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1. The meeting was called to order at 3:30 p.m. by Professor Studer, in the absence of Chair Jane Case-Smith. Approval of the Minutes of the May meeting was postponed until the November meeting.

2. Library Council's Annual Report is due for the November 20 meeting of the University Senate. The Minutes of this meeting will be forwarded to the Chair as soon as possible for her to use in drafting that report. If time permits, the draft report will be circulated to Library Council for comments before final submission.

3. Joseph Branin will assume the position of Director of the OSU Libraries the first of January 2000. The selection/negotiation process went on long enough that he had made commitments for Fall Semester to SUNY, Stony Brook that he felt needed to be honored. A copy of his resume was distributed with the materials for today's meeting.

4. The physical disposition of the card catalog had been a discussion topic for Library Council during the past academic year, and it had been planned to physically remove the catalog to an off site location. During the summer, John Burnham from the History Department and a few of his colleagues lodged a strong objection to this plan of action. It is now planned to house the catalog in the east corridor of the ground floor of the building for at least the next several years. A small portion of the catalog has already been moved to the new location to make way for office construction in the area currently housing the catalog on the First Floor of Main Library. The east corridor of the ground floor has been the site for a portion of the Friends of the Libraries Book Sales which are held twice yearly. An alternate location will be identified for future Book Sales, and the catalog will be moved following the completion of the next Book Sale to be held November 3-5. For historical purposes, a few catalog cabinets should be retained for display after the Main Library is renovated.

5. The recarpeting of Main Library has been delayed; State regulations require the appointment of an architect to oversee a project of this size. Spring Quarter is the likely completion timeframe.

6. The Library Materials Index has again provided the Libraries with a significant supplement to the 1999/2000 annual budget to insure that the Libraries' purchasing power is retained..

7. Renovation of the Main Library building has been included in the Capital Plan for 2001-2002 in the form of $500,000 for a feasibility study, planning, etc., to result in an accurate proposal for funding in the following biennium. It is currently estimated that the renovation will cost $65 to $66 million, half of which is to be raised privately. Priorities for this fund raising effort are yet to be set. Some years ago it had been determined that there was no alternative location in central campus for a new building to be built, and there is a certain nostalgic value attached to the existing building itself and its central location.

8. A report on OhioLINK's Electronic Journal Center (EJC) was distributed prior to the meeting. Even though the EJC has not been publicized, the usage level over the past year has been very heavy. The initial database was skewed in favor of science, technology, and medicine, but more and more humanities titles are currently being added. As a result of the availability of the EJC, OSU has gained access to over 300 titles that were not previously available on campus; these 300 titles have accounted for ca. one third of the OSU usage. Over the past year over 93,000 articles have been downloaded by OSU faculty, staff, and students.

9. An area of concern to the Libraries is the apparently imminent passage of a new Minimum Wage Bill by the U. S. Congress. The minimum wage is currently $5.15 per hour, and the beginning wage paid to students by OSU Libraries is $5.55. If the minimum wage is raised by $.50 incrememts, we could absorb the first increase within the current budget, but the additional $.50 would cost the Libraries an additional $100,000 per year, which poses a very serious problem. The disparity between the wage we can offer student employees and rates as high as $8.50 per hour paid by some campus employers continues to be a significant problem. Students can always get considerably higher hourly rates off campus.

10. The remainder of the meeting involved demonstrations of three new electronic resources which are now, or will be, available via OhioLINK--the Digital Media Center, Electronic Dissertations, and net.Library.

The Digital Media Center presently contains ca. 3,000 images, and by the end of Fall Quarter should have an additional 50,000 images, which will be obtained from AMICO (Art Museum Image Consortium). The initial 3,000 images are keyed to the standard texts used in introductory art courses; they are owned by OhioLINK and may be downloaded for support of classroom activities. There are listings by both title and artist, and searching is possible via a variety of parameters.

OhioLINK is also planning to provide for a collection of electronic dissertations from its members which will be similar to a resource currently available at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. VPI has developed a database which can be searched using a variety of parameters singly or in coordination with one another. VPI is making its software and formatting available for use by OhioLINK, and it is anticipated that a pilot database containing records for four Ohio institutions will be made available during the current academic year.

Net.Library is a commercial venture which is making main stream books available for use and purchase; they currently have a demonstration database containing 2,000 titles. OhioLINK is currently funding a pilot project as a demonstration of an additional mechanism for making materials available to the Ohio academic community. If the pilot project is successful, a central pool of funds could be developed from which OhioLINK could purchase a number of electronic copies that could be available to the entire State, and obviate the need for purchase by individual campuses. In addition, electronic books in general cost less than printed copies, thus increasing the purchasing power of existing funding.

Elizabeth J. Sawyers
for William J. Studer, Secretary