1. Vision Statement
2. Recommendations
3. Rationale
4. Documentary Support
Library Task Force:
Sebastian Knowles, English (Chair)
Charles Atkinson, Music
Betty Bartlett, Allied Med
Tony Buffington, Veterinary Clinical Sciences
Jarrod Burks, CGS
James A. Cowan, Chemistry
Gay Dannelly, University Libraries
Bernard Erven, Agricultural Economics
Jeffrey Ford, Management and Human Resources
Elisa Katz, IPC
Elizabeth Peters, USG
John Rayner, Geography
Introductory Remarks
The Library Task Force was convened in September 1997 by Richard Sisson and Edward Ray, with the following charge:
The Task Force is to review and assess the current context in which OSU Libraries operate and to recommend how we can best position the Libraries to operate most effectively over the next 10-15 years.
The Task Force quickly came to realize that the last three years of the 20th
century represent a window of opportunity for OSU Libraries, as a new
President joins the University in July 1998, and as a new director of
Libraries must be found to take over from William Studer in July 1999.
The Task Force set itself the primary task of laying the groundwork to
allow OSU Libraries and the Office of Academic Affairs to make the most
of this opportunity.
The report addresses its charge in four connected sections:
The report is the result of extensive consultation with the university community,
with the representative constituencies of the student, faculty and staff
members on the Task Force, and with library committees across the
university: a time-line of consultations is provided on the following page.
We could not have done this without the help of the OAA-appointed
External Advisory Review Board, a group of internationally distinguished
scholars in the university library community: Martin Blume, Editor-in-Chief of the American Physical Society, Ann Okerson, Associate
University Librarian at Yale, Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the
Coalition for Networked Information, Mort Rahimi, Vice President of
Information Systems & Technology at Northwestern University, and Tom
Shaughnessy, University Librarian at Minnesota. The three directors of
the Libraries here at OSU (Susan Kroll, Health Sciences, Bruce Johnson,
Law, and William Studer, University Libraries) provided us with
invaluable assistance, as did Bob Kalal from UTS, Barbara Van Brimmer
from the Medical Heritage Center, Raimund Goerler, University Archivist,
Pattie Charles, Library Development Officer, Edward Riedinger, Co-chair
of the Libraries' Internal TASKS Report, and Marshall Swain, College of
Humanities Library Committee. Thanks also to Don Krug, Chair of
Senate Library Council, Alan Randall, Chair of Faculty Council, to John
Wilkins and Terry Miller, Chairs of the Science & Engineering Library
Committee, and to all those who came to our open meetings for Staff and
for the University Community, or brought concerns and comments to our
attention. Thanks especially to the Task Force's two excellent secretaries,
Ann Lawrence (in Fall), and Joan Lorenz (in Winter and Spring), whose
good-natured efficiency made the work of the Task Force considerably
lighter.
Sebastian Knowles, Chair
Time-Line of Consultations and Reports
1. VISION STATEMENT
A University Library for the 21st Century
Introduction
What the Task Force would like to propose is something extraordinary. An opportunity now exists to redefine the Libraries, and to invest significantly in the University Library System to make the Libraries a fully functional partner in the University. We have in mind a newly imagined Main Library, refashioned from the original Main Library building, that would provide the University a center for its academic mission. This new Library would be a gathering place for students and teachers, and an interdisciplinary site for disciplines young and old; our sense of the space is that it would become the intellectual crossroads of the campus. Structurally and symbolically, the Reference Hall in the Main Library would be excavated from its current condition and given over to the union of information access and information generation, a space that would house an ever-changing array of research tools, both print and digital, for teaching, learning, and research. Through this new Library space, the University would achieve more than a synthesis of intellectual disciplines, more than the intersection of print and electronic cultures, and more even than the creation of an academic community of students and faculty: the new configuration of Main Library would send a message to the people of the State of Ohio, from primary and secondary school students working on their first computer projects to the members of the State Legislature and the voters that they represent, that the Ohio State University is a place with a vital and pertinent academic mission for the 21st century.
The pages that follow detail the current and future technology needs of the Ohio State
University Libraries system, of which Main Library is but the central part. Current
renovation needs for Main Library are discussed, and the endemic condition of
understaffing is shown to have serious consequences that threaten the effective operation
of the entire library system. There are acute operating problems that require immediate
solutions in the short-term; at the same time, there are areas, like new library construction
outside of Main Library, and the protection of purchasing for books and serials, where the
Libraries are doing very well. Some of the other services a renovation of the Main
Library could provide are also spelled out later in the report, such as offices for visiting
scholars, expansion of rare book stacks and general special collection space, enhanced
space for exhibit displays, conference and lecture rooms, and so on. A list of
recommendations follows, but one issue stands clearly ahead of the rest: the need for
Rethinking, Restructuring, and Realizing the Libraries to provide the University with
an academic gateway into the new era of technology and learning.
Rethinking
The academic environment of the University is changing, as the needs of teaching,
learning, and resources have changed. Universities are now forced to rethink their
purpose, and the purpose of their libraries. The Ohio State University has a real
opportunity to provide a new vision of itself, with a newly imagined Library at its center.
The marriage of the present collection of 2 million volumes in the Main Library stacks
with the Technology that now exists and will exist to support that collection, in the
central space of the original Main Library, can serve as a concept that drives the academic
mission, that identifies the University as a place that does have a central and defined
academic mission, and that provides the University with a magnet for development. The
new Reference Hall would become the University's academic showcase, a display site to
alumni, parents, prospective faculty, and prospective students. The commitments that
Ohio State has made to the community in terms of outreach, particularly through Campus
Partners and the Schottenstein Arena, have generated a climate of expectation: the
University must take advantage of this moment to articulate the next academic stage in its
mission. Outreach must be complemented by inreach, by the creation of a real center for
the University. A Library, reimagined for the 21st century, with a new Director at the
head of it, speaks volumes to the State of Ohio, for the Main Library site is, both in a
physical sense and a symbolic sense, the epicenter of the State's commitment to
education, and, in its openness to all, the clearest statement of the University's fulfillment
of its land-grant mission.
Restructuring
This proposal is not just about a building. It is about a commitment to Library Systems,
to the entire network of information that the Libraries has at its disposal, to the optimal
deployment of informational technology across the campus, and the state. Libraries and
Technology must co-exist in the 21st century; neither will be as strong separately as they
can be together. More and more, Libraries and Technology now go hand in hand;
Libraries and University Technology Services (UTS) must continue to work together in
the digital future, and this space will allow for their cross-relation. The new space will
house entry-level information for both digital and print services, and thereby give the user
complete access to the whole spectrum of research tools and learning sites across the
University from one central point: the user can be directed from this first point of
information to the next level of information, whether it be to the High-Tech Area at the
Science and Engineering Library, to the Honors House, to Hagerty Hall's Language
Center, to the Success Center, to Faculty and T.A. Development, or to any of the other
technological service stations at the University to which the Reference Hall would
connect. The several reading areas that are presently dispersed through the floors of the
old Reference Hall would be brought together in a disciplinary synthesis that is the
essence of true scholarship, embracing diversity under one roof. Scholars of different
fields would congregate here in a place of real community, taking part in the new era of
global communications. The Reference Hall would become the center of a real, rather
than a virtual, web, where disciplines, students, texts, and research methods would all
come together, in a lattice of separate but interdependent academic pursuits.
Realizing
The general idea is to gut the original Main Library, from the dismal arcade in front of the
stack tower back to the boarded-up windows overlooking the Oval, and reconfigure it in a
complete technological overhaul to provide a state-of-the-art facility for technological
resources for students, teachers, and library users. In this space, and spaces connected
with the Reference Hall, there could be provided new modules for internet access, laptops
for check-out use, plug-ins at each seat, a digital media center, all kinds of information
and access, on-site UTS support, electronic texts, electronic course materials, faculty and
T.A. development, small spaces for collaboration for students and teachers, mini-auditoria for demonstrations and lectures: there is no end to the panoply of technological
opportunities such a space could afford. Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan all provide
useful models for this space, as do Rutgers-Princeton's Electronic Text Archive, the
University of Virginia's Center for Computing in Humanities, and the Library of
Congress. A Program of Requirements and a Feasibility Study need to be drawn up, with
architectural designs, wiring plans, logistical outlines for the temporary relocation of
Main Library holdings, and cost estimates for the project. A similar renovation at the
University of Minnesota for its Walter Library (to incorporate a Science and Digital
Technology Area, and to renovate the monumental reading rooms dating from 1915), was
passed by the Minnesota State Legislature with a cost of $57 million.
