Cambridge University Reporter


Annual Report of the Library Syndicate for the year 2006-07

Highlights

Planning for the future development of the collections (both print and electronic), and their preservation and storage, assumed a high priority this year.

In the area of collection building, all academic Schools except Arts and Humanities have now agreed to join the Journals Co-ordination Scheme. Expenditure from the scheme exceeded £1.5 million during 2006-07, and with the Schools of Humanities and Social Sciences, Technology, and the remainder of Physical Sciences joining in 2007-08 this amount will grow considerably. During the year, 70 titles were cancelled, most of them duplicates held in more than one Cambridge library. Fifteen new journals were added as part of the Co-ordination Scheme, as well as one new package (Wiley Interscience Journals).

The University now has access to about 30,000 current electronic journals, either through the Co-ordination Scheme or via subscriptions funded by the University Library. There is still, however, a growing demand for more journals - principally in electronic form - and the establishment of an agreed mechanism to determine the allocation of resources, and increases to those resources, especially from the participating Schools, will be a major issue for the coming year if Cambridge is to continue to provide its users with the materials they require to support their research.

Despite the availability of a growing range of electronic resources, the number of books being published, and the demand for them, show no sign of decline, and space has to be found for the physical volumes of both books and printed journals. The situation in the West Road building has become acute, to the extent that the readers' tables on a number of open-access floors have had to be commandeered to accommodate the overflows from nearby shelves, forcing readers to work on an adjacent floor. The problem is being exacerbated in the short term by the fact that part of the closed stacks is having to be used as decanting space for books and journals temporarily removed from the 1970s mobile cases that are in the process of being replaced by state-of-the-art, easily maintained mobile shelving. That work is on schedule for completion in August 2008, by which time an additional 6.5 km of closed-access shelving will have become available.

It had been hoped that approval would have been given during the year for a start to be made on the final (Phase 6) stage of the extension to the West Road building, which will provide a further 30 km of storage space and release one complete floor of the 1970s West Bookstack (5 km of shelving) for open-access collections. Although the plans proceeded on schedule through the various University committees, the announcement of HEFCE's Science Research Infrastructure Fund (SRIF4) funding, from which much of the cost will be met, was delayed, and at the end of the year that announcement was still awaited.

In the meantime - and given that, even when this extra space becomes available, the amount of shelving for open-access books will be limited - a number of measures have been implemented to ensure that the most recent and most heavily-used books and journals are most easily accessible to users. Most nineteenth-century books and some periodicals have now been withdrawn to closed-access shelving, in order to give greater protection to the relatively fragile materials for which unsupervised use is no longer appropriate, and the open-access Official Publications have also been moved to closed areas.

As part of the policy of placing materials in the most appropriate building for their principal users, the physical relocation of journals in subjects appropriate to the Betty and Gordon Moore Library began in February 2007. Several titles are being transferred each week and, by July 2007, 335 titles, comprising 10,000 bound volumes, had been moved - approximately 65% of the total scheduled for transfer.

These moves will enable an extensive re-spacing exercise to take place on the South Front and South Wing to restore books to the shelves and return the tables for readers' use. Unfortunately the same relief is not in immediate sight for the north side of the building. Short-term solutions to these problems will be sought, but it is unlikely that there will be significant improvements until the mobile-shelving replacement programme releases some space in 2008.

A switch to electronic-only journals is now being contemplated in some STM (science, technology, and medicine) subjects, though many scientists remain cautious about abandoning print altogether. As this switch proceeds, the Library is considering various options for off-site storage and possible de-accessioning, especially of STM journals for which electronic versions exist. The UK Research Reserve programme for the co-ordinated retention of journals across the country means that such an initiative can now be contemplated, and the Library has indicated its willingness to participate in the UKRR programme. Bilateral discussions have also been taking place with University College London Library Services to explore the possibility of sharing the storage of some lesser-used journals in medicine and physics. Once the feasibility of this approach has been tested, users will be consulted on titles to be selected for participation in the scheme.

