Library Committee
Annual Report 2008

The library committee met four times during the academic year. A chief agenda item during many of the meetings was discussion and feedback to the librarians about the policies concerning rank, evaluation, and promotion of librarians. The library committee is in unanimous support of these policies. These policies were given their first reading at the March meeting of the faculty and a final vote will be taken at the May meeting. The assignment of faculty scholar studies is a task of this committee and seven faculty applications were approved for the 08/09 academic year and three for the summer of ’08. No applicants were turned away this year. The committee approved a change in the library budget allocation formula due to the fact that usage statistics of print media is no longer a meaningful gauge of true usage and electronic resources cannot be appropriately assigned to individual departments. The proposed change involves removing the 22.5% of the formula based on usage statistics and increasing the remaining categories proportionally. The change applies to the 08/09 fiscal year during which time additional consideration will be given to the issue.

This has been another very successful year for the library, and a busy one for the librarians. Usage statistics continue to rise and the Furman library was listed in the Princeton Review as one of the top 20 university libraries. We have had several visits from parties interested in learning more about the success of our library and its expansion and renovation. There has been an increase in availability of electronic resources and in our ability to obtain print resources (Pascal Delivers). The new science library in the Townes Science Center is on schedule for completion by the first week in August. Librarians have been working with faculty on the information fluency requirement in FYS. (This just highlights a few of the activities this year.) The increased scope of responsibilities of the library and its staff has necessitated a closer consideration of the organizational structure of the library. Several models are under consideration.

Respectfully submitted,
Paul Wagenknecht
Chair, Library Committee