Conclusion
The opportunities here are dazzling, and real. This is an aggressive goal for the University, the President, the Board of Trustees, the Board of Regents, and the State Legislature, and the time to make the commitment is now. The Main Library has fallen into a horrible, gut-wrenching state of disrepair. All the several visions of decades of well-meaning architects have wrought such havoc on the original building that what was once the University's greatest pride is now the University's greatest humiliation. Donors can be found to jumpstart this campaign. There is scarcely a person connected to Ohio State who wouldn't give something to make the Library a better place. In 1913, a Reference Hall was built that sent one undergraduate, writing for the Ohio State University Monthly, into paroxysms of joy:
The new library is a world apart. To the undergrad who for two years or more has ground out the long hours in the cooped-up old library the change is almost too wonderful and pleasurable to be honestly realized. The building had grown up under our eyes, to be sure, and yet we had not dreamed the verity of its beauty.
To return to school one rainy morning and enter the white corridor all alight with soft radiance, to mount the broad main stairs was in itself an experience unreal. Then at length to see the quiet grandeur of the vast Reference Hall, high windows to the east, chaste whiteness of the walls, and the high curve of vaulted arches overhead--this was the climax of impressiveness.
That student, J. Lewis Morrill, became Vice-President of the University.
When the great Reference Hall is rebuilt, in the original footprint that still
exists in the 2nd and 3rd floors of Main Library, holding in its walls new
interfaces with the tools of academic technology, perhaps an
undergraduate celebrating the Main Library's 100th anniversary in 2013
will write to the same magazine in the same enthusiastic terms, and
become Vice-President in her turn. What her University will look like,
and what it will be capable of, we cannot imagine. The new Library is the
only thing that will take us there.
2. RECOMMENDATIONS
Note: These recommendations are divided into two groups: 1) Recommendations for a
New University Library Structure, which follow from the vision that the Task Force has
for a newly realized facility, and 2) Recommendations for a New Library Environment,
which follow from the Task Force's analysis of general conditions. Each
recommendation is accompanied by a separate rationale, provided in the third section of
the report.
A. Recommendations for a New University Library Structure
B. Recommendations for a New Library Environment
3. RATIONALE
A. Recommendations for a New University Library Structure
On the cover of the Ohio State's 342nd Commencement Program in Autumn 1997, there is a photograph of one of the University's most attractive views, down the length of the Oval, beginning at the Grand Seal on College Avenue and stretching due West down a narrowing perspective of trees and lampposts to the Main Library, shining in the sun. It's an uplifting and appropriately symbolic vision, intended to invoke metaphors of the pathway to learning, of education as an ideal end in itself, and of the Main Library as a representation of that education, an Emerald City at the end of the graduating student's rainbow (see Figure A-1, Commencement Program).
It's a sham. The Main Library looks wonderful from a distance, and on the front cover of the program for Gordon Gee's final commencement, but if you pull back the curtain and actually look inside the building, you will see that the picture grossly misrepresents the presence of the Main Library in the University today. If the camera that took the commencement photograph had been fitted with a zoom lens it would take you behind the bright and beautiful facade, through the magnificent windows overlooking the oval, into a site of unexpected squalor. When the Main Library was opened in 1913, it had a set of seven glorious two-story windows facing East, into which the sun would stream every morning (as it presently does into the one remaining window not covered with dry wall, on the North side), to illuminate those working in the Reading Room, a room that reached high to the carvings above, carvings which still exist, since they were happily out of reach of anyone who wanted to obliterate them. And those faculty and students who worked in the Reading Room would receive that light from the Oval laid out before them, knowing that this was a university where education mattered (see Figure A-2, Original Main Library Reading Room). The remarks of J. Lewis Morrill, Class of '13 and future Vice-President, and Charles Chubb, Class of '04 and Professor of Architecture, in the Ohio State University Monthly of January and February 1913, immediately after the Library was built, already quoted, attest to the Reference Hall as a place of real inspiration (see Appendices A-1 and A-2).
In 1912, a faculty member could say to a student, "meet me at the Library," and the student, like J. Lewis Morrill, would know where to go. Through the marble entrance, traces of which haven't been completely concealed, up a grand staircase into the panelled room that was truly at the heart of the university, in the epicenter of the campus, from which every axis radiated, and still radiates (see Figure A-3, Staircase to the Main Reading Room). Nowadays, such a request would meet either with blank non-comprehension, from students who don't know where the Main Library is, with trepidation, from students who find the Main Library an unhelpful and forbidding environment to study in, with dislike, from students who must study there and loathe it, or with confusion. "Where would you like to meet?" would be the reply. "By the circulation desk? In the atrium, possibly the most depressing sight on the OSU campus? In the warren of small reading rooms that are totally unstaffed? In the ghastly wide-open echoing space at the back? How do you mean, 'meet me at the Library'?"
The Reading Room design is the same as that for the celebrated Reading Room at Harvard's Widener Library, which was opened in the same decade as Ohio State's construction of the Main Library (see Figure A-4, Widener Library Reading Room). There, as here, the Library is central. But if the reading room is the academic heart of the campus, their heart is still beating; ours has had the equivalent of quadruple bypass surgery performed by unqualified baboons. At Harvard, the Reading Room is the first place one would take a prospective student, or the parent of a prospective student, to show that the university cares about the value of learning; it is the first place one would take a prospective donor, to show how their money is well-spent; the first place one would take a prospective faculty member, to show her that this is the University where her work will go recognized and rewarded. At Ohio State, the Main Library is the last place one would think of taking a student, a parent, an alumnus, or a faculty member. The Main Library is in real danger of becoming an irrelevance; its connection to the campus is on life-support.
This can change, at a time when the status quo is no longer an option. Faculty surveys, student surveys, and annual reports for over a decade have made clear that the Main Library is in desperate need of a facelift. Every single building around the Oval in need of renovation has had a major remodelling in the last ten years, or is scheduled to have one, except the building in the center that provides the resources for the University's research. The Faculty Club has a new pub, called "Colleagues." Hagerty is slated to become a Foreign Language Resource Center, with a makeover with a projected cost of $20 million. Bricker, Derby, Hayes, and Mendenhall have been elegantly reappointed, Orton Hall is exquisite, but the Main Library must be satisfied with renovated (and badly needed) bathrooms and possibly new carpeting. Moreover, all other libraries in the twenty-one years of the present director's tenure have either had new buildings, expansions, or major renovations, except the building that is at the center of the library system.
It has been historically the case that for a library to receive attention from Capital Planning it is not enough for it to be merely falling apart. The Prior Health Sciences Library was virtually inoperable, with half the collection in off-site storage, and still had difficulty competing for building funds, until the Vice President for Health Sciences secured $1.9 million in start-up funds directly from state capital appropriations to begin the renovation process. An additional $6.2 million was then forthcoming from capital funds requested by the University for this project. Now, the new Prior Library is a stunning facility, and a useful model for the Main Library, in all but the method of its financing. The Main Library cannot wait for a guardian angel, or a major corporation to provide the seed money for the project, as Toyota did for the William Young Library at the University of Kentucky. The time has come to recognize that the Main Library is an eyesore, with a front that might as well be boarded up. It no longer serves the needs of its constituency. The Main Library has requested funds for building and renovation since 1987, and has not received a penny, save for minor cosmetic surgery like tuckpointing or new copper (both initiatives costing less than $100,000), in biennial capital appropriations since that time. OSU has acted, in effect, as a slum landlord, allowing the property that houses its best and brightest tenant to lie derelict. Carpeting over the problem will not solve it: this bill must be paid. The Main Library is a prominent landmark, a place of profound significance for generations of students and faculty past, present, and to come. Its renovation is non-negotiable.