The Wolfson Foundation's announcement in October 2006 of a second round of bids for capital grants under its CURL Library Programme offered a timely opportunity for the Medical Library to put together a proposal that would help to address two urgent issues: the physical limitations of the building and a shift in priorities towards a greater dependence on e-resources and away from the storage of printed materials. The Foundation awarded the Library a grant of £200,000 towards an estimated cost of £1 million, with the balance to be met principally by the Clinical School, on the basis that this was an important first step towards restructuring the entire upper library floor of the Medical Library as space that could be transferred over the next ten years to the School. Work is scheduled to take place in summer 2008. The project includes conversion of part of the upper library floor into an IT study area to replace more than 1,000m of shelving for journal back-sets. Refurbishment of the lower library floor will include a complete redesign of the entrance area, relocation of the staff workroom, and the creation of small meeting/training rooms for use by both the Library and the School. By undertaking the project the Medical Library has committed itself to deselecting a substantial proportion of its journal back-sets, and, with the aid of a three-month survey of usage, appropriate titles have been identified as candidates for deselection. The proposals will be circulated for consultation among the Library's University, National Health Service, and Medical Research Council clientele in preparation for a submission to the Library Syndicate during the coming academical year.

Strengthening the collections

The continuing weakness of the dollar and a modest increase to the acquisitions budget, made possible principally by greater use of trust funds, permitted a small increase in the number of modern books purchased. About 35,000 books in European languages (including non-UK English-language books) were bought, representing an increase of about 1,000 over the previous year. This compares to about 55,000 volumes received under legal deposit, roughly the same as in 2005-06. The table below shows the breakdown of purchased books by language.  Main Sources of Funding  pp. 79-81

30 October 2007

PETER LIPTON (Vice-Chancellor’s Deputy) CATHERINE HILLS JOHN MORRILL
RICHARD BEADLE CHRISTOPHER HOWE J. R. SPENCER
JOHN BELL PETER HUTCHINSON JILL WHITELOCK
HARVEY DEV GORDON JOHNSON DIANA F. WOOD
R. C. GLEN PATRICIA KILLIARD  
C. HANDSCOMB D. J. MCKITTERICK  
    

APPENDIX

Library Staff - Professional Activities

Publications, papers presented, membership of committees

M. C. Allen
Committee membership
Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries, Management Committee and Relocation Group
Cambridge University Women's Forum Steering Group

R. M. Andrewes
Committee membership
Bliss Trust (Trustee)
RISM (UK) Trust (Trustee and Treasurer)
RILM Technical Advisory Committee
William Alwyn Foundation (Trustee)
Cambridge University Musical Society (Vice President)

C. A. Aylmer
Paper presented
'Internet Resources for Chinese studies', NCOLR Seminar on Internet and Related Resources for Oriental Studies, Cambridge, September 2006
Committee membership
China Library Group, Periodicals Sub-Committee

S. Bhayro
Book review in Review of Biblical Literature
Papers presented
'Sergius to Theodore on the Art of Medicine', International Conference on Byzantine Studies, London, August 2006
'The sixth-century oriental Christian scientific translation movement', Mediterranean Editors and Translators Meeting, Barcelona, October 2006
'Is it possible to write a history of ancient Israel?', Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society/Institute of Jewish Studies Annual Lecture, London, November 2006
'A leaf from a magician's handbook in the Cairo Genizah', Zohar Seminar on Socio-Linguistics, London, June 2007
'The use of Jubilees in medieval chronicles to supplement Enoch: the case for the shorter reading', Enoch Seminar on Medieval Chronicle Traditions, Tuscany, July 2007

J. Bloxham
Committee membership
Institute of Conservation

I. M. Burke
Committee membership
IT Syndicate, Technical Sub-Committee

S. H. M. Cameron
Joint editor: Cambridge University Libraries Information Bulletin

C. T. Clarkson
Committee membership
University's Disability Forum

A. Collins
Committee membership
Clinical School Educational Resources Working Group
Higher Education Health Librarians in the Eastern Region

E. M. Coonan
Paper presented
'Creating eye-catching exhibits to avoid abolition fatigue: a Commonwealth journey', Standing Conference on Library Materials on Africa Conference: 'Slavery and abolition: sources in UK libraries and archives', London, June 2007

J. Cox
Committee membership
Janus Steering Group (Chair)
Cantab Developers' Group (Chair)
Cambridge Archivists Group (Secretary)
Society for the History of the University (Secretary)
Information Strategy Task Force

