Vancouver, British Columbia
May 15-17, 1996

Leading the Agile Organization

Appendix I: ARL Business Meeting

Convened by Nancy Cline, Presiding President
ARL

PRESIDENT CLINE (Pennsylvania State University): Good morning. I would like to begin our ARL business meeting.

First of all, we have some salutes in tribute to our retiring directors. I first call on Sharon Hogan.

MS. HOGAN (University of Illinois-Chicago): It is with great pleasure that I offer a salute to Joan Chambers on behalf of her ARL colleagues. Joan began her working life as a teacher and, as she tells the story, one day the principal came to her and asked, "I need somebody to run the library. Would you do it?" With her typical dedication and enthusiasm, Joan said, "Yes," but then immediately went to school to take some courses to find out what it was all about. In doing so, she discovered a second career, librarianship.

After finishing her library degree program at the University of California at Berkeley, she took a position in Government Documents at the University of Nevada at Reno, where she became one of the founders of ALA’s GODORT Round Table, an early sign that she would be a leader in our profession.

After that, Joan participated in the Council on Library Resources Academic Management Intern Program at Duke, her first interaction with ARL, and then became Assistant University Librarian at the University of California-San Diego, where, again, Joan interacted with ARL as she participated in the Academic Library Consultant’s Training Program. She was then appointed University Librarian at the University of California at Riverside, and became a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Program.

She is currently the University Librarian at Colorado State University. As an ARL Director, she has served in positions for and on behalf of ARL. She served on the Nominating Committee in 1982; the OMS Advisory Committee in 1983; the Committee on Management of Research Library Resources from 1984 to 1986; the Board of Directors 1990 to 1993; the ARL/RLG Interlibrary Loan Cost Study Project, for which she was Chair in 1992/93; and went from that to become a member of the IFLA Committee on Document Delivery. Finally, she served on the Committee on Minority Recruitment and Retention, again as Chair, 1994/95.

As Joan retires from her position as an ARL director we can rest assured that her dedication and enthusiasms will find new outlets.

Joan, we wish you well onward and upward.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Thank you, Sharon. And best wishes, Joan.

Next I’d like to call on Elaine Sloan.

MS. SLOAN (Columbia University): Thank you. I’m very honored to have been asked to pay tribute to one of the most influential librarians of our generation, Richard De Gennaro. Dick has spent his career at the New York Public Library (NYPL), at the University of Pennsylvania, and at Harvard. He has also been very active in a variety of professional associations: he has served as ARL President and as Chair of the RLG Board of Governors. Furthermore, Dick has authored over 50 papers and has completed more than 60 consulting assignments. His influence has extended far beyond the research library community.

Our profession has awarded Dick some of its most prestigious awards, including Melville Dewey Medal, the Academic and Research Librarian of the Year, and the Hugh Atkinson Award.

Dick has said of his library career that he is proudest of having served as the head of two of the greatest research libraries of the world, the NYPL and Harvard, and at Harvard he is proudest for having accomplished something that they said would never be done, recon.

Thank you, Dick, for your extraordinary contributions, and for your continuing interest in change and innovation. You have been, for all of us, a role model, an inspiration, and, personally, a friend. We all wish you well in the future and we will all miss your wise counsel and advice. Good luck.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Thank you, Elaine. Dick, our very best wishes, and please stay in touch.

I’d like to call on Sterling Albrecht.

MR. ALBRECHT (Brigham Young University): I first met Jim Wyatt back in 1980 or 1981, when we were on the ARL Board together. At that time we became friends and we’ve been good friends ever since.

Jim has an interesting background; he went to a military prep school, to divinity school at Rochester University, was a Coast Guard pilot during the Cold War, and has a Ph.D. from Florida State. He is also one of the few academic directors I know of who became a director without ever having worked in the library before. Upon completion of his library degree at North Carolina, Jim was offered the position of Director at the Morris Hill College library, in North Carolina. Following that, he worked at the University of Alabama for seven years, and was then hired as Director of Libraries at Rochester, where he has been for the last 16 years.

Jim has served on a number of ARL committees and task forces, and chaired the Committee on Government Relations. I mentioned earlier that he was a valuable member of the ARL Board.

We will miss Jim, his fine mind, and his contributions in ARL, but we wish he and Mary, his lovely wife, success and happiness in all that they do.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Jim, our very best to you. Thank you, Sterling.

Lastly, I’d like to call on John Laucus.

MR. LAUCUS (Boston University): The Irish social clubs in Boston, the real Irish social clubs, not the wanna-be’s across the various boundaries of Boston, still sing an old Irish song that has the refrain, "Though we will see great men, we will never see better." That stands, certainly, for all the retirees today, and especially for Arthur Curley, Director of the Boston Public Library (BPL), whom it has been my good fortune to know for 11 years.

I’m delighted to say that Arthur is not leaving the Boston Public Library, but is continuing as BPL’s Director Emeritus.

Arthur has served as President of this Association and as President of the American Library Association. In those roles he has been an advocate, not only for research libraries, but for libraries of all types and for library users at all levels.

