated programs at IU, faculty in other departments must acknowledge that their research needs will not be as well met by locally-held materials.

To assist in determining the amount of funds which should be allocated for specialized research materials in given disciplines or programs, the university should provide each year a list which shows the dollar amounts each department or program is contributing to the library budget through grant overhead income. The income designated for the library from grant overhead should be a very significant factor in the allocation of funds for the purchase of specialized research materials.

It is entirely possible that the percentage included in the grant overhead formula for library support is low. Efforts should be made immediately to determine whether this is so. If necessary, an outside consultant could be hired to lend credence to the study.

c. Alternate sources of information must be used to the maximum in support of research, and significant subsidies for these avenues to research materials must be provided.

Once clear guidelines have been accepted for the level of research materials which will be provided within the IU libraries system collections, it is essential that no differentiation be made among departments or disciplines for access to materials not locally owned. The primary avenue to such materials for some time to come will be document delivery of printed books, copies of journal articles, and other printed materials obtained from sources outside the IU libraries system. Increasingly, however, this will involve the use of electronic sources of informaton. To cover the cost of these options over the next six years, we recommend that the libraries materials budgets should reserve at least ten percent for other forms of information delivery. This would cover most of the costs of traditional interlibrary loan, the use of commercial document suppliers, and electronic forms of information.

For the libraries system to provide adequate service based on the three-tiered approach described in sections a-c above, it is estimated that half again the current level of support for the materials budget is needed. A fifty percent increase in the materials budget at the start of the next biennium should permit significant steps to be taken toward rebuilding the research collection and providing access to materials and information sources not owned by the IU libraries system. This is a far cheaper set of options than to attempt to uniformly provide in-depth research collections in all disciplines. That option would probably require three times the amount of the current budget to be added to existing funds, assuming the necessary endowment is included in the needed funds.

d. Allow researchers to purchase some of the more esoteric materials required in their current research from overhead money which is returned to them in support of funded research.

It should be recognized that decisions made by librarians with long-term collection building goals and guidelines in mind may not correspond to pressing current research needs of a very productive researcher. Therefore, some portion of the grant overhead for library support should be reserved and returned to the individual who received the grant, as needed.

e. Establish no new program until it is shown that there is (or will be) an adequate library collection in support of it.

Too often in the past new programs have come into being without considering the availability of materials necessary to support the programs. To attempt to retrospectively build a collection on demand as the needs of newly recruited scholars are recognized is significantly more expensive than a well-planned, continuing effort to build collections. In fact, it may be impossible to obtain the requisite materials long after they are published. If the existing library collection is inadequate to support research in a new area, the program should be established only if funds are guaranteed to support the acquisition of a research collection. If necessary, an attempt might be made to purchase a unique collection of materials from the library at the institution from which an outstanding scholar is being recruited to IU.

f. Increase efforts to raise funds in the private sector for a library endowment.

By this proposal we seek to foster a more direct partnership with individuals, business, and industry in the maintenance of collection building at IU. Many of the reference materials in the IU libraries are too expensive for a library in a single business or industry to purchase. However, the availability of these and other materials in an IU library with easy access to their employees should encourage continuing support from Indiana firms. There is a widespread feeling that increased efforts should be made to build a much larger endowment for the libraries. Other academic libraries, both private and public, which have had success in this area might be contacted for advice. A reasonable goal in this area is twice the amount currently devoted to collection building throughout the system.

In spite of our support for this proposal, experience suggests that fundraising from the private sector is not very successful in securing money for the purchase of library materials. Therefore, it is crucial that it be a very high priority to stress the need for increased funding for library materials to the public funding source, not only for our own research, but to continue to meet the reference needs of Indiana businesses, industry, and citizens of the state.

2. EQUIPMENT

While there is within the libraries a serious lack of equipment to access electronic information, there are also significant unmet needs for other types of equipment. This includes microform readers, reader/printers, and microfiche-to-microfiche duplication equipment. Large numbers of research materials are held by the IU libraries in microformat. As the available stack space has been filled, even current journals are being retained in large amounts only in microform. In addition, there is a considerable lack of other types of equipment in the libraries system. In particular, telefacsimile machines which would speed the delivery of research materials throughout the IU system are not uniformly available. These machines should be installed in all library service units during the next biennium. A high-quality FAX machine lists for about $2,500. As many as 25 of them may still be needed throughout the system on July 1, 1989.