D. Davies
Papers presented
'Maimonides' Guide as companion', opening of the Duke Islamic Studies Center, Durham, NC, November 2006
'Maimonides and Crescas on the nature of God', Manchester Jewish Historical Society, March 2007

L. Dingle
'Conversations with Professor Lipstein: some reminiscences over seventy years of the Squire Law Library and the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge', International Journal of Legal Information, 35 (2007) [with Daniel Bates]
Book review in Library Information Management
Committee membership
FLARE (Foreign Law Research Consortium)
Freshfields/Faculty of Law Liaison Committee
Academic support Officer, Wolfson College

E. Dourish
Committee membership
Cambridge Bibliographical Society

P. K. Fox
Papers presented
'Parker on the web' [with John Haeger and John Hatcher], Mellon All-Projects Meeting: Medieval Studies, New York, January 2007
'e-books in context', e-books@cambridge workshop, March 2007
'Cambridge University Library: from oracle bones to CD-ROMs', Rotary Club, Cambridge, April 2007
'What will libraries be providing in 2020', 2020 Vision: 450th anniversary conference of the Stationers' and Newspaper Makers' Company, London, May 2007
Committee membership
LIBER: Association of European Research Libraries (Vice-President)
Lord Chancellor's Advisory Council on National Records and Archives
Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Legal Deposit Advisory Panel
Joint Committee on Legal Deposit
Friends of the National Libraries, Executive Committee
National Preservation Office Board
International Editorial Board, Journal of Library Administration

L. J. Gray
Committee membership
Endeavor User Group, EndUser Board
International group of Ex-Libris Users, Steering Committee member, and Co-Chair, Voyager Product Working Group
libraries@cambridge Advisory Group

W. A. Hale
Book reviews in Rare Books Newsletter and Library History
Paper presented
'Men, women and Herveys: four hundred years of books at Ickworth', Cambridge Bibliographical Society, March 2007
Committee membership
CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections Group, Bibliographic Standards Committee

S. J. Hills
University Library Staff Club (President)
Editor: University Library Readers' Newsletter

C. N. Hudson
University Vice-Marshal

R. C. Jamieson
Committee membership
Faculty of Divinity, Working Group on Online Resources for Indic Studies (Chairman)
Union Handlist of Manuscripts in North Indian Languages
National Council on Orientalist Library Resources, Automation Working Party

R. Jefferson
Editor: Genizah Fragments

B. Jenkins
Committee membership
English Short Title Catalogue, UK Committee
National Preservation Office, Preservation Advisory Panel
Brotherton Collection Advisory Committee

E. J. Johnson
Review in Times Literary Supplement

J. E. Kelly
Committee membership
British Association of American Studies, Library and Resources Sub-Committee (Secretary)
University Library Staff Club (Chair)

P. Killiard
Papers presented:
'Managing JISC e-resources and licences using the Meridian ERM: a case study in managing the JISC model licence and related licences at the University of Cambridge', JISC Collections Licensing workshops, Edinburgh and London, November 2006
'Digitising collections: project planning and funding' [with Heather Lane], libraries@cambridge day, December 2006
'Upload, organise, share ... and preserve: managing and preserving your digitisation project output', University of Cambridge day for librarians, June 2007
'DSpace@Cambridge: the evolution of a repository', University College London, June 2007
Committee membership
Legal Deposit Advisory Panel/Joint Committee on Legal Deposit, E-journals Working Group
Legal Deposit Libraries Act Implementation Group
Library Syndicate (staff representative)
Information Strategy Task Force

N. Koyama
'Inagaki Manjirō (1861-1908): a diplomat who recognized the importance of the Asia-Pacific region to Japan', and 'Japanese tattooists and the British royal family during the Meiji period', in Britain & Japan biographical portraits, vol. 6, ed. by Hugh Cortazzi (Folkestone 2007)
Paper presented
'Japanese tattooists and the British royal family during the Meiji period', European Association of Japanese Resource Specialists' Annual Conference, Venice, September 2006
'Book 'Paths' from Japan into Europe', Tenri Antiquarian Materials Workshop for Overseas Japanese Librarians, Tenri, Japan, June 2007
Committee membership
Japan Library Group (Chair)
European Association of Japanese Resource Specialists (Board Member)

