University
Library Committee Minutes
April. 8, 2002
Present: Anderson, Barkman, Bansal, Daniel, Gabor, Koelker, Marcum, Seal
Absent: Mackay, Marcum, Payne, Woodworth, Blevins, Polisetty, Couch, Shelton, Smith
Minutes submitted by Barkman
The meeting started at 3:30pm
Seal started with an update of the Friends Banquet held in the Kelly Center on April 3. 85 people attended the 30th anniversary event. The guest speaker was Richard Kuhta, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. Along with the theme of Shakespeare, the TCU Library has a display of a time line of the years surrounding Shakespeare, videos and DVDs of his plays, and copies of pages from folios in the Library’s collection. April 23, the date of his birth and death, there will be an afternoon tea. Next year’s banquet will honor the recipient of the Texas Book award.
There have been over 100 responses to the faculty library use survey, and Seal encouraged those who haven’t yet responded to do so. Additional assessment items include an on-line pop-up survey of use of my library, a random phone survey of users of electronic reserves, and a random survey regarding the information commons. The results of all these surveys will be factored into next year’s set of Library goals.
Koelker discussed how a current dilemma is in determining what statistics best capture library use. Neither circulation of books, number of patrons, nor number of reference questions provide an adequate measure.
Koelker also mentioned that the library is investigating moving towards the payment of invoices electronically. Currently the library processes some 150-200 invoices (mostly for subscriptions) weekly.
Work on the music library is a bit behind schedule regarding equipment installation, since there is only one source in the entire country. However, work should be completed by this coming fall.
Over the summer work should progress on new carpeting upstairs and new paint, woodwork, and some physical rearrangement of the periodicals room. It is also possible that the on-line catalog may take on a new appearance in the near future because of a change in ownership of the company whose software we are using.
The TCU magazine had a very nice article about the library in the last issue.
The Library is working on how to improve access and services to distance education students, particularly those in the off-site nursing program. Seal sees an on-line suggestion box every morning.
A handout was distributed indicating all Library of Congress Titles held by the TCU Library by area and by age of holdings within recent decades. This provides an idea of the relative age of the holdings in various disciplines. About 21.5% of the 648,324 book titles (journals are not included in the statistics) date from 1991-2000 (for computer science the percentage is 38.8).
This being the last committee meeting of the semester, both Seal and Barkman thanked the members and each other for jobs well done.
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