Anyone who has talked for five minutes with Arthur knows that he is a perfect example of a union of style and substance. He is a man of personal grace and dignity, with a sense of humor. Arthur was born of Irish stock in Jamaica Plain, in Boston, which is not the water side of Beacon Hill where George Apley lived, nor is it one of the stools of Scully Square. So when Arthur made his move to Harvard, it was a major move. He went on to get his library degree from Simmons College, followed by what we in Boston think of as his wilderness years, his move to the far west: libraries in Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan.

In 1980, Arthur moved on to the New York Public Library. During his time there, he managed to lecture at Rutgers University and the University of Michigan, authored some books, and built library collections, including a modern romance collection.

In 1985, we in Boston were fortunate enough to have him return to head our public library, a library which, like New York Public, is a world-class collection in a series of world-class buildings and storefronts. Boston Public Library, under Arthur’s direction, works with a group of people who give definition to the term "cultural diversity": Brahmins, politicians, academics, people in the process of lifetime learning who are trying to get themselves and their children off the street, traditional ethnic populations, and a whole series of new émigrés to our cities. They all come to us and make demands that are being met in our public libraries.

Arthur’s range of interest is illustrated by his club memberships: he is the only person I know who is a member of both the Club of Odd Volumes and the Longwood Cricket Club. He is the only person I know who can rivet an audience to their seats with a dense discussion of libraries and their needs, and then, in an instant, free them and, given the propriety of the situation, their pocketbooks, by suddenly shouting, "Let’s party!"

As I said, Arthur is continuing as Director Emeritus of the Boston Public Library. He will be working on the much-needed restoration of the Italian Palace in Boston and the archives therein. And it’s my hope that, when IFLA meets in Boston in 2001, Arthur will be there to greet IFLA and speak with them and say, "Let’s party!"

Arthur, God bless.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Thank you, John. Best wishes to you, Arthur.

I have to say in listening to these tributes, we all should feel very fortunate that we have had these colleagues in our midst and we have quite a legacy to continue. Thanks and best of luck to all of you.

President’s Report

Now to give you a quick overview of the Board’s work and our meeting Tuesday afternoon. During that meeting we reviewed the results of the Association’s 1995 financial audit, and we also carefully reviewed the Association’s 1996 operating budget. We gave particular attention to ARL’s commitment to the Shared Legal Capability, working in the area of copyright and intellectual property issues, as this promises to be a major continuing budget issue for us. We also addressed the budget performance within the Association’s various program centers.

We spent a considerable amount of time looking and reviewing the AAU/ARL research libraries projects, on which Jerry Campbell will report shortly. We also spent considerable time on copyright issues, being updated on current events that will have an impact on the Association. Those of you who have been attending committee meetings know that this is such a fast-paced area that we just must be constantly monitoring the activity in Washington and elsewhere.

Another highlight was that we, for the first time as a board, met with the three ARL representatives to the Coalition for Networked Information’s Steering Committee, David Bishop, Sheila Creth, and Sharon Hogan. This meeting gave the Board an opportunity to discuss some of ARL’s expectations and to focus on some of the areas in which the expertise from our libraries is contributing to the advancement of the CNI agenda. In essence, it gave us a chance to dovetail so that the individuals who are representing us have more of a sense of what the Board, in its role for the Association, might be expecting of them. It was a beneficial process and probably one which we will want to continue.

The next item on the agenda was also briefly discussed at the Board Meeting, the Ad Hoc Membership Committee’s Report on Ohio University. For that I’d like to call on Gloria Werner, the Committee Chair and our President Elect.

Report of the Ad Hoc Membership Committee on Ohio University

MS. WERNER (University of California-Los Angeles): I trust you will remember that ARL revised its membership criteria several years ago, in 1994, to more clearly define what we meant by ARL membership. We knew at the time that we would not be opening the door to dozens of new members. In fact, we could count on one hand those who would be eligible for ARL membership under the new criteria. Ohio University did inquire about membership, and we proceeded to analyze their library and academic programs in two stages.

First of all, there are what I call, for the lack of a better term, quantitative factors. Ohio University is a Carnegie Research II institution. In terms of the ARL membership criteria index, they have a score that would place them 88th in that ranking.

In order to make a qualitative assessment of the criteria we had formulated, Nancy Cline, Sheila Creth, and I journeyed out to Athens, Ohio to visit the University. We looked for significant contributions that the Ohio University Library would make to us as a group, to the North American collection of research resources and services. We found that O.U. does have distinctive collections, especially as they relate to Southeast Asia and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Africa. They are very engaged in international outreach efforts and they do have very progressive public service programs.

So with that information, Sheila, Nancy, and I came back to the Board and, based on our assessment, the Board recommended unanimously that Ohio University be brought forward to you today for consideration as a member of ARL.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Since this is a recommendation that is coming to you from a duly established committee, I present it to you as also having passed Board approval. So, at this point we seek a confirming vote from the membership.

First of all, is there any discussion?

[No response.]

All right. All those in favor, please signify by saying "Aye."

THE MEMBERSHIP: Aye.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Those opposed, by "Nay."

