Message sent by Kaya van Beynen, Associate Dean of USF Libraries, to the Research and Instruction librarians on the USF Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota-Manatee campuses.
Here are a few things to keep you updated and to follow up on some of our recent conversations.
The new streamlined ILL / Document Delivery page is now live: https://lib.usf.edu/ill/ Terry, Natalie, and Sandra did a great job changing the overall page and submission form to make it easier for faculty and students on all campuses to request items.
If you receive questions from faculty regarding streaming media for their courses, you should refer them to the eReserves Request form: https://lib.usf.edu/course-reserves/make-request/ The library is renewing film licenses for Fall 2020 courses and receiving requests for the Spring 2021 semester. Also, the USF Libraries Media Guide is also a great place to send your faculty.
Next week, the library’s revisioning the Collections website will go live with an explanation of the what we’re doing and the list of FAQs for faculty. Based on our conversations as well as some of the questions from the faculty in the FS Library Council, the FAQs will expand to include the following questions:
- Are we keeping JSTOR?
- Can I still read through Table of Contents?
This will be a living webpage, updated as we learn more and if you have questions or hear common concerns from faculty, please share them with me so that we add these to the FAQs or edit the page accordingly.
I am happy to say, that it is looking like the cuts to the library and to the collections will not be as bad as anticipated. Nonetheless, they will still be significant, and this will be a long, multi-staged process:
- Now through December – Step 1: Right now our Collections colleagues are going through their legal requirements of notifying publishers regarding our contracts and licenses. This will immediately impact four “Big Deals.”
- November through December – Step 2: Then they have to conduct title by title analysis of the journals. This will take several months. During these stages, we are still planning, and NO cuts have been implemented.
- January through February/March – Step 3: reacquire content based on the analysis in Step 2.
- March through May – Step 4: review and consider next steps on canceled content. Finally, stage four is an iterative step to consider next steps and re-evaluating titles to make sure that we are strategically meeting the needs of the university and programs. ILL/Document Delivery and other mechanisms will be in place in December to bridge gaps.
Your patience and consideration of this mammoth undertaking is appreciated. This revisioning process is something that all of USF is going through right now.
I know that our teaching and research colleagues will react with understanding even if you reaffirm the library’s commitment to supporting their research and instruction, refer them to what resources we now or will have in place — ILL, Document Delivery and article purchasing-on-demand, your professional suggestions on alternative sources, and the library collections that we either own outright or will re-subscribe to. It’s also ok to say “I don’t know at this time, but promise to get back to you when I and the library know more.”
I hope this helps, I am always happy to answer any questions you may have or else to talk to any faculty that you want to refer my way.