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Nancy Baker Director: WSU Libraries

Bytes From Baker

March 1, 2000

As Spring approaches, we have an exciting new service to introduce to our library users – electronic books. I remember, not so long ago, when the idea of electronic journal articles was almost futuristic. But even those who could imagine electronic journals, could never imagine a whole book in electronic format.

Through a partnership with the BCR consortium, we are now providing about 5,500 electronic books out of the 14,000 titles available from netLibrary. These represent books from over 160 publishers. Students at the University of Texas and other universities currently offering netLibrary are making tremendous use of this collection. Much of their use occurs from midnight – 3am when campus libraries are closed. It will be interesting to watch the pattern of usage here at WSU.

I had the opportunity to attend the training for netLibrary on February 24. I am sure we will be offering some additional training within the Libraries for those who were unable to attend that session. Some training is especially helpful since, like all databases, netLibrary has its own special features and quirks. The underlying philosophy of how this service works is also a bit different from our other databases.

On another note, many of you have asked me about upcoming budget cuts for the 2000-2001 fiscal year. Unfortunately, I do not have very much definitive information at the present time. We do know, at a minimum, we will be asked to reduce our budget by 2.5% of our 1998 salary base. This will cover previous shortcomings in Academic Affairs that were covered temporarily by one-time funds. For the Libraries, this represents $41,500. Until the enrollment figures for the coming year are more definitive, it is impossible to know exactly what, if any, enrollment shortfalls might affect the Libraries' budget. However, with the mandated minimum wage increases from the past two years and our usual inflationary increases on books and journals, I believe we will be facing some difficult decisions for this coming year even if WSU meets its enrollment goals.

I have always tried to keep you all informed about changes in our budget as soon as I have had information available to me. That will continue. In the meantime, Library Council will likely have to explore some "what if" scenarios in order to be ready for various possibilities.

Nancy L. Baker, Director of Libraries