[No response.]

Ohio University has been added as a member to the Association. I would like to thank Gloria for her leadership. We have been, as an Association, improving our understanding of membership criteria and this was, for me, certainly an experience. I’ve since had the occasion to talk to others who have been on site visits to some of our more recent members, and the addition of a site visit has really proved to be an important part of the process.

I’d like to now invite Jerry Campbell, co-Chair of the AAU/ARL Steering Committee on Research Libraries, to report on those issues, primarily electronic publishing and global resources.

Report of the AAU/ARL Steering Committee on Research Libraries

MR. CAMPBELL (University of Southern California): Thank you, Nancy. I will report on the actions of the Joint Steering Committee from the spring meeting. This was a kind of benchmark meeting; that is, business had gone on for a while, certain things had matured, and some actions had been taken. Then, toward the end of my report I will talk about the next steps that have been planned.

Among the actions I would report is that the Steering Committee concluded that, with efforts to revise the copyright law that are currently underway but certainly not yet settled, it is premature to enter into formal communications with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) on the matter of university licensing. The Steering Committee did, on the other hand, feel it wise to continue informal discussions. So, while it didn’t seem to be a very good idea to break off all contact, the Steering Committee and particularly the presidents felt it would be unwise to freeze anything into a license with CCC that may or may not be more or less flexible than the law turns out to be.

Second, the Steering Committee made a decision to disband the Intellectual Property Task Force. The Task Force’s work has been critical from the outset in helping frame the intellectual property issues and, in more recent times, its work began to focus on a plan to provide more experiments in electronic publishing and to fund those experiments. However, the Steering Committee judged that there were in fact now a sufficient number of successful high-profile electronic publishing ventures–including JSTOR, Project MUSE, and HighWire–that we really didn’t need to undertake at this time any further testing of pilot projects. So we thank the Task Force, but move forward with other activities.

As early as the fall 1995 meeting of the Steering Committee, questions were raised about whether, with these electronic publishing projects, the academy was in need of some way to coordinate the activities, particularly to avoid replication in many different locations. So the Committee has considered how coordination of these publishing ventures might be undertaken. It returned to that matter again this spring and, in the interim, the ARL Board considered the question of coordination at their February meeting and appointed a small task force to develop a proposal to accomplish the coordination.

I would like to call on Nancy Eaton at this point to report on that effort.

MS. EATON (Iowa State University): As Jerry pointed out, the ARL Board, almost independent of the discussions of the ARL/AAU Steering Committee, raised the issue of something akin to a not-for-profit corporation to foster the kinds of electronic publishing ventures in which we have all been interested. There was considerable discussion at the February Board Meeting, at which time Nancy Cline named a working group to carry out and draft, in writing, a concept for such an organization.

The members of that subcommittee were myself, Barbara von Wahlde, Jim Neal, and Jerry Campbell. We did meet separately during that Board Meeting and came back with a first draft, had considerable input from the Board as a whole, and were asked to continue to work on this after the Board Meeting.

As Jerry indicated, the AAU/ARL Steering Committee was given this first document to review in an effort to discuss interest and determine whether we should proceed. And there was such interest from the Steering Committee, so we continued work. That work was compiled by staff at ARL into a current draft which you will see here.

The Board was very concerned that we inform you at this point of these discussions because, if we proceed, this may be a fairly major undertaking, and we would like to get your input at as early a stage as possible. We’re not asking you to discuss it at this meeting. The Board itself only received the current draft on Tuesday morning and has not yet responded to it. What we do want you to do is to take a copy away–it will also be available on the listserv–and there will be a call for comment as soon as you get home.

It’s important that we get that input as soon as possible because there will be both AAU and ARL Board discussions in June and July. We urge you to look carefully at this document and to give us your thoughts so that the Board can proceed at that time.

Thank you.

MR. CAMPBELL: As the third kind of action item from its spring meeting, the Steering Committee received and endorsed a draft report prepared by the ARL Research Collections Committee entitled "Tactical Plan for the AAU/ARL Global Resources Program."

The Steering Committee was pleased with this proposal for a program to build a distributed collection of global research resources to ensure North American access to foreign publications and will move it forward.

And I would like to ask Dale Canelas to describe the proposal.

MS. CANELAS (University of Florida): The Global Resources Project has been a five-year effort, during the course of which we have made regular reports to you. But I would now like to review for you the project as a whole.

Primarily, we’ve been trying to document the extent of the reduction of foreign holdings in North American collections, to involve all the stakeholders in recognizing and resolving problems, and to begin exploring solutions for them.

The project was funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 1991, and the Committee on Research Collections has overseen a complex series of consultative meetings involving scholars, scholarly societies, bibliographers, collection-management officers, and ARL library directors to define and identify courses of action.

The publication Scholarship, Research Libraries and Global Publications, which was mailed to you in April, is an excellent discussion of the whole program: the depth, extent, and breadth of the work that has taken place, as well as amply documenting the extent of the decline in North American library holdings in foreign publications.

