Subject: Creation of Subject Groups of Collection Managers (Subject Groups - Initial Assignments)
Date: January 26, 2005
From: Jim Bracken
As you know, centrally-funded serials not under the control of individual collection managers were largely exempted from 20% cancellation in Serials Cancellation Project (SCP05). Following SCP05’s conclusion, however, the Collections Advisory Council (CAC) more deliberately returned to reviewing centrally-funded serials. The object was to: (1) increase collection manager input on retained and cancelled serials, (2) identify serials to assign to subject-specific funds (central funds will still cover this year’s inflation); and (3) group remaining titles by interdisciplinary subjects or type (general humanities, social sciences, or sciences; annual fees for e-resources; OhioLINK-related, and therefore almost untouchable, etc.).
This has been done. However, CAC recognized some titles could not be assigned to individual funds because of multidisciplinary content. CAC recommended creating subject groups (modeled on the effective LOTS group of the science collection managers) to review serials inflation, manage evaluation/cancellation of multidisciplinary serials, provide feedback to CAC, and serve to mentor new collection managers.
CAC intends that all collection managers will belong to one group; some may participate in more than one. Each group would have an open listserve. Current CAC members will serve as liaisons to the groups but would not necessarily be the coordinators. (But this does mean that future CAC members will continue some of these responsibilities.) Structure of each group would be flexible, decided by the group.
By this memo, I am appointing the following CAC members to serve as liaisons and the initial conveners for three subject groups:
Organization of the groups can begin immediately. CAC will work through the liaisons to bring issues to each group as appropriate.
The work of these groups will be discussed more at the 16 February 2005 Collection Managers Forum.
Thanks.