I am pleased to report on an active and informative October 1998 Membership Meeting in Washington, DC. One hundred and ten member libraries were represented at the meeting and were welcomed by ARL President, Jim Neal. The opening reception honored the 21 successful Leadership and Career Development Program Participants and introduced six new directors to the ARL: Bernard Dumouchel (Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information), Joanne Eustis (Case Western Reserve University), Joyce Garnett (University of Western Ontario), William Gosling (University of Michigan), Peter Graham (Syracuse University), and Liz Lane (New York State Library). Three retiring directors were honored at the Thursday evening reception - Joe Boisse (UC Santa Barbara), David Stam (Syracuse University) and Carlton Rochell (New York University).
1. Confronting the Challenges of the Digital Era
The 133rd Meeting of ARL engaged the theme of Confronting the Challenges of the Digital Era and featured the President of the University of Maryland, Dan Mote, Jr. as the keynote speaker. Dr. Mote examined strategies for raising funds for the digital library. The program included an economist's assessment of the impact of journal mergers on pricing practices, a panel of experts looking at staffing issues in the digital era and perspectives from a panel of provosts (David Shulenburger from the University of Kansas and Charles Phelps from the University of Rochester).
The Fall Meeting also featured a review of the copyright legislation recently passed by the US Congress and a cultural program on the history of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and the Library of Congress.
Papers presented at the meeting are made available electronically on ARL's www server http://www.arl.org/.
Materials distributed at the meeting are noted at the end of this message and may be requested from Linda Pinto.
2. Business Meeting Actions
At the business meeting, several actions were taken and topics discussed:
* Membership voted approval of 1999 ARL membership dues of $15,550.
* Membership elected three new representatives to the ARL Board of Directors: Meredith Butler (SUNY at Albany), Joseph Hewitt (University of North Carolina), Carolynne Presser (University of Manitoba).
* Jim Neal, ARL President, saluted the contributions of ARL Board members whose terms expire: Bill Crowe (University of Kansas), Carole Moore (University of Toronto), and Gloria Werner (UCLA).
* Gloria Werner, chair of ad hoc ARL Committee on Membership, presented the report of the committee's visit to George Washington University Library and the recommendation from the ARL Board of Directors to extend a membership invitation to GW. The membership voted unanimously to extend an invitation.
* Duane Webster provided a brief Executive Director's report acknowledging staff contributions to a most active year. The full ARL Activities report is available http://www.arl.org.
3. ARL Board Actions
The ARL Board of Directors met twice during the week. Actions taken were:
* Elected Kenneth Frazier (University of Wisconsin) Vice President and President-Elect of ARL.
* Adopted the Board's July meeting minutes. These minutes will be distributed in a separate mailing.
* Discharged the ARL Work Group on Scientific and Technical Information based on a recommendation from the chair of the work group.
* Adopted a five-year rolling currency rate to calculate ARL membership dues for Canadian members.
ADDITIONAL NEWS FOR OCTOBER
4. George Washington University is 122nd ARL Member
The George Washington University Libraries accepted the invitation to join as the 122nd member effective immediately. Located in Washington, DC, the University has been classified as a Carnegie Research University II since 1973. Jack A. Siggins is the University Librarian. The University Libraries serve as a resource in support of the research and instruction conducted by the approximately 1,175 faculty and 16,000 students. The Libraries include a distinctive Washingtoniana collection, a collection of post-Cold War materials from the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and East Asia, as well as an important judaica collection donated by the Kiev family.
More information about The George Washington University Libraries may be found at: http://www.gwu.edu/~gelman/.
5. Digital Millennium Copyright Act Signed Into Law
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (H.R. 2281) passed Congress on October 12 and was signed into law (Public Law 105-304) by President Clinton on October 28. Prue Adler has provided members with access to initial analysis of the law. An ARL briefing package for members to use with the academic community is being prepared. Added efforts are underway within the Shared Legal Capability (ARL, ALA, SLA, AALL, and MLA) to engage several provisions of the new law requiring studies of fair use, distance education, and electronic commerce to be conducted by the Library of Congress.
6. SPARC Announces Partnership with the Royal Society of Chemistry
The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), based in the United Kingdom, have agreed to collaborate on a series of new high-quality peer-reviewed electronic journals that will be offered at far below the prices of competing commercially published journals. PhysChemComm, the first product of the SPARC-RSC partnership, provides rapid communication of articles in physical chemistry. With a 1999 price tag of $353 (200 Pounds Sterling) for site-wide institutional online access, it competes head-to-head with a commercial title priced at over $8000. The RSC title is an all-electronic journal providing double refereeing, an esteemed international team of editors, searchable full-text, multi-media presentation features, and Web availability.