It was recognized early on that, while the new technologies promise assistance to us, they alone cannot solve the problems, and the impact of reduced holdings and sharing programs on scholarly working habits will be extensive. That kind of profound change does require the support of university presidents and chief academic officers.

Hence, the AAU presidents were involved, and they have provided significant input for the project over the past three years. And there is some promise of additional support.

Two years ago three demonstration projects were started. One, the Latin American Project, did get support from the Mellon Foundation and it has made a good deal of progress. The project’s Advisory Committee includes bibliographers, scholars, an ARL director, and staff support. As a result, there is better access to some Latin American titles, and they will now work on scaling up the project.

The other two projects, focusing on German and Japanese materials, have yielded variable results, but each has identified and defined specific problems affecting those area publications and they are beginning to develop specialized solutions to help make those publications more accessible to us all.

The message is that we are learning, assessing, and designing new approaches, and during the coming year we want to begin pilot projects in African and Southeast Asian areas. Two of the things we have learned are that to be successful all of these projects must deal with a critical mass of material in its particular area or field, and, second, there must a permanent coordinator for these efforts. The Global Resources Program is not a single monolithic effort: it is a series of interconnected or federated efforts that require coordination on an ongoing basis, much more than a committee of library directors can provide.

There has been significant progress in documenting the dimension of the overall problem, in identifying the specific difficulties for several geographic areas, and in involving appropriate stakeholders.

We have AAU support for our tactical plan. We invite your participation in shaping the continuing program. We also welcome any suggestions and comments. We want to make sure that we have your support in this.

MR. CAMPBELL: Thank you Dale. Before Nancy entertains questions, let me conclude by reflecting a bit about next steps. With the I.P. Task Force now being dissolved, I think the Steering Committee itself sees a kind of conclusion to its work because the considerations have broadened somewhat.

At the same meeting this spring, the AAU Technology Committee also sent in a recommendation that essentially said the Internet status quo is unacceptable and suggested that the AAU should set aside an extra day and a half in the fall to consider whether the AAU should establish a dedicated academic network; in this case, a physical network similar to the Internet.

That proposal is not uniformly supported throughout the Educom community, but the degradation of the speed of the Internet for everyday use is apparent.

At any rate, this suggestion fell alongside the notion of a more coordinated approach to electronic publishing, in the same category that concerns distance learning, and the long list of effects the digital environment is having on higher education.

The upshot of it is the AAU is in the process of establishing a focus on this set of issues and it will likely constitute a major program element for the fall meeting. As a part of that, they will probably also set up a smaller working group to do a preliminary run-through of these issues. That is to say, the AAU/ARL Steering Committee on Research Libraries, as we have known and participated in it, will not continue, but it will be enhanced to focus on the whole impact of digital technology on higher education. Our concerns for the library are just part of a larger set of issues, and I think the presidents want to focus on that larger set.

At the same time, I think there was an inclination from the Steering Committee, which will carry through to AAU, that a small joint working group representing ARL and technologists be put together to do some preliminary work over the summer as well. So the enterprise we have been engaged in is proceeding, but it is enlarging its scope to include the whole of the digital environment.

That concludes my report. I’ll be glad to answer questions, as will the others.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Thank you all for those reports. Are there questions?

MR. BENNETT (Yale University): I want to comment on the global initiatives, as Yale, like most of the libraries that are represented in this room, has a major stake in the success of these initiatives. I’ll mention that Yale is a very active participant in the Latin American project. We welcome the initiative and will be glad to participate in moving it forward. Because of the strength of Yale’s collections in German materials, we considered very carefully participating in that but decided not to because we thought that there were serious flaws in the design of that project. And it’s out of that experience that I’m speaking now.

I quite agree that Dale has identified some of the lessons learned so far and accurately describes the need for federated interconnected projects for moving the global access initiative forward. One of the things we have learned in the last year is that it is exceedingly difficult to construct effective interconnected federated projects and, in fact, we have failed to do that in a significant way.

My hope is that the Association will look carefully at the difficulties of doing what needs to be done and form a pretty clear idea of how it should be done before we engage the interests of university presidents in a definitive way. I do not want to fail with that audience on this matter.

The other thing I’ll mention is that we have a long way to go still in demonstrating the kind of economic impact on our institutions that we seek through these programs and a long way to go in designing the programs so that they will achieve those desired impacts. And that’s another issue where I think we have to pay a lot of attention, again, before we definitely enlist the support of university presidents.

MR. SIMPSON (Center for Research Libraries): I’d like to add my endorsement of this tactical plan to Scott’s and agree with a number of comments that he made. I’ve long participated in the development of this program, having now served on both the Research Collections Committee and on the task force with others who have been involved in the exploration phases of this program. So I have a lot of personal and organizational investment in this.

It is a very substantial, difficult, and complex problem that just isn’t going to go away unless we do something well thought-out, well considered, and with a certain amount of concerted and committed action on all of our parts.

The tactical plan, as I see it, is an effective means for a transition from the kind of exploration that we’ve been doing for the last four or five years into an era that I would describe as developmental and coordinative, but with the expectation that this period of time will be relatively brief because of the need to move on with the operational aspects.

