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Faculty Assembly

Report of the Library Advisory Committee for May 2002.

The committee met Monday, 6 May 2002.

Present:  Lesley Ginsberg (Chair), Dean Leslie Manning (Library), David Weiss (LAS-SCI), Patrick Yarnell (LAS-HUM), Christina Martinez (Library), Rita Hug (Library), Catherine Kelly (ED).  Guests:  Sue Byerley and Mary Beth Chambers, Library.

Item: Endorsement of the Collection Philosophy.  Although at the last Representative Faculty Assembly meeting the new Collection was endorsed by a majority, the committee decided to revise and re-submit the Collection Philosophy for endorsement based on some of the suggestions we received.  The committee revised the draft, and re-thought one of the bullet points regarding responding to graduate student needs.   We also moved the funding problems the library faces to the front of the document to remind faculty of the ongoing under funding of the library.

Patrick Yarnell presented a 4-page document outlining a Rawlsian approach (from philosopher John Rawls) to the issue of distributing scarce library resources.  The committee agreed to consider the ramifications of such an approach at our next meeting.

Discussion Item:  Whether rankings of individual departments and/or degree programs should be included as a weighted factor in the distribution of library materials dollars as reflected in the Collection Philosophy.  Strong opposition was raised to this suggestion.  All the library representatives present were opposed.  There are many ranking systems put out by various organizations; further, some disciplines are accredited on a regular basis (e.g. engineering), others, like the liberal arts, are not.   The Education representative raised the issue that when education programs are reviewed, the strength of and library resources allocated to the different majors that feed into educational degrees were taken into consideration.  In the case of GSPA, questions were raised whether one could separate the ranking of our program from that of CU Denver's.  [NB: at the Rep. Fac. Assembly meeting, GSPA faculty Michael McLeod noted that GSPA is considered one unit, inclusive of all branches, but that this is new for this year].  The consensus was not to recommend consideration of rankings at this time.  The committee suggests that if rankings were to be considered, a separate committee of faculty and librarians would need to agree on various ranking systems.

Sue Byerley and Mary Beth Chambers then joined the meeting to discuss a survey of faculty use of the library, which the library would like to distribute to all faculty in the Fall of 2002.  We looked at three model surveys from other institutions and discussed their relative merits.  The committee agreed that we would support the library in their efforts to get faculty to complete the survey, and that we might use information gleaned from the survey when we visit the topic of possible revisions to the journals allocation formula next year (AY 2002-3).

Respectfully submitted, Lesley Ginsberg, Chair, Library Advisory Committee.