I. L. Kuhn
'NHS library services for social care workers', Poster session: CILIP Umbrella Conference, University of Hertfordshire, June 2007 [with D. Lepley, A. Parrett, and J. Reynolds]
Committee membership
Clinical School Educational IT Steering Group
ECLaKSA (NHS Eastern Counties Library & Knowledge Services Alliance)
East of England Health Information Skills Trainers (Chair)

S. V. Lambert
Book review in Learned Publishing
Assistant Editor, The Indexer

J. A. Leary
Committee membership
Clinical School Building Safety Committee
Higher Education Health Librarians in the Eastern Region

D. K. Lowe
Committee membership
West European Studies Library and Information Network (Convenor)
French Studies Library Group (Annual Review editor)

A. Martin
Committee membership
CILIP London Branch (Secretary)

P. M. Meadows
'Living stones: researching the history of your church building', Cambridge Historic Churches Trust Annual Conference, April 2007
Committee membership
Cambridgeshire County Archives Advisory Group
Degree Sub-Committee for Master of Studies in Local and Regional History

S. Morcillo-García
Committee membership
Advisory Council on Latin American and Iberian Information Resources
Paper presented
Seminar on Spanish book distribution in UK libraries, London Book Fair, April 2007

P. B. Morgan
'Alive and kicking: a progress report on Open Access, institutional repositories, and health information', He@lth Information on the Internet, 58 (2007)
'Obituary: Linda Dorrington 1949-2006, Health Information and Libraries Journal, 23 (2006), and Journal of the European Association for Health Information & Libraries, 2 (2006) [with L. Curtis, M. Forrest, and T. McSéan]
'Open Data - free for all?' RINews (Research Information Network Newsletter), No. 2 (2007)
Project SPECTRa (Submission, Preservation and Exposure of Chemistry Teaching and Research Data): JISC Final Report (2007) [with A. Tonge]
Papers presented
'Capturing research outputs at the University of Cambridge: experiences with DSpace', 'Institutional Archives for Research: Experiences and Projects in Open Access', Rome, November-December 2006
'Facilitating the deposit of experimental chemistry data in institutional repositories: Project SPECTRa (Submission, Preservation, and Exposure of Chemistry Teaching and Research Data)', Global Access to Science: IATUL Conference 2007, Stockholm, June 2007
'An overview of open access repositories', BioMed Central Colloquium: Open Access: How Can We Achieve Quality and Quantity?, London, February 2007
'Research data and the role of the institutional repository', UMSLG Residential Meeting, Cardiff, July 2007
Committee and representative membership
BMJ Publishing Group Library Advisory Panel
Clinical School/Addenbrooke's Hospital SIFT Liaison Group
Clinical School Building Safety and Users Committee
Clinical School Educational Resources Working Group
DSpace User Group Meeting 2007 (Rome) - Programme Committee
ECLaKSA (NHS Eastern Counties Library & Knowledge Services Alliance)
European Association for Health Information & Libraries: UK representative, EAHIL Council
Higher Education Health Librarians in the Eastern Region
Research Information Network - Librarianship & Information Science Consultative Group
SHERPA Management Group
SPECTRa (Submission, Preservation and Exposure of Chemistry Teaching and Research Data) - Steering Group
University Medical School Librarians Group

A. E. Murray
Vice-President of Wolfson College
Paper presented
'Growing Your Own: developing leaders through succession planning', LIBER Annual General Conference, Warsaw, July 2007
Committee membership
Legal Deposit Libraries Agency Management Committee

F. Niessen
'A newly discovered autograph fragment of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed from the Cairo Genizah', Journal of Jewish Studies, 57 (2006) [with B. Outhwaite]
Paper presented
'Documents referring to Al-Andalus from the Cairo Geniza', 13th Conference of the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies, Cordoba, June 2007

W. A. Noblett
Book reviews in CILIP Rare Books Group Newsletter
Committee membership
HISTPOP (Online Historical Population Reports), Steering Committee
Eighteenth-century Parliamentary Papers Project, Steering Committee
History of Parliament Trust Ad-hoc Committee on Digitisation