SPARC announced it will be represented in the UK and Ireland by the Standing Conference of National & University Libraries (SCONUL), which includes 129 leading libraries in its membership. SPARC also has established an affiliation with Denmark's Conference of Directors of Research Libraries, an organization of 12 major libraries.
7. AAU/ARL Global Resources Program Update
The German Resources Project of the Global Resources Program has named an Advisory Board. Members are: Helene Baumann, Bibliographer for Western Europe, Duke University; Jeffrey Garrett, Bibliographer for Western Languages and Literatures, Northwestern University; John van Oudenaraen, Chief, European Division, the Library of Congress; Louis Pitschmann, Associate Director for Collection Development and Preservation, University of Wisconsin; Roger Brisson, Project Coordinator and Digital Access Librarian/Selector for German Language and Literature, Pennsylvania State University; and Mary Jackson, Senior Program Officer for Access Services, ARL. The Project co-chairs are Sarah Thomas, Cornell University, and Winston Tabb, the Library of Congress.
8. Ninch "Best Examples" Page Used By NSF To Make The Case For Greater Funding Of Humanities Computing
Responding to a challenge from the NSF's Michael Lesk (Division Director of Information and Intelligent Systems), NINCH recently organized a "Call for Best Examples" in humanities networked computing that would help to make the case for greatly increased funding. In a talk at the recent NINCH Board Meeting, Lesk spoke of the case still to be made for humanities "special needs" but had many examples of why computer scientists would want to work with humanities material. Lesk is making the case both for greater federal funding and for more funding of humanities computing within the National Science Foundation. In the first round of applications to the DLI-2 competition, to which the humanities community were actively invited to apply, Lesk reported that humanities applications ranked with medical informatics as the categories with the highest number of applications. The NINCH "Best Examples" webpage is open for submissions at http://www-ninch.cni.org/PROJECTS/Future/examples. [Moved to http://www.ninch.org/PROJECTS/Future/bestexamples.html (11/01/99.)]
9. Call for Comments on NEAR Proposal Issued
At the October ARL Membership meeting, David E. Shulenburger, Provost of the University of Kansas, presented a proposal to address the scholarly communication crisis. Shulenburger promotes the development of NEAR, the National Electronic Article Repository, a single, publicly accessible repository of articles written by US authors. NEAR would be created by requiring authors to submit their work to the repository within a certain amount of time after an article has appeared in a scholarly journal. Shulenburger has invited comments on his proposal from the library community. ARL members are encouraged to read the proposal and let the members of the ARL Scholarly Communication Committee have your comments. His proposal and a form for comments is available on the ARL website: http://www.arl.org/arl/proceedings/133/shulenburger.html. The form will be available through March 15, 1999.
10. CIAO Seeks Library Support
Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) is a database of scholarly materials in international affairs which began publication in August 1997. CIAO includes working papers and symposia proceedings from 66 major research institutions, along with journal abstracts and books. A joint project of the Columbia University Press, the Columbia University Libraries and Academic Information System, and funded for three years by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CIAO is intended to evaluate whether it is possible to provide a cost-effective means for publishing high-quality scholarly material in a particular discipline. CIAO currently has 112 library subscribers and needs to reach 300 (or the equivalent revenue) to be self-supporting by August 2000. You can sample CIAO and get more information by going to http://www.ciaonet.org.
11. Scholarly Communication, SPARC, and Copyright in the News
Several articles of interest focusing on scholarly communication issues, SPARC, and copyright have appeared in the past month:
+ Frazier, Ken, "Liberating Scholarship," Library Journal, October 15, 1998, pp. 40-41.
+ Guernsey, Lisa, "Research Libraries' Newsletter Examines Profits of Journal Publishers," Chronicle of Higher Education (Online edition), Friday, October 30, 1998, http://chronicle.com/free/98/10/98103002t.htm.
+ Malakoff, David, "New Journals Launched to Fight Rising Prices," Science, October 30, 1998, pp. 853-854.
+ Mann, Charles C. "Who will Own Your Next Good Idea?," Atlantic Monthly, September 1998, pp. 57-82.http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98sep/ copy.htm.