There are downsides but, as we heard in the motivational speeches yesterday and those we’ve been hearing for years, we have to look to these challenges as opportunities. This opportunity will require an enormous amount of commitment, an enormous amount of patience, and a very careful balance between short-term gains, which is what our presidents want us to provide, as well as long-term progress, which is really the only thing that will resolve these incredibly difficult issues over time.

Now, as part of this effort, CRL, being an organization that is in the operational business of cooperation in relation to collections, is now announcing an initiative to step forward and expand our program to fit some aspects of the global resources program. We want to expand our operating capacity to meet the needs within the global resources program that are not now being met.

Initially, we put forward a planning statement that focuses in several areas. One of those areas, which is actually a new effort for us, is the development of an electronic journal archive. Notice I said "a," not "the," because we see that there will be many participants who will have a variety of electronic journal archives. That, in fact, will be the strength for this community over time, rather than trying to put all the eggs in a single basket.

We also want to expand our newspapers program, which is exceptionally strong in the international area; expand our area studies programs; build on our dissertations collection to make it a truly global collection; take on an exchanges coordination function; and, lastly, the program will build on something that we have been working very hard on over the last dozen years, the national collections of record.

All of these are our attempt to build on the experience that many of your institutions have invested in now for almost 50 years at CRL. It’s not to say that there aren’t some incredibly complex issues that have yet to be dealt with. The very first one on my list is money. Money is difficult for all of us to come up with these days and this will not be an easy barrier to surmount.

Another issue is the one of membership in CRL. We have to remember that, for a very long time, CRL has operated a number of programs that involve both member institutions and non-member institutions. We have to keep in mind that a 1950s model for membership may not be the appropriate one to carry CRL or the research library community into the 21st century. There is a panel of very hard-working and intelligent people who are examining that issue now and will do so over the next year.

A couple of other problems that have to be dealt with, of course, are the conflicts with local priorities that any kind of cooperative mechanism encounters. Copyright will continue to be a very serious problem as we expand our efforts. The other is, of course, the need for multiple players in all of this. I’m hopeful that other players in the cooperative collection business will step up now as well.

Over the next year we will be doing a lot of detailed planning. We expect ARL to provide an incredible amount of very effective coordination for this program. We feel that that is entirely essential, not only to meet the needs of the Center’s members, but those of the entire community. Beyond that, we hope to begin implementation of these expanded programs very shortly.

In closing, I would ask that as you read the documentation that’s coming forward from CRL, please send us your thoughts. They would be very helpful.

MS. SLOAN (Columbia University): Speaking as a member of the AAU/ARL Steering Committee, I want to thank Jerry for his report and for his leadership. I want to emphasize that the work, as Jerry stated, will continue.

The association with AAU is very important to ARL. One of the reasons, as Scott said, that we are so committed to the Global Resources Initiative is that it does have AAU support. I think this continuing collaboration is extremely vital to us and, in fact, will be strengthened by a closer link with the information technology issues because, if we’re going to promote an electronic publishing initiative, we must have a strong network.

Finally, I’d like to thank Duane for his heroic efforts in bringing AAU and ARL together.

MR. WEBSTER (ARL): I think it is worth noting two things: one, that Dr. Neil Pings, President of AAU, did come to our meeting here in Vancouver. He and John Vaughn are both here from AAU and I think that’s in important signal that AAU has a continuing stake and interest in this set of issues.

Secondly, Nancy, Jerry and I had a conversation with John Vaughn this morning to begin drafting the design for the group that will succeed the IP Task Force. We are very interested in having an enhanced sponsorship of that group. We’re thinking in terms of an ACLS and an AAUP presence. If we’re able to achieve that, then this will be a real step forward.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Thank you. We’ve received some good input. At this point we have several committees who wish to make a report. I’d like to call first on Nancy Baker from the Minority Recruitment and Retention Committee.

Report of the Minority Recruitment and Retention Committee

MS. BAKER (Washington State University): One of the biggest priorities from last year’s committee was to build on the work that Kriza Jennings was doing with ALISE (the Association of Library and Information Science Educators). As you may recall, we sponsored a breakfast at ALISE, and I want to thank those directors who were able to come to ALISE and meet with us. I think it had tremendous impact and we would like to continue by focusing this year on the committees and the special interest groups at ALISE and on trying to have a presence there.

The second thing that the Committee would like to do is to have a liaison from each institution to work with Kriza’s replacement at ARL. Third, we really would like to especially encourage you to pick up and use the revised evaluation form for the membership meeting because one of the questions on the revised form is of special interest to our committee.

Thank you.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Thank you, Nancy. Jim Neal will now report for both the Information Policies Committee and the Copyright Issues Working Group.

Report of the Information Policies Committee

MR. NEAL (Johns Hopkins University): Thank you, Nancy. First of all, the Information Policies Committee has been monitoring quite closely the appropriations developments in Washington. We talked extensively about the reviews of the Library of Congress, a situation that I think this Association needs to give careful attention.