Now is the time to do it. Since the status quo is not an option, the need for change affords a new administration a glorious opportunity to direct the course of the University, and to show that the best way to fulfill the mission statement of Ohio State is to reinvigorate its educational center, to restart its heart. The new president arrives at a pivotal time in Ohio State's career. He will receive on or shortly after his arrival a report from Budget Restructuring that is two and a half years in the making. A report from the Research Commission will also come to his immediate attention, including a section instigated by the Board of Trustees on Benchmarking across the University. The present report, from the Library Task Force, as the work of one group over one year, isn't likely to make much of a dent in comparison to the high-visibility studies that will hit the new president's desk. But with this one, and with a decision to act on the recommendations in this one, a president could change the way the University sees itself.
We have come close before, as the history of the various proposals for attention to the Main Library makes clear. Both President Jennings and President Gee, at the end of their tenure as presidents, turned their attention favorably to our insistence that the Main Library was a problem that needed to be solved. President Jennings asked in 1986 that the University pledge itself "to nothing less than seeking to create the finest library possible, for today and for the future" (see Appendix A-3, Columbus Campus Library Facilities: A Conceptual Basis and Plan for the Future). William Studer, after 21 years of exemplary leadership as the director of Libraries, writes to Gordon Gee of his hope "to have a commitment before I retire" (see Appendix A-4, William Studer, Letter to Gordon Gee, and Reply). He is retiring next year. Gordon Gee agreed that "we do need to make a major effort to address the physical face of our libraries," and then, like Jennings, left. President Kirwan has an opportunity to start the process at the beginning of his tenure, and so have the prospect of not only making an immediate impact on his arrival by placing his stamp on education and learning as the University's rightful emphasis, but also of leaving a lasting legacy at the end of his tenure.
The University presently sees itself as others see it: a place that inspires enduring loyalty, but little respect. Parents of high school age children in Columbus and Ohio, and Alumni who pour out to see us on six Saturdays in Autumn, must come to admire OSU, to feel that OSU is committed to education, rather than to its corporate profile. A renovated Main Library, with the light flooding back from the Oval into a place where students and faculty can meet and work and study and feel part of an academic community that cares for the intellectual health as well as the financial and physical health of its students, indicates that commitment to the prospective student, who is encouraged to come here, and to the people of Ohio, and to all those who benchmark universities. The OSU Libraries are important not just as a University asset but as an asset to the State.
As a sign of how far off the track the University's focus has grown, the following is offered: an "Impact Statement" from the newly proposed Recreation and Physical Activity Center (R-PAC) that will replace Larkins Gym:
This facility has been described as having the potential of being a "family room" of campus. A place where students can gather, meet their friends, make new acquaintances and work out together in an environment that is attractive, appealing, and welcoming. A place where students can interact with faculty and staff outside of the classrooms and offices. A place where cultures can interact and learn from one another. A place where members of the university community and their families can recreate together in healthy lifestyle pursuits. A place that adds value to the university and assists in the recruitment and retention of not only students, but faculty and staff as well. (Appendix A-5: Impact Statement, R-PAC Center)
Substitute "study room" for "family room," "learn" for "work out" and "recreate," and "academic" for "lifestyle," and you have, in fact, the perfect description of a library:
This facility has been described as having the potential of being a "study room" of campus. A place where students can gather, meet their friends, make new acquaintances and learn together in an environment that is attractive, appealing, and welcoming. A place where students can interact with faculty and staff outside of the classrooms and offices. A place where cultures can interact and learn from one another. A place where members of the university community [...] can learn together in healthy academic pursuits. A place that adds value to the university and assists in the recruitment and retention of not only students, but faculty and staff as well.
A library is such a place, assisting in the recruitment and retention of students, faculty, and staff. A library does add value to the university. In a library that has an attractive, appealing, and welcoming environment, students can interact with faculty, and cultures and disciplines can interact with one another. Only they aren't interacting in a $104 million "family room," they are exercising their minds, in a library. OSU is not the YMCA. This is a public institution of higher learning. OSU has agreed to spend $161 million for a new football stadium. It has agreed to spend $105 million for the Schottenstein Arena, with actual costs for that arena already far exceeding projections. It has on the drawing board a new Success Center, with a lounge for student athletes to escape the "fishbowl" of the media, for $10 million. That's nearly half a billion dollars, counting predictable cost overruns, for athletic-related facilities. It is time for this excellent expansion of the university body to be accompanied by a similar expansion of the university mind.
R-PAC is funded in part by a student resolution from its Undergraduate Student Government in June 1997, allowing $63 million of the costs of construction to come from the general fees of full-time and part-time undergraduate and graduate students. Funding for the football stadium renovation is driven by projected ticket sales, the Schottenstein Arena is donor-driven, the Success Center is an imaginative consortium of Athletics, Physical Facilities, Academic Learning, Career Services, commercial space, and other sources. The money for the Main Library renovation project has no such obvious seeds. It must come from within. The Library must be recognized as an essential indirect cost that impacts the entire university. Its renovation should be made a priority in capital planning submissions. It can be financed as part of a University campaign, operated through the Development Office, where funds are particularly targeted to the Libraries for a year, or for a certain percentage of the whole campaign, if the President is willing to spearhead the effort. Libraries don't do well in a general campaign: there is no natural constituency, no strong advocacy group, no obvious connections to industry. To succeed, a University must make the Libraries a single campaign issue. Harvard University is doing just that for its Main Library renovation, at a cost of $78 million, making the Library the principal fund-raising target of its final year of its campaign. We are not Harvard University. But many of our departments are every bit as good. The infrastructure is the main thing missing.
As our University campaign races ahead of its time-frame, planning can begin for a coming interregnum between campaigns, where Libraries can be made the principal focus. The University of Kentucky made the Library the sole issue in its university campaign, and built a facility that is ready for the 21st century. They did it through the vision of a new president, who barely three weeks into his presidency, announced to the faculty senate in 1990, that "We need to work toward building a new library for this campus" (see Appendix A-6, William T. Young Library: Overview, Fundraising, Profile). Seven years later, the building was complete. The details of the fundraising for that building are also provided in Appendix A-6. As Pattie Charles, Development Officer for University Libraries, has said: "The future can be bright for the development effort at University Libraries. We have nowhere to go but up."
Restoration of the Reference Hall would make a statement that "Tradition" at Ohio State is more than a word to be trotted out at development meetings, but an active commitment to a fundamental belief that the foundation of the present is the past. Restoration will make an equally clear statement about Ohio State's commitment to its academic future, since it will allow for the development of that future by providing a focus for Alumni giving for a defined period of time. Finally, restoration will make a place for Ohio State's present, by giving students and faculty a place to gather and study that both pleases and instructs, where students, faculty, parents, and alumni can look out over the University Oval with a sense of real pride, and by allowing the Main Library to catch up to the present after decades of neglect. Eighty-five years after it was built, our Library is barely ready for 1913.
As new resources appear, old ones change, software is updated, and the learning curve becomes steeper for both library staff and library users, necessitating greater investment in learning the technology in addition to the content provided. The new Main Library can be a place of first resort for students, faculty, and staff to learn about newly available technology, to be informed of new upgrades, or to be introduced to the computer as a research tool; Main Library should be a campus leader in educational technology issues. This central location for teaching and learning will overlap, as is inevitable in a university of this size, with existing training facilities, and with proposed ones in Hagerty Hall and the Success Center.
The Libraries (including the University Archives) are the primary unit on campus having the specific responsibility to retain and provide information resources over the life of the University. It is imperative that adequate facilities are provided in which to carry out that mission. Any renovation of the Main Library must be predicated on programmatic directions, flexibility of facilities and an appropriate concentration on both user and staff needs. Given a rapidly changing technological environment, facilities must be reviewed and updated as service needs change.