It is with electronic formats of information that funded equipment will have the greatest and most far-reaching impact on research at IU over the next six years. All library service points should have user workstations which provide the capability to access remote or on-site databases and download data in a form which allows the researcher to easily incorporate the information into a research project. The minimum configuration of equipment includes a dedicated microcomputer, telecommunications device, software, optical scanner, a printer, and other hardware as needed. Typically, each workstation would cost about $4,000. During the next biennium, user workstations should be installed in numbers roughly equivalent to the number of photocopy machines currently in the libraries.

A second category of equipment for accessing electronic information is linked to the online library information system discussed in the following section. All public access terminals and other computer equipment required for the initial implemention of that project must be purchased during the three biennia.

3. THE NOTIS SYSTEM.

There is concern that implementation of the University-wide online library information system has competed for funding with the materials budget and might continue to do so. This should not and will not happen. Part of the concern has arisen from confusion between the libraries' automation project (which is the subject of this section) and other technological expense categories long incurred by the libraries, including OCLC costs and expenses associated with online searching of remote databases.

The libraries automation project is a multi-million dollar endeavor to provide five computer-based components which are not currently available in the libraries system. These are an online public access catalog, a serials control system, a circulation control system, a book acquisitions system, and a non-public catalog (including authority files). The contract has recently been signed for the system based on the NOTIS (Northwestern University) software, and the initial $1.12 million to begin the project has been received from a special appropriation administered by the Higher Education Commission.

The ultimate goal of the libraries automation project is to link all academic libraries in Indiana and to provide better access to library materials to all citizens of the state. Since 1976, the IU libraries system has cataloged books through an online system called OCLC. The OCLC interlibrary loan subsystem is also used to identify libraries throughout the nation from which to borrow materials. The expense of OCLC is essential to fund each year, since it is through OCLC that we utilize the shared cataloging records of other libraries, thus saving enormous numbers of man-hours to catalog materials. The OCLC archival tapes will also provide the database of records, including holdings of journals, which will be loaded into the NOTIS system. Thus, while successful implementation of NOTIS is dependent to a large extent on the continued use of OCLC, the expense categories are totally separate, and the sources of funding are quite different.

Having made that distinction, we affirm that the library automation project promises to have a very positive impact on the way research is done at Indiana University. In effect, it will take the guesswork out of much of the research effort. The scholar will not only be able to discover if a known work is held by the libraries, but also can learn the status of the work (i.e., whether charged out to another, on the shelves, at the bindery, etc.). Furthermore, the identification of works which were unknown to the researcher will be facilitated by keyword subject searching. For those reasons and many more, the libraries automation project deserves the full support of all of the academic community. Maximum effort should be made to continue the special state funding for the project and to seek supplemental funding from private and other sources.

4. LIRN--THE LIBRARY INFORMATION AND REFERENCE NETWORK.

It is proposed to implement on all campuses of IU the Library Information and Reference Network. On the Bloomington campus, holders of GOLD VAX accounts can enter an option for library services from an initial menu. This leads to a screen which is reproduced below.

IU ACADEMIC INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT

Library Information and Reference Network (LIRN)

[1] Information: Hours, Branches, Departments

[2] Library News

[3] OCLC: Online Computer Library Center

[4] Renew Library Materials

[5] Delivery Services (BDS, ILL)

[6] Purchasing Library Materials

[7] Reference Services

[8] Request Library Tours

[9] Library Services Suggestions

[10] Coming LIRN Services

Eventually, the LIRN option will include a link to the Online Public Access Catalog created by the libraries automation project. LIRN has proven to be a popular service, combining as it does a read-only bulletin board function (options 1, 2, 10), menu-driven electronic mail connections (options 4-9), and an experimental direct access to the OCLC database (option 3). There is a task force at work on implementing this service on all campuses. In order to realize this goal, some rather complex technical problems must be overcome. It is not possible using the different electronic mail systems in place at IU on different campuses for the various units to easily communicate with each other. Transporting software from one computer environment to another to implement the LIRN system presents similar problems. We recommend that each campus carefully examine the costs and benefits to be expected from this project and make individual budget requests if they desire to pursue this option.

5. STAFFING.

The IU libraries have a severe staffing shortage. This may not be readily apparent from the FTE figures, which include student workers. It is the proportion of student help compared to the total work force which complicates matters. IU has one of the highest rates of student employment of any major ARL library. The constant training, re-training and supervision of this work force degrades the productivity of the libraries as a whole. While it is highly appropriate that students be employed in the IU libraries, the degree of dependence on student help for key functions should be carefully examined. Where necessary, student positions should be combined and converted to fulltime support staff.