We are also beginning a look at the several encryption legislation bills that are moving through Congress and trying to understand what prospective impact they will have on our universities and our libraries. But we have spent most of our time at this meeting talking about the copyright bills, which I’ll return to in a moment when I talk about the work of the Copyright Issues Working Group.

We did consider an association plan for management and access in preservation of electronic government information. That plan will be developed further and we will be presenting it for Board review and endorsement at the July meeting.

We also are monitoring very carefully the library and university liabilities issues that are bundled up under the Communications Decency Act and the Copyright Protection Act. We believe that these two pieces of legislation are moving in parallel directions, and the infringing acts of our user communities, whether they be in the decency and/or copyright arenas, and the potential tagging responsibilities that we might assume in our universities and our libraries are areas about which we need to be passionately concerned. We will be monitoring, troubleshooting, and informing on those issues as we move forward over the next several months.

Report of the Copyright Issues Working Group

Let me spend a little time talking about the work of the Copyright Issues Working Group.

We all know that the copyright term extension legislation and the new copyright legislation are advancing rapidly in Washington. We, ARL, are connecting with key people in Washington and are working effectively with the Digital Future Coalition, an important network of organizations and individuals advancing important principles and actions on our behalf.

I think it’s important to thank and applaud you for how effective and responsive members have been to requests for letters and phone calls to key congressional committee members. This area will accelerate as we move into the fall and your continued cooperation, participation, and leadership will be crucial to our success.

But it’s clear that our ability to advance our interest and to retain our industry partners–and we need to remember that our industry partners are primarily interested in the online services liability issue–and be successful is uncertain. It is possible that the legislation will reach the House and Senate floors by September and we must be prepared to engage the higher-education community.

While working with our higher-education communities, up to now we have pretty much argued on the basis of principles. We have begun to emphasize the impact of this legislation on teaching and research. And now we must address the budgetary impacts for our universities, impacts which are substantial and largely not understood.

We must respond to the mixed messages being received by our campus administrators on such things as patent issues, from IT staff, from university press personnel and faculty who have significant publishing income. The higher-education community does not speak with a single voice. We must move our higher-education communities from awareness and understanding to a period of commitment and action on this issue.

We must work at each of our institutions with our presidents, provosts, deans, university councils, and legislative lobbyists. We must select a future set of key issues. And we spent some time at this meeting talking about what those selected issues should be in terms of the higher-education community. We propose that they be: fair use; online services liability, which in many ways is really a network management issue at our institutions; distance education; and preservation.

I should also add that, in conjunction with this heightened political action, we must also assess the feasibility and desirability of continuing under the umbrella of CONFU to develop guidelines. The Copyright Issues Working Group reviewed the electronic reserves and multimedia draft guidelines here at these meetings, but it is not clear what our right strategy should be. There are issues of process, there are issues of political partnerships, but, most importantly, there are issues of practical considerations. Do we give away rights by signing on to guidelines? We need to come to terms with that as an association.

In addition, we must pursue our priority issues through legal channels and we must decide now if the Michigan Document Services (MDS) amicus brief which we heard about yesterday is ARL’s correct platform. I’d like to turn the podium over to Scott to say some things on that topic.

MR. BENNETT (Yale University): I have, in fact, a motion to make, and, if it’s seconded, I would like to discuss it.

The motion is that, if moved, the ARL membership advise the ARL Board to review the new amicus brief for the hearing of the MDS case and find an appropriate way to express, both to the Federal Court and to the public, its concern that readers be able to exercise with vigor their fair-use rights provided under the U.S. Constitution and that readers be able to rely on third parties, such as libraries, in the exercise of their rights.

MS. CRETH (University of Iowa): Seconded.

PRESIDENT CLINE: As it has been seconded, there is now a call for discussion. Scott, I’ll recognize you.

MR. BENNETT: Thank you very much. There really are two key issues for us in the MDS case. We’ve been calling on ourselves and others to protect fair use. This case is one where fair use is squarely before us, where it is vastly jeopardized, and where there is a good chance of winning. So this is the case in which we should express our views.

I want to emphasize that I think this is a winnable case. It’s winnable if we are able to keep what the true issues are clearly before the court and before the public. You heard yesterday what those issues were and the key importance of keeping clearly focused on them. Before this initial decision was handed down, we’ve seen that it is very easy to lose sight of and to, in fact, misrepresent what the true issues are. This is winnable and it’s an important win for us. So the first issue here is that this is a perfect opportunity, as best as we will have, to protect fair use.

The second key issue is that a particular aspect of this case is that students and faculty were calling upon a third party in the exercise of their fair-use rights. It is vitally important for us to recognize and to protect readers’ ability to do that.

A lot of what now is happening in our libraries is in jeopardy if we do not protect readers’ rights to call upon third parties. When, for instance, a laboratory scientist sends a graduate student to the library to photocopy something, that person is exercising his or her fair-use rights and is employing a university student, somebody the university is paying, to do that.

Some of us are beginning to design library services on precisely this principle. It seems to me that the future of the way in which people will use the library and the future of our ability to shape library services that are really useful to readers depends, in a significant measure, on our ability to protect the individuals’ rights to employ third parties in the exercise of their fair use rights.