In addition to the humanities and a large part of the social sciences collections, the Main Library houses the technical and automated services for the library system that in turn support the functions for which the Libraries are responsible. User space must focus on the provision of information resources of many kinds. User space must also provide a clean, light and efficient environment that enhances the learning experience and establishes the Main Library as a learning laboratory available for students, faculty and staff to work individually or in small groups.
Historical renovation of the Reference Hall will provide a more central focus for the facility while taking full advantage of the new capabilities of technological support for library information resources. It will also bring to the Main Library both a new character and new, increased use by students, faculty and the community. Those functional areas displaced by the Reference Hall renovation will be able to restructure their needs for space, taking into account new technological support and space that is actually renovated to fit those functions.
In order to reach the goal of a functional environment, the renovated space must provide for the following:
At present two special collections reside in the Main Library building: Rare Books and Manuscripts and the Hilandar Research Library. Both require secure stacks areas, secure reading rooms, improved environmental controls for both the collections and reading rooms, and adequate processing space. Their present stacks are grossly inadequate for their needs and the increasing size and multiple formats of the collections. At present, processing of the collections takes place in the reading rooms because there is no other space available and limited staffing levels require that personnel be present in the reading rooms to also assist users. The Rare Book reading rooms need more space; the collections are in some areas superb, and visiting scholars could be invited, on fellowships established by the University, to use them. But the cramped space of the reading rooms makes the work environment next to impossible.
While the ideal would be the construction of a new special collections library (funded with development funds and including those special collections now housed outside the Main Library), appeals for such construction are unlikely to be effective. But we must be sure to create adequate user, collections, and processing space for these unique and extremely valuable collections in the Main Library. They are a cornerstone of the intellectual content of the University Libraries and deserve the best in facilities, staffing and user services.
It is important that we take this opportunity to enhance the use of our special collections and to improve their integration into the daily teaching and learning activities of the University. The digitization of selected special collections materials would certainly focus attention on the collections and the potential for use in daily classes.
In order to enhance the Libraries' character as a place for the sharing of scholarly information, a small, fully wired auditorium facility should be included in any Main Library renovation. At present, presentations by visiting scholars take place in a large unsightly conference room. While it is adequate (barely), the need for space that provides the ability to teach new technologies and that facilitates the learning process for the applications of information technology is strategic to the teaching mission of the Libraries. The need to provide information on the use of high-tech resources, to give subject-oriented information classes, and to orient students to the latest electronic tools in research, is increasing, both in numbers of sessions and in widening applicability to classroom courses.
B. Recommendations for a New Library Environment
The Board of Trustees, under the directorship of Alex Shumate, issued a directive in the Fall of 1997 to the university in general, and the Office of Academic Affairs in particular, to focus on improving the national ranking of Ohio State among public universities from its current position of 19th to somewhere in the top ten. In an effort to quantify how such a move might be made, Resource Planning and Institutional Analysis was charged to select institutions that mirrored Ohio State based on similar organizational characteristics for purposes of more detailed comparison. Nine universities were chosen as the primary set of "benchmark" institutions: Illinois, Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Washington, Penn State, Minnesota, Arizona, and UCLA (see Appendix B-1, Identification of Benchmark Institutions, and note that Arizona and UCLA have been added since that document). It is proposed here to use these benchmarks in the manner that they are intended for the institution as a whole: as a means of examining the strengths and shortcomings of the OSU Libraries, with an eye to where improvements can be made.
Though it is true that libraries are not explicitly factored into the university rankings--not even in the USNews Rankings, which is unique in the three sets of rankings used in providing a detailed breakdown of its objective criteria--the strength of a university's library plays a significant part in the assessment of academic reputation and faculty resources. These two factors, in fact, make up 45% of a university's total ranking in the USNews system (see Appendix B-2, Comparison of Ranking Models). So it is fair to say that as the Libraries go, so goes the university.
A comparison of the Budget for OSU Libraries with these nine institutions reveals that OSU is below the mean at significant and in some cases startling levels in nine major budgetary categories (see Figure B-1, Comparison of Budget-related Parameters of Mean of Benchmark Institutions). Compared to the average for these institutions, OSU has fewer books and serials (17% below mean), for which it spends less money (7% below mean), smaller salaries (23% below mean), for less library staff (18% below mean), a larger ratio of faculty to library staff (39% above mean), and a smaller percentage of the total university budget (16% below mean):
| Ohio State University | Mean of Benchmark Institutions | |
| Total Library Volumes | 5.08 million | 6.09 million |
| Total Library Materials Expenditures | $8.60 million | $9.22 million |
| Total Library Salaries | $10.41 million | $13.42 million |
| Total Library Staff | 423 | 514.7 |
| Total Faculty/Total Library Staff | 7.01 | 5.01 |
| Total Library Expenditures as %
of University E&G Budget |
2.20% | 2.60% |
Table 1 - Comparison of OSU to Mean of Benchmark Institutions, 1996-1997
This is clearly a situation where the Libraries are being asked to do too much with too little. There are some bright spots in the graph in Figure B-1 (library materials expenditures have significantly increased in comparison to the benchmark mean from 1990-1991 to 1996-1997, as a result of the Library Materials Budget Index, discussed in Recommendation #3 below), but the position is still subpar across the board.
These findings are supported by the Research Commission, which provided in March
1998 a packet of benchmarking data across the university, concluding in its summary that
"OSU lags benchmarks in per-student budget for libraries, particularly in funding for
operations" (see Figure B-2, Library Expenditures per Student, Research Commission
Report, 62).
2. Increase the budget for Professional and Support Staff to the benchmark
mean (an increase of $3 million).
OSU was #21 in the ARL Membership Index for 1996-97, an Index that measures
volumes held, volumes added, current serials, library expenditures, and total
professional and support staff (see Figure B-3, ARL Membership Index, 1996-97).
At #21, OSU is seventh in the Big Ten, and ninth in the benchmark set. This poor
showing is precisely the result of extremely low values for Professional and
Support Staff and Total Library Expenditures. The Final Report of the North
Central Association's External Evaluation Team, dated November 1997, puts the
deplorable position of library staffing very directly, and in bold lettering: "As a
result, the crisis in the Library today is a crisis of staff" (see Appendix B-3,
NCA Report, 15-16). In terms of library expenditures for 1996-1997, the most
recent year for which comparative figures are available, Ohio State ranked second
to last in comparison with the other institutions of the benchmark set (see Figure
B-4, Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Library Expenditures: Ranked
Listing). The gap is most severe in staffing expenditures, where OSU is a true
statistical outlier: at $10.4 million, staffing expenditures are $3 million below the
mean.
Breaking down that $10.4 million further, the most serious shortfall is in Professional and
Support Staff, which is funded at critically low levels in comparison with the
mean for the other libraries in the benchmark set. Currently there are 155 students
for every library staff member (see Figure B-5, Peer Publicly-Supported
Universities: Student/Faculty per Library Staff), far in excess of the benchmark
mean of 105 students per staff member. Texas, again, provides a salutary
example: though it has a slightly larger student body than Ohio State, it makes up
for that with nearly double the number of Professional and Support Staff that Ohio
State has, at 515 staff members to OSU's 281 (see Figure B-6: Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Library Personnel).
The consequences of this lack of staffing can be seen everywhere in the Libraries.
Reading rooms devoted to particular collections (on the 2nd and 3rd floor of the
Main Library, for instance), which were fully staffed only five years ago, are left
to manage themselves, so that no one is now available to direct students to the
catalogs, answer questions about book circulation, or provide advice about the
particular collections, which are underutilized as a result. The computer systems
that purportedly allow students access to the library collections are left for
students coming to the library for the first time to figure out for themselves
(outside of the entry-level library exercise that is part of UVC 100), and students
predictably turn away from the library, as a place more suited for scholars and
computer experts already proficient in the increasingly specialized art of research.
