Minutes of the Meeting of the University Libraries Committee, 6 March 2007, 2:00–3:00 PM in PCL 3.204
Present: Michael Winship (chair), Richard Hazeltine (vice chair), Kenneth Ralls, Katherine Arens, Virginia Burnett, Luis Francisco–Revilla, Meghan Sitar, Fred Heath; also Dennis Dillon, Doug Barnett, Sue Phillips, Robert Foster (recording secretary)
There was discussion of possible changes in the makeup of the committee. Since the current official description of the committee specifically says that there should be two research staff representatives, it was offered that the president’s office may be encouraged to consider representatives from the Pickle Research Campus for committee membership. It was also thought that chairs of the committee might actively encourage the scheduling of one meeting of the committee in the fall and spring at branch libraries.
There was a brief report on the continuing problem of library remote storage caused by the addition of perhaps 200,000 volumes to the University’s libraries annually. Soon there inevitably gets to be no place to add new books on campus. Under consideration has been adding a second module to the remote storage facility at the Pickle Research Campus in cooperation with the Texas A&M Library. With high–density shelving, such an addition might hold a million books, and provide storage needs for perhaps five years. The costs of such a module at PRC are rising due to the City’s revised fire safety requirements, and it isn’t clear at this time whether such a module at PRC is the most serviceable choice.
Dennis Dillon led discussion on the Google Books Project, of which UT Libraries is now a part. One of the larger goals of the participation of the UT Libraries is to digitize one million volumes from the Benson Latin American Collection. Libraries from various European countries are now partners with Google also. Dennis reported that meetings with Google representatives are helping bring the pieces of the proposed partnership project together.
--Robert Foster
