Library Report for the Academic Year 2004-2005.

Library Collections.

Books	466,939
Serials	   2,754
Electronic Journal Titles	  31,214

Consortia/Relationships:Â Member, Boston Library Consortium, Massachusetts Conference of Chief Librarians in Public Higher Education and South Eastern Massachusetts Library System.

Staff:         Professionals         16.75                  Â

                  Support Staff        21

Hours: Open 87.5 hours per week.

Services.

Website: www.lib.umassd.edu

Online System: Voyager/Endeavour for online catalog, cataloging.

InterLibrary Loan Service.

Â	Items Loaned	Items Borrowed
Returnable	        1,817	           910
Non-Returnable	        2,622	        2,797
Total	        4,439	        3,707

Virtual Catalogs (patrons have access to aggregated holdings with ability to request online)

Â	Borrowed	Lent	Total
Boston Library Consortium	     423	 1,094	 1,517
Massachusetts Libraries	  1,000	 1,410	 2,410

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Circulation	 47,893
Reserves	 32,759
E-Reserve use	 27,533

Library Instruction: Total of 181 classes taught to 4,548 students.

Reports to: Division of Library Services, Information Resources and Technology; Dean sits on Academic Council and participates in Council of Deans.

Challenges.

• Faculty and Graduate student expectations.

UMass Dartmouth has been blessed with the opportunity to revitalize the campus with a significant number of new faculty who are highly focused on research as well as teaching, and make new and sometimes, unexpected demands of the Library. The University at the same time, is encouraging the development of graduate programs in a variety of areas and these also require more extensive and in-depth resources than the library has been providing to the mostly undergraduate programs. A recent survey clearly indicated that faculty and graduate students are dissatisfied with the print, electronic and journal resources provided by the Library.

    UMass Dartmouth was originally an undergraduate institution. The budget has not kept up with the development of graduate and faculty research. How can we remedy this situation?*

• Funding-Impact of Inflation and Level funding.

Whereas libraries were once measured by the size of their book collections, today the breadth and depth of their journal holdings/access are perhaps a better measure. Unfortunately, subscriptions to journals and databases tend to increase in cost by about 10% per year and journals, (like staff) once selected, must be paid year after year after year. Consequently, a level funded budget quickly falls behind just paying for existing journals, resulting in a need to cut “non-essential” titles in order to preserve “essential” ones. At UMass Dartmouth, journals and other serials account for approximately $1 million in expenditures. At 10% inflation and a level funded budget, there’s almost a $100,000 decrease in buying power each year.*

• Staffing- Cuts, unfilled vacancies, and pressure of new initiatives hurting services.

Since 2000, the Library has experienced several unfortunate staff losses-the termination of several temporary but long term employees, the retirement of the Dean, and an early retirement incentive that took several staff to greener pastures. Some of these positions have been replaced but others have not, leaving some services so thinly staffed that there is no backup and no ability to improve or innovate. Staff have been creative and cooperative in making up for the deficits, but the growth in the student body, the energetic new faculty, the new residential focus of the campus and increasing demand for all types of services to support classrooms, faculty, students and administration are putting a severe strain on the organization.

• Space and Service Planning for Growth, Renovation and Expansion.

The University Library was constructed in the mid 1970s in typical Paul Rudolph style-lots of concrete, no closets, weird angles and lots of hidden entrances. It is time to renew. New carpeting has been installed in almost all the floors, but the entire infrastructure-electrical, heating, cooling, etc-needs to be updated and replaced. Core building functions, like the popular Library Browsing Area that is used for lectures and other meetings, often interfere with other library uses.

    With these issues in mind and spurred on by the UMass Dartmouth Master Planning document(s), library staff have begun the process of defining a library plan to inform future renovations an expansions of the facility.

• Hiring New Dean.

In August 2001, Dr. Donald Sweet retired from the position of Dean of the UMAss Dartmouth Libraary. Ann Montgomery Smith, Assistant Dean, was appointed Dean in an interim capacity. She has served ably during this time of severe state funding limitations, staff cuts and change, but will retire at the beginning of September 2006. The challenge to the Library and the University will be to find a dean who can inspire staff to even better service, who can work with the campus and the University of Massachusetts to build the best collection of resources possible, and who will be knowledgeable about library trends, usage, technology and collections.

*COSTS.

    We are often asked, when the subject of the cost of materials comes up, what we are doing to collaborate with other institutions, especially the other UMass campuses, to get better prices for databases, journals, etc. The answer is that libraries were among the first to leverage the power of numbers to get special deals. UMass Dartmouth Library acquires resources through the Boston Library Consortium, SEMLS (South Eastern Massachusetts Library System), NELINET (a library broker), and other organizations that save us tens of thousands of dollars and make many items available to use that we would not otherwise be able to access.

    During the last couple of years, we have been discussing UMass five campus, plus UMass Online acquisition of databases. With the advent of intercampus programs and UMass Online, it is increasingly important that access to resources be available, regardless of institutional affiliation. We have also been working through Massachusetts Conference of Chief Libriarians in Public Higher Education (MCCLPHEI) to influence statewide efforts to provide access at the public library, school and higher education levels to appropriate resources.

    On campus, we advocate strongly for our budget, but also seek out opportunities to build the materials budget. Elizabeth Winiarz has been particulary successful in securing funds to build our Cranberry Collection, Healy Grants have supported our musuem passes loan program, and we encourage people to honor others with a gift of a book to the library. None of these minor strategies, however, make a huge difference. Several years ago we asked if it might be possible to recieve some percentage of indirect costs from grants to support library resources. Since the research is often associated with graduate programs as well as faculty, the funds can be directly related to that higher level of collections.

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