B. Outhwaite
'A newly discovered autograph fragment of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed from the Cairo Genizah', Journal of Jewish Studies, 57 (2006) [with F. Nielsen]
Catalogue entries for the Smithsonian Institution exhibition 'In the beginning: Bibles before the year 1000' (Washington, DC, 2006)
Papers presented
'A world apart? Byzantium and Byzantines in the Genizah' AHRC/CRASSH International Colloquium 'The Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism', Cambridge, July 2007
'The Mosseri Collection at CambridgeUniversity Library: the re-emergence of a Genizah archive', Cambridge Jewish Residents Association, February 2007
Committee membership
AHRC John Rylands Genizah Project Advisory Board

A. J. Perkins
'A case of archival theft: the retrieval of the Greenwich Observatory Neptune papers', International Astronomical Union 26th Congress, Prague, August 2006
'The past and future of scientific archives: good practice by default, the illustrative case of the Royal Greenwich Observatory collection', Royal Astronomical Society's Astronomical Heritage Committee meeting, London, May 2007
Committee membership
International Astronomical Union, Commission 41/Inter-Union Commission for History of Astronomy, Working Group on Astronomical Archives.
Royal Society Library Committee

R. Rowe
Committee membership
South Asian Archives and Library Group (Chairman)

R. Scrivens
Reviews Editor: Solanus: International Journal for Russian and East European Bibliographic, Library and Publishing Studies
Committee membership
Council for Slavonic and East European Libraries and Information Services

N. A. Smith
Committee membership
Cambridge Bibliographical Society (Secretary)

C. Staufenbiel
Committee membership
German Studies Library Group (Treasurer)
Paper presented
'Saved by a Cambridge student: Arthur Schnitzler's manuscripts, Eric Blackall and the Nazi threat', international conference on 'Schnitzler's Hidden Manuscripts', Cambridge, November 2006

A. E. M. Taylor
Editor, Bulletin of the Friends of Cambridge University Library
Committee membership
British and Irish Committee for Map Information and Catalogue Systems (BRICMICS)
Charles Close Society Archives Sub-Committee
Groupe des Cartothécaires de LIBER (Board member)
MapForum (Editorial Board member)
Cambridge Library Group (Membership Secretary)

J. R. H. Taylor
Committee membership
Legal Deposit Libraries Shared Cataloguing Programme, Steering Group (Chair)
RLG Union Catalog Advisory Group
Joint Steering Committee for Revision of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (CILIP representative)
SUNCAT Bibliographic Quality Advisory Group.

J. D. Wells
'To improve their respective estates: James Matheson and Zavier Yrisarri in copartnership', Matheson & Co. Christmas Letter, 2006
Committee membership
Friends of Cambridge University Library (Secretary)
Group for Literary Archives and Manuscripts
Committee for the Commemoration of the Quatercentenary of the Birth of John Milton

J. Whitelock
Editor: Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society and Monographs
Committee membership
Library Syndicate (staff representative)
Cambridge Bibliographical Society
Friends of Cambridge University Library

G. H. Wiedermann:
Committee membership
Coutts OASIS Advisory Group

D. F. Wills
'The Squire Law Library', Cambridge Lawlink, (Faculty of Law Newsletter), Issue 7 (2007).
Committee Membership
BIALL Awards and Bursaries Committee (Chair)
FLARE (Foreign Law Research Consortium)
Freshfields/Faculty of Law Liaison Committee

P. Zawada
Committee membership
EU Databases User Group (EUDUG)

P. N. R. Zutshi
'An unpublished letter of Isabella of Aragon [CUL, Add. MS. 4100(2)]', Renaissance Studies, 20 (2006)
'The provenance of the so-called Hours of Isabella of Aragon, Cambridge, University Library, Add. MS. 4100', in The Cambridge Illuminations: the conference proceedings, ed. by S. Panayotova (Turnhout and London 2007)
General Editor, The History of the University of Cambridge: Texts and Studies
Paper presented
'The papal penitentiary and the beginnings of the Great Schism', German Historical Institute, Paris, November 2006
Committee membership
Oxford University Archives Committee
Advisory and Technical Panel, Northamptonshire Record Office
SCONUL and RLG representative, East of England Regional Archives Council
Charles Darwin Trust (Trustee)
Editorial Advisory Board, Journal of Ecclesiastical History