Present: Richard Slaughter (Co-Chair), Dan Drucker, Perry Mars, James Moseley, Victoria Neale, Martin E. Newcomb, Marilyn Oermann, Georgia Reid, Barbara Roseboro, Jim Woodyard, Robert Holley (Secretary)

1. Richard Slaughter, Co-Chair, convened the meeting. The Minutes were approved after clarification of the wording in one section.

2. Jessica Litman did not attend the meeting. [She called Bob Holley the next day, apologized profusely, and agreed to attend the May 17, 1999 meeting.] The discussion centered on the decision by the Kansas Board of Regents to require faculty authors to not sign away all their rights when granting copyright to publishers of journal articles. Some of the topics that emerged during the discussion were:

ð SPARC should list its members as an indication of its influence;
ð University Libraries should subscribe to the SPARC sponsored electronic journals as a sign of support;
ð Non-tenured tenure track faculty should be considered in implementing any revised copyright policy;
ð We should find out how the Kansas policy is working;
ð The research institutions must band together to support any such changes in copyright policy;
ð Any policy adoption on the part of the ULC should not be seen as a substitute for more substantive action by Wayne State University.

3. Dan Drucker gave an informal report on Dean Breivik's presentation to the Academic Senate. (The official minutes were not yet available.) While it is difficult to judge overall reaction to the presentation, he noted a degree of bickering and a negative reaction from some Senate members. The comment was heard that while it was clear that University Libraries needed more money, this is true of most units on campus. Some complained about the lack of electronic resources for their disciplines. The Senate did pass a motion that University Libraries would have a formal review on the same time table as other units.

The ULC response to the above report included several components. First, University Libraries is a service unit that spends its funds on helping the rest of the University, a fact that makes it different from academic departments. Second, cost/benefit analysis has been the overriding factor in choosing electronic resources. The group then talked about the need for units to raise revenue from new sources during a period of small increases but agreed that such a strategy is difficult for service units such as University Libraries and that, in any case, the need for increased funding for the acquisitions budget is so large that central funding is the only reasonable answer. Dan Tucker and Jim Woodyard will approach Seymour Wolfson about making a ULC presentation to the Academic Senate. [This presentation was put on the agenda for the May 12 meeting.]

4. The members next considered the fact that the amount of funded research has increased significantly at Wayne State University and has generated a need for library resources but that University Libraries has not received increased funcing to meet these needs. The ULC believed that the issue of allocating a portion of indirect costs for library materials was worth pursuing. For the next meeting, the ULC requested information in the following areas:

6. The ULC decided that the current momentum made it important to schedule a May meeting and that enough of the Committee would be able to attend. The next meeting was therefore scheduled for May 17, 1999 at 1:30 pm in the Dean's Conference Room, 3100 Undergraduate Library.

Prepared by Robert P. Holley

May 7, 1999