The preceding four initiatives, involving as they do a substantial increase in the workload for the libraries, demand that additional professional librarian and support staff be hired. Some of these should be temporary appointments where employment is tied to specific goals. These might include tasks associated with acquiring and processing the needed research materials which have been backlogged in the last few years, establishing training programs for faculty and students to use certain types of advanced technology equipment, and performing the many one-time tasks associated with the implementation of the libraries automation project.

There has not been any significant increase to the total pool of libraries system employees in the past two decades. This situation holds despite the introduction of many new services during that period and substantial increases in the minimum wages paid to student workers (coupled with declines in the level of federal work/study student wage support). Librarians and other library employees work in a very dynamic environment, requiring constant re-training and the honing of skills. As library services increase in number and complexity, it is necessary to add staff. If that cannot be done through the normal funding mechanisms, then we recommend a two-tiered system of services, one to be universally provided to all IU patrons for free, the other to be fee-based, with full personnel costs included.

Free services might include access (keeping the doors open), on-site circulation, ready reference, etc. Fee-based services might include off-site delivery of materials, online searching, in-depth reference assistance, etc.

6. PRESERVATION OF AND ACCESS TO MATERIALS.

It is a fact that much of the research collection in the IU libraries system is deteriorating to the point that it will be unusable in the next century. Certain types of materials are already at that point. It is vital that Indiana University pay more attention to the preservation of its research collection. This includes not only the physical tasks of preservation like mending, binding, de-acidification, and microfilming. It also includes the construction of adequate facilities to house the collections. Significant library building projects are underway at this time. However, a major addition to the stack space for materials on the Bloomington campus will be needed very soon. For all practical purposes, the stack space in the Bloomington libraries will be full by 1991. A 1987 report of the Ohio Board of Regents Library Study Committee notes that technology "...won't appreciably diminish the problem of storage, at least within the next decade."2

In addition to the need to acquire and preserve a significant collection of research materials within the IU libraries system, we stress the notion of accessibility. It is essential to make better accessible not only the research materials owned by IU, but also the entire knowledge base of the world. While automation of the libraries will substantially enhance access to our own collections, even that effort will not provide access at a level desired by many: the article level of a journal, the chapter level of a book or conference proceedings volume, etc. Therefore, we propose that IU fully support the efforts of the IU libraries and the computing services to secure appropriate software and mount on the local computer systems appropriate databases. This option should provide a cost-effective mechanism to expand access to database searching. There are large numbers of research materials found in those databases which are not part of the IU collections, in addition to the many, many citations to materials owned by IU. An additional $100,000 annually of the proposed increase to the materials budget is required for the tape lease fees to support this service.

There is also a critical need to physically move research materials throughout the system. If better cooperation in collection building is indeed a desirable goal, then parochial attitudes of ownership will have to give way. Unnecessary restrictions on the circulation of materials should be eliminated, and a document delivery mechanism installed which will place the needed materials in the hands of the researcher in the shortest possible time. To that end, a dedicated delivery shuttle among campuses should be considered.

In conclusion, the collections of the IU libraries are a rich treasure which must not be allowed to decline in value to the research effort at IU. They are important not only for research itself, but also for their use in teaching, where new knowledge is transmitted to future generations of researchers. Nevertheless, realistic goals must be established for traditional collection building efforts, and a substantial investment made in alternate forms of access to information. The libraries are valuable at Indiana University not just because of their tangible research materials. Research gets done at IU in large part due to the efforts of a dedicated group of librarians and staff who service the research collections and who enhance the researchers' access to information sources, wherever they may be located in the world. They deserve the fullest support through the measures outlined in this report.

Respectfully submitted,

Barbara Fischler, IUPUI

Helen Nader, IUB

Gary Wiggins, IUB (chair)

Thomas Wolf, IUSE

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1. Ferguson, Anthony W., Joan Grant, and Joel S. Rutstein. "The RLG Conspectus: Its Uses and Benefits," College & Research Libraries v. 49 no. 3 (May 1988): 197-206.

2. Academic Libraries in Ohio: Progress through Collaboration, Storage, and Technology. Report of the Library Study Committee, Ohio Board of Regents, September 1987. p. 16.