But the consequences of staff shortages go beyond student apprehension. There are
inadequate staff to reshelve books in a timely manner, to cover escalating
demands for OhioLINK and CIC resources requests, to train other staff to meet
user needs in a multi-faceted informational environment, to keep pace with
cataloging and to work off long-standing backlogs in specialty areas like
microform and Slavic. The Health Sciences Library has cut its reference hours
drastically, eliminating weekend hours. As part of its renovations and expansion
in 1992, the Law Library had network lines run to all carrels. To date, these lines
have not been activated, a failure due in large measure to a shortage of computing
staff to support plug-in use of the network. Faculty and student research time
significantly increases when staff are not around to help, especially as technology
changes the face of reference service every six months. Before the advent of the
PC, the library could be relied upon to look pretty much the same when you left as
a senior as when you arrived as a freshman. Now the library changes utterly
several times within that span, and for each change the staffing must be adequate
to facilitate each new system. The computer does not replace staff but
necessitates more of what it might have been expected to supplant.
A staff member puts these problems most succinctly, in an e-mail forwarded to the Task Force Chair on April 26, 1998:
I see all libraries [within the OSU system] downsizing and relying more and more on student staff to do jobs that full time staff used to do. [...] I see a higher rate of staff burnout because the staff duties have expanded to the degree that one person can no longer do all the duties in their job description on a daily basis. [...] Frustration/burnout runs high among the staff that are constantly expected to perform at yet a higher level each year as the number of staff dwindles but the number of services offered increases.
The Libraries have been able to maintain the status quo in the way that a leaking ship manages not to sink, by bailing out the water at the same rate as it comes in: as it loses hands to bail the water, the water begins to rise. The Libraries receive a smaller percentage of OSU's E&G Budget than it did ten years ago: in 1987 the $15.3 million it received was 2.6% of the total budget, and in 1995-1996 the $20.7 million was 2.2% (see Figure B-7, Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Library Expenditures as % of University's E&G Expenditures). Percentages are down for every institution in the benchmark set except Illinois, but Ohio State comes in with the lowest percentage of the ten. If the Libraries were to receive the mean percentage of 2.60 for the ten schools, the resultant increase in the budget would be $3.8 million. The greater part of that additional $3.8 million should go to restoring Professional and Support Staff levels so that the Libraries can run efficiently and serve the university in the way both it and the university deserve.
3. Maintain the commitment to funding for books and serials (the Library
Materials Budget Index), ensuring the maintenance of funds for both paper
and electronic formats, and continue the supplementary distribution of
revenues generated from trademark and licensing services.
The Libraries are unique in the ARL in having budget protection for library materials for
each of the three Libraries, Main, Health Sciences, and Law, drawn up in a
Memorandum of Understanding with the Office of Finance and the Office of
Academic Affairs in December 1990. In having this protected budget, called the
Library Materials Budget Index, Libraries have been able to increase spending for
its annual purchases of books and serials from 1990-1996 by 53%, an impressive
showing that makes Ohio State, with Penn State and Michigan, head and
shoulders above the pack in terms of the commitment to its collection during the
1990s (see Figure B-8, Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Library
Acquisitions Expenditures: % Increase 1990/1991-1996/1997). For more on the
recommendation that the University maintain its commitment to the Index, see the
Senate Library Council report (Appendix B-4). At the same time, cracks in the
wall are beginning to show. New academic programs, such as African Studies,
are established with no accompanying library funding for collections or staff. For
the first time since the Library Materials Budget Index was established, one of the
OSU Libraries (Health Sciences) was forced to cancel its book orders for an entire
quarter, an untenable situation that the Library Materials Budget Index was put in
place precisely to prevent. Since the Health Sciences Library's acquisitions are 9-1 in serials, the blame for this can be partly placed on the sky-rocketing cost of
serials.
The cost of serials has increased rapidly, and their numbers have multiplied. The
Libraries budgeted $4.9 million for serials in 1997-1998, as against only $2.01
million for books (see Figure B-9, University Libraries: General Funds &
Depository Budget, FY 97-98). In 1989-90, 32,870 serials were purchased, at a
cost of $3,390,294; in 1996-97, 33,603 serials were purchased, at a cost of
$5,842,795: a 72% increase in cost for a 10% increase in number. According to
David Shulenburger, Provost of the University of Kansas, "Between 1986 and
1996, the consumer price index increased 44 percent. Over that same decade, the
cost of monographs increased by 62 percent. The price of health care increased by
84 percent. And the cost of scholarly journals increased a whopping 148 percent--more than three times the rate of inflation and nearly twice the rate of growth in
health care costs" (see Appendix B-5, "Policy Perspectives," 1-2).
The question of serial budgeting is a vexed one. As the dollar recovers from its recent
weak position against foreign markets, the costs of serials may moderate slightly.
The online release on April 6, 1998 of 1,100 journals from Reed Elsevier's
portfolio gives the Libraries access to 300-400 additional serials it does not
presently own at no additional cost. Other initiatives regarding electronic
publication of journals that the Libraries could take advantage of to reduce the
crippling financial commitment to serials are worth exploring.
Over the last decade serials have been priced at whatever the market will bear, and this
does not seem likely to change (see Appendix B-6, Library Groups Demand New
Policies on Electronic Journals). (Price-gouging has overtaken the electronic
market as well, as the next section of the report will detail: the cost for the
Lexis/Nexis database provided by Reed Elsevier will increase from $10,000 a year
in 1995-1996 to an estimated $44,000 a year in 1998-99.) What is also troubling,
despite a protected Library Materials Budget Index and a resultant 53% increase
in acquisitions funds from 1990/91-1996/97, OSU receives a low number of
serials at 33,603, ranked eighth in the ten universities of the benchmark set (see
Figure B-10, Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Library Collections 1996/97:
Ranked by Total Volumes). This may be a truth-in-accounting issue (Illinois has
frequently been challenged to provide evidence for its 91,000 serials), but the
consequences of our faithful bookkeeping is a lower ARL ranking.
Many disciplines are in a period of transition, moving from paper access to paper and
electronic access, some with the intent to move entirely to electronic access.
Although electronic information access is attractive from the viewpoints of ease
of storage, speed of access, and cross-referencing capability, it will be necessary
in the foreseeable future to maintain both paper and electronic formats. Paper
publications, particularly in the sciences, technology, medicine, law and business
are shifting rapidly to the new combined publication pattern of paper and
electronic formats. The transition from paper to electronic formats differs by
discipline, by the source of information (particularly in foreign publications), and
by the type of resource. Paper collections will remain a necessity for some
scholars, particularly in the humanities. The need for information about that paper
collection, particularly in the resource sharing environment, via electronic means
will increase dramatically (for example, digital finding aids for manuscript
collections). It is imperative that the academic community develop mechanisms
ensuring the long-term, stable readability and archiving of information to the
extend that scholars can rely on the technology available to them. Until that
occurs, increased expenditure to maintain print versions of information will be
needed during the evolution into the electronic era. During this time, strong
working relationships between libraries will be necessary to ensure effectiveness
in negotiations with publishing units, control archiving costs, and maintain
appropriate levels of redundancy of non-electronic information.
In 1994 the Board of Trustees took the enlightened step of authorizing distribution of
revenue generated by royalty income from trademark and licensing services to
benefit a broad range of students, dividing the money in four parts: Athletic
Education Programs, Library Acquisitions, Student Programs, and the Name &
Seal Endowment (see Figure B-11, Proposed Licensing Revenue Sharing
Formula). This money is less than 2% of the Libraries' budget (in 1996-1997 the
Libraries' share was $279,000), but the spirit of the decision is important.
Disappointingly, the Office of Finance reserves the right to consider the money
given to Library Acquisitions, and to that area only, as a substitutional rather than
a supplementary source of income, as the footnote in Figure B-10 reveals: "(1)
will be used to replace general funds currently used for this purpose." To the
credit of those allocating these funds, that right has never been exercised, and
these funds have always been made available as supplementary income. But the
footnote should be deleted, since otherwise the university is placed in the
awkward position of alloting money to the Libraries from Trademark and
Licensing, in fulfillment of the trustees' mandate of 1994, only to immediately ask
for different money back.
