---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 11:11:12 -0600 From: Dan Lester <DLESTER@BSU.IDBSU.EDU> Subject: Trouble with usage studies (Albert Henderson) -Reply From: Albert Henderson <70244.1532@COMPUSERVE.COM> If I had tenure at LSU I would have been looking for a job at an institution that would support its research and education programs with an up-to-date library. Is this how you would deal with the rules of tenure? --------------------------- If you were happy with LSU otherwise, and if Chuck and friends in the library could SATISFY YOUR NEEDS despite holding the serials budget constant, why would you leave? The secret is to get the information you need....it isn't, or shouldn't be, the business or concern of the researchers as to HOW the librarians get the information needs satisfied for the faculty. I regularly have patrons who tell us where to get the item they want (they've checked holdings, which is fine), but I remind them we'll get it from the fastest and most reliable place, not necessarily the place THEY think it should come from. Our ILL people know where to get the items, and the patron needn't worry about it. I've always believed that if we leave running the Physics Department to the Physicists, they can leave the running of the library to the librarians. ================= If I were on a Federal grants review panel, I would look twice at proposals from an organization that does not have an up-to-date library collection. ---------------------- I've been on a number of federal grants review panels over the years, and my concern is simply whether or not the reseracher's needs will be met, and NOT how they are met. I'm not advocating a zero size local collection, but I also hear daily about how my wife's special library meets the needs of over 500 researchers in a Fortune 50 electronics company here, yet only has a hundred journal subscriptions (none retained over 3 years) and less than three thousand books. The patrons rave continually about her service. She meets their needs, and meets them much more quickly than is typical in an university environment. That is what matters, not how many books are in the collection. She doesn't tell them how to develop new hardware and software, and they don't tell her how to get the information they need. ======================= Inadequate preparation is the primary cause of unproductive research. ----------------------------- No argument. However, that is usually because folks are writing their grant proposals the night before they have to be faxed off, not because they didn't have TIME to do research. Of course they are working the same way they worked in grad school and undergrad school. o-) ===================== You have been squeezed by university managers whose first priority has been to get research grant money, whose secondary priority has been to expand the bureaucracy, and whose last priority has been to provide adequate library collections for research and education. -------------------------- Well, whether the above is totally true or not (and I'll only accept it in part), librarians have bosses, just as do all other employees. And we don't always like the limitations placed on us or our organizations. But, we also lack the ability to change those limitations in most cases, since they often come from statewide economic conditions, the folks who were elected to public office, etc. Sure, we can vote and protest and so on, but that doesn't mean that what we want to happen will happen. ======================== The academy has never asked for support appropriate for the use of its library collections -- which are heavily relied on by government, industry and other off-campus researchers. ------------------- This is nonsense. The librarians have fought for this for decades. Some higher administrators have supported us, and some have not. Such is life. ===================== Library collections are essential for the preparation and review of proposals, articles, etc. The "library" factor approved for the indirect costs of research has never been tailored to the role and use of library collections by researchers; I would be surprised if any library ever saw any of it. --------------------------------- Also true that the library rarely sees direct income from research funding. I've fought for it. Others have fought for it. In one institution I made a strong case, supported by the faculty senate, for some of the research overhead funding to go to the library. Five percent of the overhead at that time and place was just over a million dollars a year. The VP for Finance of the university told me he'd give us the million a year, but that he'd also cut our budget from other sources by a million a year. Basically, we could have a RELATIVELY stable income of the million from the other sources (appropriations) or we could have the MUCH more variable income from research. Since research funding varied by up to 30 percent a year, we decided to stay with the slightly more secure and stable source of funding. You might have decided differently. So it goes. ==================== A few years ago, a dozen big universities were cancelling journals all over the place while they claimed indirect costs for parties, decorations, real estate ventures, etc., etc. Millions of dollars that should have been used to maintain collections were refunded to the Treasury! Please tell me who demanded this money for library collections and was turned down. --------------------------- We can all read about such scandals in the Chronicle or elsewhere, but since they've never happened at any of the seven universities I've been employed at, I can't relate to them. Remember, these headline making stories make headlines for one reason: they are rare. They are also irrelevant to the vast majority of the readers of this list, since most of us don't work at the handful of places those things happened, and wouldn't support them if we did. Just because some poobah wasted money doesn't mean that the library would have seen the money if the bigshot didn't waste it, even if the librarian knew about it. Basically, this is just more smoke being blown up our skirts. cheers cyclops Dan Lester, Network Information Coordinator Boise State University Library, Boise, Idaho, 83725 USA voice: 208-385-1235 fax: 208-385-1394 dlester@bsu.idbsu.edu OR alileste@idbsu.idbsu.edu Cyclops' Internet Toolbox: http://cyclops.idbsu.edu "How can one fool make another wise?" Kansas, 1979.
