To the Academic Senate, Santa Cruz Division:

The Committee on the Library (COL) met twice during the 1999-2000 academic year, once in the Fall and again in the Winter. In addition, the University-wide Committee on the Library (UCOL) met once in the Winter, with representation from each of the campuses.

The major issue considered by COL this year was the looming space crisis threatening McHenry Library, caused by the fact that the UC Office of the President failed to provide funding for the McHenry Addition/TEAM Center.

At the Fall Quarter meeting, COL discussed the issues raised by the fact that the plans to build a McHenry Addition/TEAM Center (Technology Electronic Access and Media Center), a top campus priority, cannot go forward at this point because the UC Office of the President failed to provide the necessary funds. University Librarian Allan Dyson informed the Committee of the consequences for McHenry Library. Since the Library will soon be running out of stack space, beginning in Summer 2000 approximately 50,000 less used volumes will be moved to a storage facility in order to make room for new acquisitions. The Committee discussed the various negative consequences that these developments will have for our campus, and decided to take some appropriate action later in the year, after further consideration of the issues.

At the UCOL meeting in Winter Quarter, the main item was the experimental archiving of print copies of journals. A central item of discussion was the security and permanence of such electronic archives, and a broad range of opinions was expressed by the participants. UCOL passed a resolution endorsing the implementation of an experiment that will help the University increase its understanding of strategies for creating a durable and reliable archive.

At the Winter Quarter meeting, COL members were briefed on the items discussed at the Winter UCOL meeting. University Librarian Dyson requested input from COL regarding a new reserves policy at McHenry Library aimed at preventing problems that sometimes arose in the past because an item that was of crucial importance for a course was returned excessively late. In its discussion COL agreed with the Library that, besides raising the fees to be charged in such cases, the situation can be ameliorated by improved communication between the faculty and the reserves staff. The Committee continued to discuss the space problem at McHenry, and based on this discussion wrote a letter to the Chancellor and to the Chair of the Academic Senate expressing the strong support of the UCSC faculty for the Library, and specifically for the McHenry Addition/TEAM Center project, and drawing attention to the dire consequences of the space crisis at McHenry for the teaching and research environment at UCSC.

October 18, 2000