Those are the key issues. Now, there is an important question about the particular amicus brief. The one that we saw earlier in the week is not the one that will be submitted. It will be significantly revised in response to Susan Kornfield’s comments on it. I spoke with Susan yesterday, and she is confident that the new brief will strongly and accurately inform the court on the issues. So while we do not have the brief before us today for judgment, I can report to you Susan’s confidence on that matter.

It may be, however, that the brief will not be a perfect one. Certainly, the draft that we have seen is not a perfect one. I have, therefore, tried to take some care in shaping the motion. So I’ll just remind you that the motion advises the ARL Board to find an appropriate way to express, both to the Federal Court and to the public, its concerns on the key issues that I’ve just described. My most fervent hope is that we will not, in search of a perfect way of expressing that support, forego the opportunity to employ a good way to express those concerns.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Thank you. Are there others who wish to comment?

MR. NEAL: I think it’s important to remember that we, as an association, had been a participant in the original amicus brief in this case and that this is a new action that’s being considered.

Secondly, it’s important to note that the original draft brief that we looked at earlier in the week was also shared with legal counsel, not ARL’s legal counsel, and we received expressions of concern about ARL’s signing on to that particular brief and aligning itself with photocopy-shop interests, although the questions and issues being advanced by the brief clearly align with the needs and interests of the research library community.

So we need to be aware that there is not a unanimity of view in terms of whether this brief represents the right strategic action on the part of the Association, although I think, as Scott emphasized, there are some changes that we have not yet seen which potentially could influence that judgment.

PRESIDENT CLINE: I would again remind everyone of the wording. It calls for the action of the Board, so it’s not committing to something that we don’t know.

MR. NEAL: Exactly.

MR. FRAZIER (University of Wisconsin): I want to support the idea of going forward with this resolution, as I believe there is something very important at stake here.

You all heard that the status of guidelines is very relevant to this issue. That is to say, classroom guidelines are being represented by some publishing interests as the maximum extent of use permitted under law, rather than as a safe harbor for use. Now, this goes fundamentally against the whole underlying premise of the guidelines: that we would come together in good faith and define an area of minimum fair use. Now we have, in this particular case, the idea represented that the guidelines represent statute, which they are not, and the maximum extent of fair use, which they are not.

So there’s a very fundamental principle at stake for us with respect to the status of guidelines. Because if, indeed, guidelines are to define the maximum extent of fair use under law, then in the future we can no longer participate in the formation of guidelines. So that is one very important reason for us to back this resolution.

MS. NUTTER (North Carolina State University): I’ll be very brief. I just want to speak in support of Scott’s motion.

Also, I am very concerned of the concept of waiting for the perfect brief. I don’t think we’re ever going to see one and there are issues within this brief that are very critical to us.

I also feel that the photocopy-shop issue is one that is a complicated one for us; I would have difficulty distinguishing my own photocopy operation from the kind of shop that’s described in this brief. So I would hate to see that hold us back.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Seeing no other people at the microphones for comment, I’ll consider our discussion complete and call for the vote. Those who are in favor of the resolution please signify by saying "Aye."

THE MEMBERSHIP: Aye.

PRESIDENT CLINE: Those opposed, by "Nay." It’s carried. Thank you.

We will now hear from Duane Webster.

Report of the Executive Director

MR. WEBSTER: We do feel confident that we’re keeping you well-informed through a variety of mechanisms; well-informed on what we’re doing, on the issues we’re addressing, and how we’re addressing those issues. So I don’t think I need to reiterate those activities.

However, I believe it is appropriate to spend a moment both saluting some of the staff who have been such a crucial part of this partnership, as well as looking at some directions we are taking the enterprise, given current staff changes.

Let me start by saluting Mary Jane Brooks, who has done a marvelous job in putting together the logistics and arrangements for this meeting. Secondly, I’d like to look at some of the changes that are taking place in ARL staff, acknowledge the accomplishments of those who are leaving, and look at some of the directions we are going.

First, I want to note the significant contribution that Kriza Jennings, Program Officer for Diversity and Minority Recruitment and Retention, has made to ARL’s agenda and our thinking, as well as our behavior, over the last six years. She has been an advocate for a set of issues, but she’s also been an enthusiast for those issues in the context of helping research libraries embrace and engage, and deal with managing cultural diversity and recruiting a stronger component of minorities to research libraries. The accomplishment that Kriza has mastered is that she has brought the program to such a prominent level of attention and has brought our capability to the level of a full-fledged program fully supported by the membership, both in the use of that program, as well as via membership dues.

Another key staff member who is leaving is Susan Jurow. Susan has been with us for 11 years. Of course, she came from a number of libraries, working at the University of Houston and then the University of California. She has worked in a training capacity, and has emerged as the director of the OMS. Susan is the person who has been the most responsible for coaching, nurturing, and working with Kriza to help move the Minority Recruitment & Cultural Diversity Program forward.