+ Walker, Thomas J., "Free Internet Access to Traditional Journals, "American Scientist, September-October 1998, pp. 463-471. http://www.signmzi.org/amsci/articles/98articles/walker.html. [Note: Incorrect link. Correct link is http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/articles/98articles/walker.html (11/01/99)]
+ "A Look at . . Whose Ideas, Anyway?", Washington Post, November 1, 1998, p. C3. (Three opinion pieces on copyright and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Authors include Allan Adler, AAP, Charles Platt, and Pamela Samuelson, UC Berkeley.) http://www.washingtonpost.com.
12. ARL's Office of Leadership and Management Services Seeks Feedback
The ARL OLMS actively seeks input regarding customer satisfaction with its training services and information regarding customer training needs. Two surveys are available online on the following webpages:
http://www.arl.org:591/survey/cust.html
and
http://www.arl.org:591/survey/needs.html [Note: These surveys are no longer available at this site. (11/01/99)]
We hope you will take a few minutes to let us know how well we are serving you and what your specific training needs now and in the near future will be.
13. CNI Update
The 6th Dublin Core Metadata Workshop is being held Nov. 2-4, 1998 in Washington, DC. The project convenes a broad range of information professionals to address the problems of improvement of resource discovery on the network. Hosted by Library of Congress and OCLC, the workshop is also supported by CNI and NSF.
Over 30 project briefings on networked information topics will be presented at the CNI Fall Task Force meeting in Seattle, Washington on December 7-8, 1998. Topics include libraries' role in distance education, image archiving, customized subject gateways, access management systems, Internet 2, and many other issues.
14. ARL Publications Issued in October
+ ARL Newsletter #200 Special Issue on Journals
+ Issues and Innovations in Electronic Theses and Dissertations. SPEC Kit 236. George Soete. Gail McMillan, ed. advisor. October 1998. 40 pp.
+ Managing Food and Drink in ARL Libraries. SPEC Kit 237. George Soete. September 1998. 67 pp.
15. ARL Transitions
+ University of California, Berkeley - Gerald R. Lowell was appointed University Librarian effective December 1. He is currently University Librarian and Vice-Chancellor-Academic Information Technology at the University of California, San Diego.
+ University of Michigan - William A. Gosling will be recommended as Director of the Library to the Board of Regents at its November 19-20 meeting. Interim Director since 1997, Gosling came to the University of Michigan in 1986 as assistant director for technical services and library systems.
16. Awards
+ University of Virginia - On October 30 Kendon L. Stubbs became the 45th recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award, the University's highest award. The award honors an individual who exemplifies in character, work, and influence the principles and ideals of the University's founder. Stubbs was recognized for his innovations in making the University Library's vast resources more accessible to the University and scholarly communities via the Internet.
17. List of Handouts distributed at the October 1998 ARL Membership Meeting, Washington, DC
Please email Linda Pinto to request any of these handouts.
1. Review of ARL's Copyright Advocacy Campaign - Cover memo and sample of various newspaper editorials.
2. SPARC Status Report (Overheads used by Rick Johnson, October 14, 1998).
3. Licenses and Information Wares: An Update on UCC Article 2B. [Article by Laurel Jamtgaard. Information Outlook, Nov. 1998, pp 31-36]
4. ARL Latin Americanist Research Resources Project Presidential Messages Digital Collection/Distributed Resources.
5. Free Internet Access to Traditional Journals [Article by Thomas J. Walker, American Scientist, Volume 86, September-October 1998, pp 463-471]
6. Elsevier Science Intends to Acquire JAI Press/Ablex Publishing. [Elsevier Science Press Release October 8, 1998] http://www.elsevier.nl/cgi-bin/inca/esav/shownews?item=WN/1998-Q4/nt00000504
7. New Challenges for Scholarly Communication in the Digital Era: Changing Roles and Expectations in the Academic Community Conference March 26-27, 1999, Washington, DC. http://www.arl.org/scomm/
8. ARL Director Turnover Study, 1948-1997 [Report of general trends from 112 Institutions by Jim Neal]
9. The Impact of Publisher Mergers on Journal Prices: A Preliminary Report [Overheads used by Mark J. McCabe, October 15, 1998]
10. Working Together: A Workshop for Archivists, Records Managers and Information Technologists, December 16-17, Washington, DC. http://www.cni.org
11. Coalition for Networked Information Program 1998-1999.
12. 133rd ARL Membership Meeting, October 1998. Attendance List.
13. AAU/ARL Global Resources Program brochure
14. The Digital Millennium: What's It All Mean? [Overheads used by Arnold Lutzker, October 15,1998] http://www.arl.org/arl/proceedings/133/lutzker.html