4. Index Academic Enrichment grants so that they provide a derivative increase
in funds to the Libraries to support the programs created through those
grants, and establish the OSU Libraries, in Budget Accounting Systems, as a
central resource, or common good, that is paid for by all.
The library is the heart of any university. Everything that the university does impacts the
Libraries: each new hire, each new computer system, each funded Academic
Enrichment grant, each new program has a derivative effect on the resources and
staff needed to maintain the university's new position. When the James Cancer
Hospital was built, the Health Sciences Library had to start from scratch to
provide the additional literature which the new research program required. There
are similar problems with Modern Greek, African Studies, and other programs
that outstrip the ability of the Library to keep up the collections.
Academic Enrichment proposals serve a useful purpose for departments, but it is
inappropriate to make the Library compete for these funds on the same level,
when each funded proposal directly affects the Libraries. To enrich departments
without enriching the libraries is like building a new community without requiring
that the builders update roads, schools, and sewers to accommodate new residents.
To take a concrete example, in the OAA bulletin, "Funded Initiatives for the
1997-1998 Academic Year," an initiative on "Global Climate and Environmental
Change" is described, sponsored by the departments of Chemistry, Geography,
and Geological Sciences, the Byrd Polar Research Center, and the College of
Mathematical and Physical Sciences. The award is for "annual funding for four
new faculty in three departments with expertise in environmental isotope
geochemistry, environmental chemistry, and atmospheric modeling" (see
Appendix B-7, Funded Initiatives). These four new faculty will need books and
journals in their new fields. To increase faculty without increasing library
expenditures in materials and staff is irresponsible.
Academic Enrichment grants should be indexed so that they trigger a derivative increase
in the Library system. While the Libraries has been fortunate to have received
Academic Enrichment grants on its own (net.TUTOR and Electronic Course
Reserves promise to be extraordinary successes), the infrastructure for each
Academic Enrichment initiative should not be ignored. It is possible that this can
be done through cost allocation, along the lines considered by the Total Cost
Allocation Advisory Committee, which proposed, in at least one of its several
reports, the division of University costs into three categories, Direct Costs, Quasi-Direct Costs, and Indirect Costs (see Appendix B-8, Budget Restructuring V, 9-10). The Libraries are an indirect cost for the entire University, as recognized in
the "Sources and Uses" document prepared by OAA (see Appendix B-9, "Sources
and Uses," 8-10), and could be budgeted accordingly.
The cost of new proposals, new research, and new grants always comes later, but must
always be paid. In fact, we are paying for it now, in terms of national ranking,
reputation, and our ability to attract faculty. As the Library Council's report for
1996-1997 asks, "Is it possible to sustain a world-class university without a library
of the same caliber?" The answer, in the long term, would seem to be no.
At the same time, the resource allocation model currently under discussion, where
budgets are based on the income generated by each area, also makes little sense
for the Libraries, which generates a trivial amount of income (in fines, interlibrary
loans). Though the Library is an active grant-soliciting entity, grants in the larger
scheme of the Library budget never could loom large: no source of grant money
could fund anything like the income the Libraries need. The Libraries need to be
allocated funds in a way that takes its budget off the income-earning table. This
seems to be recognized by the Revenue Generation Advisory Committee, who
write that "Central distribution of revenues to subsidize highly valued activities"
will be necessary where these activities have little revenue-generating capacity
(see Appendix B-8, Budget Restructuring V, 7). There should be no more "highly
valued" activity than that of going to a library and reading a book. Again,
protection is critical. The Libraries aren't charities that departments must be
tithed to support; neither are they simply attractive buildings to encourage alumni
donations, or places for people to meet after class. They are essential partners in
every revenue-generating activity at this university.
The analogy between Libraries and new Information Technology is an interesting one,
and will be developed in #5 below. The analogy holds true in at least one respect:
to fund a university you must fund its academic infrastructure. As the NCA
Accreditation Report has it, "The university has been innovative in placing the
Library under the supervision of the CIO. This should allow Ohio State's
outstanding library to prepare to provide new services required in the age of
multimedia network-based information services. It could also result in further
improvement in overall planning for information services and further redirection
of resources" (see Appendix B-3, 43). Computers are being used by the
generation that is coming in ways that many now in a position to make policy
cannot comprehend. Students today use computers as naturally as breathing. By
having the Libraries answer to the CIO, Ohio State sends a clear signal that it
recognizes that Libraries and University Technology Services must work hand in
hand to develop a future for the university. And they both are clearly indirect
costs.
5. Maintain and enhance the relationship between Libraries and University
Technology Services, bring Libraries and UTS together to answer directly to
the University's Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice Provost, as the
person responsible for the oversight of information access and information
generation at the University, and expand the Senate Library Council to
include representation from UTS, renaming the Council the Senate
Committee on Libraries and Information Technology.
Technology is changing the way teaching and learning are happening at the university. A
primary responsibility of the Libraries is to provide permanent access to
information required by university students, staff and faculty. Computers have
significantly changed some methods of providing this access to library users.
Libraries will provide increasing amounts of content in digital form as time goes
on. This trend raises a number of difficult issues, many of which are outside the
direct control of any single library, or, in fact, the library community. New
alliances may need to be formed, and responsibilities formerly shouldered by
libraries may need to be shared with or accepted by others.
Computer hardware, software, and digital information have become significant
alternatives to expanding bookshelves, card catalogues, and paper volumes as the
physical environment of the Libraries changes. The provision of electronic
resources has already significantly changed the natures of the staff skills required
for their support. In the mixed format environment of the present and the digital
libraries of the foreseeable future, computer experts will be required to design,
construct, and maintain the new "furniture" to librarian-provided specifications.
To that end, it is vital that Libraries maintain and enhance its relationship with UTS. At
present, there are regular interactions and collaborations that promote a reasonable
working relationship. In the past, all computer support for the Libraries was
provided through the administrative computing staff of the University; as the
reliance on electronic information increases, it would be useful for the Libraries to
determine what functions need to be staffed with library personnel and what might
be more efficiently and economically outsourced. For any such arrangement to be
considered, however, the administration will have to commit sufficient resources
to UTS to permit them to respond to the library's complex and immediate needs.
It is appropriate that both Libraries and UTS answer directly to the Chief
Information Officer of the University, recognizing that the Libraries are
particularly well-laced within the Office of Academic Affairs in answering to the
Senior Vice Provost; it is perhaps also appropriate that the Senate Library Council
be expanded and renamed the Senate Committee on Libraries and Information
Technology, with representation on the committee by UTS. Such a
reconfiguration would serve to foster the close collaboration that will be required
in the coming decades; in the new millenium, Libraries and Technology must go
hand in hand. A new Director of Libraries, working closely with the UTS, should
be able to negotiate the role of Libraries in the University's network of
technological services and support, to establish an essential symbiotic link
between Libraries and Technology.
In meeting with the External Advisory Board, it was clearly established that some issues are of vital concern not just to libraries but to the academy as a whole, such as the decoupling of promotion and tenure from the increasingly commercial world of publishing, or the general consequences of an essentially electronic research environment. It was recognized that the following three issues deserve critical and immediate institutional attention:
The efficient pursuit of scholarship requires facile access to resource materials in
the scholar's field. The book, serials, and other library holdings represent
the primary source of such materials for most scholars in this university.
Library budgets have come under severe stress over the past decade. The
exponential growth of knowledge has led to a proliferation of sub-disciplines, completely new areas of investigation, and other forms of
scholarly activity. The number of scholars who publish also has grown,
increasing the number of books and journals published, and the number of
pages and articles within these publications. The pricing of these materials
is currently heavily vested in commercial publishing companies who have
few reasons to control costs as their competition has dwindled.
Information prices have thus increased, with the cost of many serials rising
by more than 10% per year. These increasing costs, increasing rates of
publication, and tighter budgets in higher education leave library budgets
ill-equipped to respond to the escalating demands of their users. Rising
costs make it increasingly difficult to maintain, never mind expand,
current collections, and especially serials.