She has also done an awful lot for us in a variety of fashions, not the least of which, again in terms of this meeting, is her work with both Nancy and Carolynne Presser in identifying speakers, and tracking them down, and making sure they would be available for this event.

Susan is taking on new responsibilities as Executive Director of the College and University Personnel Association, CUPA. I believe this is an excellent opportunity for ARL to extend and enhance its relationships within the university community. With Susan at CUPA, I think we will have opportunities to develop a unique and very special working relationship with the human resources staff in our institutions.

So while we are in fact losing, or I might say graduating, Susan to a new set of activities, this will, in fact, be a relationship that will continue to bear fruit for the organization.

Next, I would like to say a couple of words about Jutta Reed-Scott. Jutta has been with ARL for 14 years. She is a very special person, extremely important in formulating and advancing research library collection, preservation, and bibliographic control interests.

Jutta has worked on a variety of fronts and, very notably, she has done extraordinary work in framing, shaping, directing, and leading the Global Resources Initiative described by Dale earlier. Of course, Jutta has worked very closely with Dale and with the committee to make that initiative happen. Perhaps the most important accomplishment of this effort has been the study on global resources that Jutta recently completed, published by ARL. It is a truly notable and fitting closure to her career at ARL that she was able to write this, to capture and articulate the dramatic need facing research libraries in the arena of foreign acquisitions. It serves as a true tribute to her talent, her excellence, and her lasting contribution to our enterprise.

In our own mischievous way we are finding ways to keep Jutta involved with us, even in her retirement. She has agreed to continue to work with us on a contract basis. She will be helping us with the NRMM (National Register for Microform Masters) Project, a retrospective conversion effort for which we have been fortunate enough to receive some funding from the National Endowment for Humanities over the last several years, largely due to Jutta’s grant-writing skills. This last grant will be the final phase, we are assured, allowing us to in fact complete that series of efforts.

Let me speak briefly about where we are going with these ARL program capabilities, given these staff changes. We are losing 30 years of experience here and it will be very difficult to replace that, to build our new team. But we, of course, have a very strong nucleus of staff who are continuing and will be available to help with that transition.

We have also made some progress in building the new team. In the area of the scholarly communication, we have renamed the office. It’s now the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC). We have also been able to recruit a fine new director for that office, who I would like to introduce to you at this time.

Mary Case has her MLS from the University of Michigan. She has worked over the last decade in a variety of positions in serials and acquisitions at one of our member institutions, Northwestern University. Most recently, and quite importantly, she has been working in Northwestern’s Office of the Vice-President for Administration and Planning, where she has been coordinating reviews of the academic programs. This has given her an excellent opportunity to develop a better understanding of the interest and needs of the scholars at Northwestern.

We believe that Mary’s combination of a background in traditional library as well as working on reviews of academic programs and interests establishes her very well as Director for the Office of Scholarly Communication.

We are working closely with the Scholarly Communication Committee to chart new directions for that office, but I want to assure you that it will continue to serve as a focal point for collecting and dispersing information on changes taking place with scholarly communication. We are looking at more formal and deliberate mechanisms for serving that clearinghouse role and will be looking to Mary to help design those.

Secondly, we will continue the Directory of Electronic Journals. It is becoming a very large enterprise; the current Directory is about to be published with 1,700 titles. And so we are looking at different alternatives for producing it and making it available in the future. Mary, again, will help us in that regard.

Third, we are convinced that a primary contribution of OSC is in connecting us with various parts of the academic community. We are and will continue to pay attention to that partnering aspect of the Office. So I believe it is appropriate to announce, on a tentative basis, that the Office of Scholarly Communication will be working with the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) and, we think, the American Association of University Presses to put together a symposium in December of this year on campus-based strategies for electronic scholarly publishing, in conjunction with the CNI meeting in San Francisco. I hope you will put that on your calendar.

For the Minority Recruitment Program, we are very pleased with our recruitment efforts. We have received 50 applications, and expect to proceed with interviews in this next month. We will have a new Director of that Program before the end of the summer to continue Kriza’s good efforts.

As I mentioned, in the area of the collections and preservation programs, Jutta will contract to do a particular project, but we are also extending a relationship with Deborah Jakubs. I promised Deborah I would not formally announce that she has been recruited to be a Visiting Program Officer, but we are in the final stages of negotiation.

I believe this is a very important step, as it indicates our commitment to moving the Global Resources Program forward. Deborah has been a strong part of the Latin American pilot project and has agreed to seriously consider the arrangements under which we might work together on a part-time basis as a Visiting Program Officer to ensure that the Global Resources Program progresses.

Finally, with the OMS, we have a very strong cadre of talent: Maureen Sullivan, Kathryn Deiss, and Laura Rounds. We also have talent in the field under contract to OMS: George Soete, Shelley Phipps, and others. There is a lot of strong talent in OMS, and we are committed to continuing to deliver quality services to you. In the next several months I will be working with staff, the management committee, and Paul Kobulnicky (University of Connecticut), who chairs the Management Committee, to look at different ways to best organize and deploy that talent to you.

I’m confident that we have a very exciting new team in the making.

Thank you.