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NEWS FROM THE FIELD

C&RL News, May 1999
Vol. 60, No. 5

by Mary Ellen Davis

High-tech, off-site facility housing books to be built
The three institutions with the largest book collections in the greater New York Metropolitan and surrounding area (the New York Public Library [NYPL], 13.3 million book-like materials; Princeton University, 6 million printed volumes; and Columbia University, 7 million printed volumes) have agreed to build and share a high-tech, automated book storage facility to house millions of their infrequently used volumes.

The high-density facility, expected to be located at Princeton University’s James Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, New Jersey, will consist of 15 build-as-needed modules (approximately 225,000 gross square feet of construction) each capable of storing 2 million volumes.

Infrequently used books and scholarly journals of all three institutions will be moved to remote storage and will be available within 24-hours of a reader request, alleviating the overcrowding and significant storage problems faced by all three institutions. The materials stored off-site will be accessible to users of all three institutions.

The initial phase of construction will include a joint processing facility and three modules, each costing $5 million to construct, to be shared by the consortium. Columbia expects to move 1 million volumes by 2001, the first year of operation, and deposit 110,000 volumes per year; NYPL expects to deposit 1.3 million volumes with annual deposits of 150,000.

Columbia and Princeton have agreed to move toward digitizing back issues of stored journals (60% of all stored materials). Digitization of the materials would allow institution users to instantly search, cross-reference, download, and print out articles contained in the combined collections.

ACRL copyright debate on Web
ACRL held a very successful 9th National Conference, “Racing Toward Tomorrow,” April 8–11, 1999, in Detroit. Approximately 3,000 people attended the conference and enjoyed a full range of workshops, programs, exhibits, and special events. A full report of the conference will appear in the June issue of C&RL News.

But if you missed the conference or even if you just missed the “Open Forum on Copyright and Fair Use” featuring James Neal, director of Libraries, Johns Hopkins University, and Pat Schroeder, president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), you can still watch this session on the Web through July 8, 1999.

Go to http://www.ala.org/acrl/copyrighthdr.html. You will need:

•RealPlayer version 5.0 or higher. The current version can be downloaded for free from http://www.real.com/products/player/dload.html

•A 56Kbps or higher speed connection to the Internet

Censorship exhibit available
“Censorship in Public Colleges and Universities” is a new exhibit available from the Long Island Coalition against Censorship. The exhibit, which combines a history of challenges to academic freedom with censorship of the college press, begins with McCarthyism in the 1950s and describes two of the most significant cases of the period. The second part of the exhibit focuses on censorship of the college press from the 1960s through the present.

The exhibit contains 23 11” x 14” illustrations accompanied by text. It is easily displayed on poster boards. The exhibit may be purchased for $39 including postage. Send a letter requesting the exhibit or a purchase order to: Donald Parker, Long Island Coalition Against Censorship, P.O. Box 296, Port Washington, NY 11050. Call (516) 944-9799 for more information.

Oregon State University faculty vote for more money for library
The Faculty Senate of Oregon State University (OSU) approved a recommendation that encourages administrators to dedicate more money to the library. The Senate recommended that the university double the library’s budget from seven million to about $14 million over a six-year period. Faculty at OSU want administrators to know that departments aren’t the only areas that have been hurt by past budget cuts.

Historically, OSU’s library has received about 2% of the $300 million the university spends each year. Professors want to double that to 4%. One professor noted that a strong collection is an important factor in recruiting and retaining excellent students and faculty.

Last year, graduate students successfully petitioned the university president to restore cuts to the library collections budget. State legislators are looking favorably on a new method for dividing state money among Oregon’s public universities. “The resolution is designed so that the library will have an easier time to make a case,” says Ken Williamson, president of the Faculty Senate. “Most faculty, however, agree that the library needs additional funding before more academic programs.”

University librarian Karyle Butcher said she was thrilled with the support and looks forward to working with the students and faculty to build the collections.

Univ. of Hartford offers college library newsletters on the Web
ALiNUS (Academic Library Newsletters in the United States) is an Internet gateway to more than 400 online academic library newsletters published by U.S. institutions of higher education. The primary purpose of the ALiNUS Directory is to encourage communication among academic librarians. The protoype of this database is the listing provided by the College Libraries Section of ACRL. The database is searchable by name of institution and newsletter title. ALiNUS is edited by Ronald Epp, director of libraries at the University of Hartford, and former managing editor of Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. Check out the newsletters on the Web at http://libaxp.hartford.edu/llr/alinusin.htm.  

SUNY/OCLC name change
Effective April 1, the SUNY/OCLC Network, a regional affiliate of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, changed its name to Nylink (New York Library Network). Nearly 350 institutions dispersed throughout New York State and adjacent regions in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and representing more than 700 academic, special, government, law, medical public, school, and nonprofit libraries constitute the SUNY/OCLC membership.

New books on Friends, reference, and service published by ACRL
People Come First: User-Centered Academic Library Service edited by Dale Montanelli and Patricia Stenstrom is a collection of ten essays that take a look at library functions from the user’s point of view in light of new technologies.

The opening two chapters present overviews of the issues at stake followed by chapters written from a functional perspective, for example, collection development, cataloging, and reference. However, the authors cross these functional boundaries to describe future visions of library service and new collaborative relationships within the library. Technology and teaching are presented as tools for providing service, as support for the movement away from the library as a place and toward the library as a service available wherever and whenever the user needs it. Readers will gain insights on how library managers can aid in the implementation of user-centered services. People Come First is available for $28.00 to ACRL members; $31.00 list price. (ISBN: 0-8389-7999-8)

Mail book orders to Hugh Thompson, ACRL, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611 or phone (800) 545-2433, press 7 or fax (312) 836-9958.