In this environment, some libraries and faculty have been faced with two bleak
alternatives: reduce the size of the collections, or reallocate budget
resources to maintain collections at the expense of other library services.
The Library Materials Budget Index has helped maintain purchasing parity
for all the OSU Libraries, but it has not been able to support development
of new collections in support of new programs. While the acquisitions
budgets have been well funded, financial support for staff and services
have been subject to University budget cutbacks and reallocations. This
has significant implications for the support of electronic information
resources which require both staff, software, and hardware investment.
The attached memorandum from the Director of Libraries details the
significant increase in staffing costs for library automation over the last ten
years, together with an outline of current expenditures for electronic
databases (Appendix B-10, "Information on Expenditures for Electronic
Databases and for Electronic Information Systems Staffing).
Another issue of broad interest is the potential for the return of scholarly
publishing to the community which produces it. The removal of the
commercial publisher from the matrix of publication is much more
feasible in the electronic world than it has been in the paper world. Should
the academic community pursue this model, the economic support for both
the scholarly process and the support of library collections would be
changed dramatically.
6. Exploit the opportunities that exist for growth in partnership with other
institutions, and begin digital library initiatives to enhance the resources
used by the University community, to participate in the wider digital library
community, and to contribute to the national digital library collection.
The recently acquired ability to provide information in electronic ("digital") forms, has
revealed two possibilities to sidestep the discouraging alternatives noted above.
First, digital information is more easily transmittable and can be affordably
acquired and widely shared through consortial licensing arrangements such as
those made through OhioLINK. Efforts need to be made to expand the scope of
these arrangements so that all areas of scholarly publication are adequately
covered with a maximum of cost effectiveness and a minimum of duplication.
Pending development of an effective digital library, "real" books, manuscripts,
etc. will continue to be used for the foreseeable future. Mechanisms for ensuring
rapid and inexpensive sharing of interlibrary loaned materials have been
implemented within OhioLINK and CIC to ensure access to a complementary
book and serial collection with less collection duplication.
Second, the emergence of electronic journal formats changes the cost equation for
publishers, and should allow universities, through consortia or individually, to
negotiate deals that offer improved access to a more comprehensive set of journal
titles in a more cost-effective manner - along the lines of the recent OhioLINK-Academic Press and Elsevier contracts. It is important to note that whereas the
cost per journal may be reduced by such arrangements, overall subscription costs
will increase as long as the publishing of scholarly work resides with commercial
publishers. Current efforts for the licensing of on-line information resources
through consortial relationship should continue to be a strong element of the
Libraries' collections effects. Costs and access to information may also be
improved by working toward the establishment of stronger publication operations
associated with learned societies and university presses as appropriate. However,
multi-year contracts involving serials must be entered into cautiously, since they
do not permit cancellation in the face of financial exigency, and would decrease
the flexibility of the library materials budget during the period of the contract.
Digital libraries can be currently defined as repositories that collect and provide access to
digital information, but may or may not provide for the long-term storage of and
access to that information. In future years it is clear that a growing percentage of
the materials acquired by libraries will exist in an electronic format, changing the
physical facilities required for its storage, maintenance, and access. The focus of
local efforts should be limited to digital conversion of currently held and
incoming materials that are unique to, or produced by, OSU. Inasmuch as most
scientific literature is outdated within ten years, there is less need to digitize these
materials locally, particularly when they are being digitized by the commercial
market.
It is important for OSU to begin digital library initiatives to enhance the resources used by
the University community, to participate in the wider digital library community,
and to contribute to the national digital library collection. This will require
equipment and a new kind of staff with specific technical expertise. Since
digitization is a university responsibility (in which the library is an interested
party), rather than a responsibility solely for the libraries, financial support for the
digitizing process will need to be identified in future university budgets. Such a
program would include the development of electronic text center programs, the
digitizing of portions of the library collections, and participation in state, national
and international cooperative programs. The Libraries' collections need to remain
an attraction for the hiring of new faculty and recruitment of highly skilled
graduate students in all fields. Without digital efforts, the Libraries will be
considered inadequate for support of cutting edge research in many fields.
In contrast to digital libraries, digital archives are intended to be repositories of the
nation's social, economic, cultural, and intellectual heritage. They are intended to
protect materials already in digital form against both media deterioration and
technological obsolescence by technological "migration." Migration is a set of
organized tasks designed to achieve the periodic transfer of digital materials from
one hardware/software configuration to another, or from one generation of
computer technology to a subsequent generation. The purpose of migration is to
preserve the integrity of digital objects and to retain the ability for clients to
retrieve, display, and otherwise use them in the face of constantly changing
technology.
The Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information (a joint group appointed by the
national Commission on Preservation and Access and the Research Libraries
Group) has concluded that the responsibility for archiving rests initially with the
creator or owner of the information, and that public digital archives may invoke a
fail-safe mechanism to protect culturally valuable information. But it is naive and
dangerous to assume that information producers will take care of their own
archiving. This has not been the case in the paper world, and is unlikely to be the
case in the electronic world. The Libraries must be allowed to take the lead here,
to create digital archives that are a public necessity. The Libraries should seek to
develop further cooperative efforts, such as that with OhioLINK, to help drive the
archival agenda in the library community as part of the national effort to provide
permanent access to digital materials.
7. Address current hardware and software needs, ensure appropriate staff
training in the new technological environment, fund the maintenance,
support, and operational costs of information access, and implement the
recommendations in the Libraries' internal TASKS report.
Network infrastructure in the University and the Libraries must be developed to provide
access to information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The University Libraries
currently support 9 servers on 7 machines (see Appendix B-11, Current University
Libraries Server Support). This requires a considerable investment of support on
the part of the Libraries. It would be useful for the Libraries and UTS to evaluate
the potential for outsourcing this support to the Kinnear Road controlled-environment facility, especially given needs in new applications technology
support, machine support, and other required services for a 24-hour production
system. The new High-Tech area at the Science and Engineering Library may also
provide a solution to this problem.
The broad expansion envisaged in this report for electronic access to the Libraries will
require considerable upgrades in bandwidth and networking throughout the
campus to provide dependable access to these resources by university users.
Upgrading the networking capability of the Libraries is irrelevant if not carried out
in the context of general campus growth. There are also important and difficult
issues relating to authorization and authentication that need to be dealt with to
allow complete access (on and off campus) to library resources. This will include
OhioLINK and other data links.
The University Libraries will provide more than 240 public workstations and over 350
staff workstations by August 1998. The Health Sciences Library (64
workstations) and Law Libraries (24+ workstations) provide fewer, as required by
their respective constituencies. The University Libraries provides the primary
web site for access to licensed resources, but Health Sciences also provides a web
site focused on the specific needs of that community. Law is planning to expand
their web site in the next few months. As is evident from these data, the need for
support of electronic resources is increasing. Based on projections by UTS, the
use of on-campus workstations actually increases with increased availability of
student and faculty owned/accessed workstations.
Therefore, the commitment to both increased access to information resources and the
support required for public and staff workstations on campus by the libraries is
expected to expand significantly over the next several years. Office, laboratory,
and home access to the full gamut of library resources, so important to university
users, may be achieved by self-financing, purchasing through grants, indirect
costing, or department resources. The library cannot shoulder this responsibility.
Relatively simple computer terminals with direct links to central servers may best
serve the library in terms of ease of update of software and applications and
preventing obsolescence of hardware. The ARMS system is a good example here,
both for the logic of its organization, and the difficult problems associated with
implementation of such systems.
As electronic access becomes more widespread, software installations on public and staff
machines will require additional personnel support. The provision of foreign
language resources in general, and particularly for non-Roman languages, require
a variety of special application software, keyboards, and other peripherals. As
numeric databases become more widely available, software to support
computational activities also will need to be included on public machines in the
libraries. Increasing reliance on automated systems for day-to-day library work
will necessitate regularly updated specific productivity software to maintain staff
and user efficiency. The necessary updates and enhancements to such software
also will be time intensive for automation staff, and may require considerable
expertise depending on the software. There also will be increasing pressure by
rights holders to force the university to respect copyright/intellectual property
rights through locally provided software access management and reporting
programs. This demand may conflict with issues of academic freedom, and
patron privacy rights. Authentication of users for all public machines in all
libraries is currently under review with an expected implementation date in late
1998.
