**Penn State University Libraries**

**ALCTS CMDS Chief Collection Development Officers of Large Research
Libraries**

**and**

**ALCTS Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries**

**Discussion Groups**

**ALA Midwinter \-- January 2007**

###### General

**Administrative Appointments**

Mike Furlough from the University of Virginia became the Assistant Dean
for Scholarly Communications and Co-Director of the Office of Digital
Scholarly Publishing in September. Mairéad Martin from the University of
Wisconsin at Madison became the Senior Director of Digital Library
Technology, which reports to the University's central IT unit but serves
the University Libraries.

**Librarian Departures and Searches**

Recent departures include Justina Osa, who left the Education and
Behavioral Sciences Library for Virginia State University, Leslie Moyo,
Head of the Gateway Library who went to Virginia Tech University, and
Mila Su, reference and instruction librarian at Penn State Altoona who
took a position at SUNY-Plattsburgh. New hires include Alexia Hudson,
reference librarian at the Great Valley campus, and Heidi Abbey,
Humanities librarian at the Harrisburg campus. Searches are under way
for Educational and Behavioral Sciences Librarian/ Assistant Director of
the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, Head of the Maps Library, and
Science Librarian.

###### Collections

**Collection Development Administration**

The provisional model for administration of collection development was
made permanent. Providing oversight is a Collection Development Council,
headed by Chris Avery, as Coordinator of Collection Development
Coordinator for Commonwealth Campus Libraries, and Bill Brockman, as
Collection Development Coordinator for University Park. Four other
selectors also serve on the council, along with the Electronic Resources
Librarian, the Head of Serials and Acquisitions, and the Assistant Deans
for Technical and Collection Services and for Scholarly Communications.
The council reports to the two Associate Deans.

**Materials Budget**

The materials budget for FY2007 received an increase of \$400,000, or
about 2.5 percent. Much of the increase will pay for new electronic
resources.

**New Initiatives**

A proposal has been made to the Board of Trustees to establish a School
of International Affairs. A committee in the Libraries has been formed
to assess how collections need to be strengthened in order to support
the school.

Two Forums were held in the fall for selectors from all campuses. The
first was devoted to an overview and discussion of budgets and
allocations; the second dealt with new purchases and funding models for
electronic content; and the third offered presentations on the writing
of collection development statements.

In an effort to coordinate cooperative discussion and selection of
networked resources across Libraries at all Penn State locations,
several subject-based listservs were established to facilitate
evaluation of existing resources and to suggest new acquisitions. An
Electronic Resources Review Committee and an Electronic Reference
Resources Committee were established to share expertise from across the
Libraries.

**Digital Preservation**

The Libraries continue to archive electronic journals using the LOCKSS
software. There are currently over 400 journals archived in the Penn
State cache. We are currently exploring membership in Portico.

**Significant Acquisitions**

Digital resources: *Eighteenth Century Journals II*, *Times Digital
Archive*, numerous titles in the *Gale Virtual Reference Library*,
*Early American Newspapers Series III*, additional components of
*Periodicals Index Online* and *Periodicals Archive Online*.

Special Collections: The Irving Louis Horowitz/ Transaction Publishers
Archive; The papers of former Pennsylvania State Senator Robert
Jubelirer.

###### Technology

In May, the IT unit in the Libraries began reporting to the Assistant
Dean for Technical and Collection Services. The fall was spent getting
to know the staff, affirming priorities, and establishing a working
relationship and establishing communication mechanisms. Major
initiatives include working towards the implementation of a content
management system, testing of the java client and Unicode capabilities
of Sirsi, moving applications to an Oracle environment, working with
Special Collections on a finding aids platform evaluation, and making a
proposal regarding laptops and desktop machines for faculty.

DPuBs, a digital publishing tool co-developed with Cornell with funding
from Mellon, was made available as an open source product this past
October, and development work continues.

###### Technical Services

**Personnel**

Between July and December 2006, the Technical Services Department
advertised and filled 6 FTE vacant support staff positions; three of the
positions were filled with new hires and three people transferred from
within the Tech Services units. We are currently in the process of
reviewing applications for the vacant Metadata Librarian position.

The cataloging and acquisitions faculty and staff have had an
outstanding year. They have obtained grants, made several presentations
at national meetings, are authoring new tools, teaching classes and
serving as leaders on committees such as PCC while keeping material
flowing through the departments and providing excellent user services.

**OCLC Enhance**

In December, 2006, Penn State was accepted as an OCLC Enhance member in
the Visual Materials Format.

**Local System**

Last summer, the ILS upgrade from SirsiDynix Unicorn version 2003.1.4 to
GL3.1 was completed. The fall semester found staff heavily involved in
testing, planning, and training activities. The Unicode implementation,
originally planned for December, was cancelled. More testing will occur
next year and, depending on the success of the implementation at
Stanford, will be rescheduled at a later date.

**Bibliographic Services Council**

The Assistant Dean for Technical and Collection Services appointed a
Bibliographic Services Council to consider matters of policy and
management related to the intellectual access of library materials
through the online catalog (The CAT) or other search and retrieval
interfaces.  The Council will develop and document policy that adheres
to national standards while also addressing local needs. Members of this
council include faculty in the central cataloging and metadata services
unit and faculty at Hershey Medical Center and the Dickinson School of
Law who are involved in cataloging. Library Administration has put in
place three Councils to coordinate functions across University
Libraries: the Access Services Council, the Bibliographic Services
Council, and the Collection Development Council.

**Government Documents Processing**

The Assistant Dean appointed a task force to examine cataloging and
processing in the Social Science library at University Park and to make
recommendations for process improvement. The group issued a preliminary
report and will continue to examine this issue through April with the
goal of issuing a final report in April, 2007.

**Acquisitions**

Acquisitions continues to transition staff from a predominantly print
environment to an electronic one. For example, serial check-in staff are
now reviewing and resolving e-journal package issues. Due to the ability
to access electronic journal content, many of the campuses are able to
purchase more monographs. Monograph ordering significantly increased
last year. An EMRS evaluation will be underway which will enable the
retirement of our locally developed ERMS. We will be exploring use of
virtual approval plans and expansion of direct ordering by selectors at
the University Park campus.  Currently, all other campus libraries order
directly online via the vendor interface. We hope to complete the
expansion of shelf-ready processing for domestic monographs to most
campus locations this year. This summer we folded acquisitions and
cataloging functions for the Harrisburg campus into the central unit at
University Park. All campus acquisitions and cataloging functions now
take place at University Park, except for Hershey Medical Center and
Dickinson School of Law, where integration of acquisitions within the
overall framework of Libraries processing is nearly complete.

Compiled by Bill Brockman and Lisa German