Each of these elements requires considerable planning, testing of hardware and software,
installation, and management over time by highly skilled technological staff. UTS
currently provides student assistants in the computer area of the Main Library to
field technical questions concerning software/hardware issues, but these assistants
are not asked to be qualified to answer questions relating to library matters. This
model might be usefully expanded and duplicated in other campus libraries to
provide for adequate user support.
A standard equipment replacement/upgrade process is necessary for both financial and
staffing reasons. UTS has established that 20% of desktop hardware and software
needs to be replaced or upgraded each year, to permit faculty and staff to keep
pace with changing technology, to provide desktop access to information, and to
ensure desktop productivity. UTS has suggested, and the Task Force strongly
endorses their recommendation, that matching funds be made available to colleges
to assist them in meeting the maintenance, support, and operational costs of
information access; the minimum funding level for such a program would be
$500,000 a year.
At present all technical services are housed in the "lower level" of the Main Library. Part
of this space is adequate, but the remainder, while upgraded in the past few
months, is still far below what might be considered good space. Many staff work
in areas without windows, without good ventilation (despite renovations of the
specific HVAC system for their area) and with poor space resources.
The public services staff space is over-crowded, with multiple people in every office; facilities are in every way inadequate to the needs of the Libraries' faculty and staff. The April 1998 report of Libraries' Internal Committee on renovation concerns discovered a widespread staff dissatisfaction with the physical environment of the Main Library (see Appendix B-12, SCOREMAIN Report, Table of Survey Responses). The report, the product of nearly two years work, calls attention to the lack of regularly scheduled maintenance in the Main Library, to inadequacies of ventilation, lighting, signage, restrooms, carpeting, and basic cleaning. Some of these concerns are being met: the Main Library has been upgraded to a "level 2" standard of cleaning, carpeting is to be addressed, and the air conditioning has been improved. But central administration must appropriate funds for continuing maintenance at the Main Library, to replace furniture, repaint walls, and restore the facilities as necessary. If the library faculty are to become partners with the classroom faculty in the educational process of the university, then adequate staff space and facilities are an important element of any renovation project.
4. DOCUMENTARY SUPPORT
List of Figures
Figure A-1 Commencement Program, 342nd Commencement
Figure A-2 Original Main Library Reading Room. Ohio State University Monthly, 4, #5 (January 1913)
Figure A-3 Staircase to the Main Reading Room. Ohio State University Monthly, 4, #5 (January 1913)
Figure A-4 Widener Library Reading Room. Harvard Magazine, May-June
1998, 78
Figure B-1 Comparison of Budget-related Parameters of Mean of Benchmark Institutions
Figure B-2 Library Expenditures per Student (Research Commission Report, 62)
Figure B-3 ARL Membership Index, 1996-97
Figure B-4 Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Library Expenditures 1996/97: Ranked Listing
Figure B-5 Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Students/Faculty per Library Staff 1996/97
Figure B-6 Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Library Personnel 1996/97
Figure B-7 Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Library Expenditures as % of University's E&G Expenditures
Figure B-8 Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Library Acquisitions Expenditures: % Increase 1990/91-1996/97
Figure B-9 University Libraries: General Funds & Depository Budget, FY 97-98
Figure B-10 Peer Publicly-Supported Universities: Library Collections 1996/97: Ranked by Total Volumes
Figure B-11 Proposed Licensing Revenue Sharing Formula
List of Appendices
Appendix A-1 J. Lewis Morrill, '13, "The New Library--The Undergraduate's Point of View," Ohio State University Monthly, 4, #5 (January 1913), 8
Appendix A-2 Charles St. John Chubb, '04, "Architecture and the New Library," Ohio State University Monthly, 4, #6 (February 1913), 5-8
Appendix A-3 Columbus Campus Library Facilities: A Conceptual Basis and Plan for the Future (table of contents, appended letter)
Appendix A-4 William Studer, Letter to Gordon Gee, and Reply
Appendix A-5 Impact Statement, R-PAC Center
Appendix A-6 William T. Young Library: Overview, Fundraising, Profile
Appendix B-1 Identification of Benchmark Institutions
Appendix B-2 Comparison of Ranking Models
Appendix B-3 NCA Report (excerpts)
Appendix B-4 Senate Library Council Report on the Library Materials Budget Index
Appendix B-5 Policy Perspectives (excerpt)
Appendix B-6 Library Groups Demand New Policies on Electronic Journals
Appendix B-7 Funded Initiatives (excerpt)
Appendix B-8 Budget Restructuring V
Appendix B-9 FY 1996, "Sources and Uses" (excerpt)
Appendix B-10 Information on Expenditures for Electronic Databases and for Electronic Information Systems Staffing (Studer Memorandum)
Appendix B-11 Current University Libraries Server Support
Appendix B-12 Report of the Subcommittee of Response for Rehabilitation of the
Main Library (SCOREMAIN), Table of Survey Responses, 6-8
Appendix B-11
Current University Libraries Server Support
As of April 1998, the University Libraries Servers include:
A. UNIX operating system (O/S)
1. Galaxy (SUN)1
a. ERL server
b. OSUL Web server2
c. CIC WebZ server3
2. EAS (SUN) - EAS Web server and services
3. Phoenix (SUN) - OSUL Web development server
4. Phantom (SUN)- OSUL WebSpirs server4
5. Felix (DEC)- Staff server for Oscar: housed at KRC
6. OSCAR (DEC)- Staff server for Oscar: housed at KRCB.
B. Not O/S - NetTUTOR (Intel)5
1 Encompasses three servers
2 Netscape Commerce plan to upgrade to Netscape Enterprise
3 OCLC WebZ product, in development
4 Not currently functioning but must be brought back online when OSU ERL server is finally repaired
5 This is expected to be moved to a UNIX server when the software used is available in
UNIX compatible formats
Novell network software: In December 1997, the Libraries upgraded the Novell server to
version 4.1. This server has a 250-user license and supports the public and staff
Windows 95 computers in the Main, SEL, EHS, MUS, BUS, JOU libraries. Novell
4.1 is supposed to allow Novell to interact with TCP/IP so that the server can support
the public and staff Windows 95 computers in the AGI, BPL, CGA, Depository,
Archives, CGA, TRI locations.
Adding these additional locations, as well as the 125 recently purchased new computers,
required an additional 250 user license. Rather than adding the new users to the
current server, it was decided to purchase another computer and put the additional
users on a second Novell server. This new server will support all public Windows 95
computers. Staff will remain on the older server. The plan is to have CD-ROM
database servers attached to both servers. The public server would have the Indexing
and Abstracting, full text, etc. databases. The staff server will support the staff
manuals that come on CD-ROM, as well as other productivity software. Users on
each server will be able to see the databases provided from the other server. Currently
the CD-ROM databases are attached to a third server. They are functioning in this
environment but this configuration is not optimal. This server has only a 25-user
license; Libraries hopes to not retain this license. Unfortunately, the January attempts
to attach the CD-rom towers to the original server caused this server to crash. This
set-up is seen as temporary but as a lower priority to solve at this time.
The staff are in the process of setting up the public server and preparing to modify the
public Windows 95 computers to link with it. The testing has already been done to
determine that the computers on each of the Novell servers can see resources from
both of the computers, when they are authorized to see the information. The staff are
currently setting up and testing the function of Novell's TCP/IP, which will permit the
central support of software to all remote library locations. When this is functioning,
then the Libraries will ask UTS to de-couple the network of the Main, Sullivant Hall,
Journalism Library, Business Library. This de-coupling will allow the Library to
acquire 10MB network capacity each for SEL, Sullivant, Journalism and Business.
Main Library currently has a 10MB connection to SONNET as well as sharing a
second 10MB connection with the other four buildings.