CIS Year-End Report (2000)
Peter Starr, Chair of the Committee on Information Services 

The Committee on Information Services (CIS) was established in the Fall of 1998 under the name Joint Information Services Committee (JISC). Comprised principally of university faculty and personnel from the Information Services Division (ISD), its charge is to advise the Academic Senate and the university's Chief Information Officer, Jerry Campbell, on all matters related to information resources and technologies, as well as on policies associated with scholarly communication, research, teaching, and study.

As one might expect of an oversight group whose mandate is so broad, our discussions during the 1999-2000 academic year were various and wide-ranging. The following is but a summary of the principal initiatives, proposals and discussions to come out of this year's committee.

1. Teaching and Learning with Technology

The Task Force on Teaching and Learning with Technology, chaired by Ed Kazlauskas of the Rossier School of Education, was formed to address the various impediments that stand in the way of a more rigorous integration of technology into the pedagogical practices of university faculty. In their action list of 12/1/99, then again in their February meeting, members of the committee called for establishment of a website, under the auspices of the Center for Scholarly Technology, that would allow academic units across the university to share information on such specific questions as how to evaluate the effectiveness of multimedia-driven instruction, how best to obtain external funding for such initiatives, and which tools are best suited to the tasks at hand. In the late spring, task force members played an important contributory role in the planning and execution of the CST's Teaching and Technology conference. Going forward, the Teaching and Learning with Technology task force should continue to work with related university groups-the Facilities Improvement Committee, the Distance Learning Committee, and the Center for Excellence in Teaching-to elaborate a common set of long-term goals and avoid duplication of effort. For more on the committee's work, click here. For a summary of the discussion of distance learning at the February 23rd meeting of the full CIS, click here.

2. Computing Infrastructure

The Computing Infrastructure Task Force, chaired by Mike Bolger of the School of Pharmacy, began its work this year by making a series of concrete recommendations on ways to alleviate the strains placed upon ISD's Customer Support Center and Publishing and Web Services units by rapid increases in the number of support requests. These include: improving staff training programs, using automated systems for better distribution of service calls, significantly enhancing support for high-end research needs, increasing staffing in key areas of future growth (e.g., the use of 'Blackboard'), and improving salaries to competitive levels. At its January meeting, the task force examined issues pertaining to access to University electronic resources from off-campus sites, including the cost of ADSL access through Covad Communications, 56K modem pool access, the use of Virtual Private Networks, and the relaying of e-mail messages. In March, the task force reported back to the full CIS on how various units across the University have responded to the recently instituted policy on direct (as opposed to indirect) payment for Ethernet ports. The results of this survey, as well as of previous task force initiatives, have been posted on the CIS website here.

3. Visual Image Collection

In mid-November, the CIS Task Force on Digital Image Collections, chaired by Nancy Troy of Art History, submitted a preliminary proposal toward the creation and funding of an integrated digital archive/visual image collection for use in undergraduate and graduate courses across the university. Building upon existing collections, such as those associated with specific courses and with the ISLA project, the task force report envisioned a collection that would grow to approximately 100,000 images over a two-year funding period. (A copy of this proposal can be found here. While we were disappointed recently to learn that the Digital Image Collections proposal was not chosen for funding in the FY 2001 budget cycle, we were pleased to hear that the administration has chosen to devote significant resources to the further wiring of classrooms, without which the true promise of this proposal could never in fact be realized. A talented group of faculty and ISD personnel continues to explore the strides that other universities have made of late in the digitization of images for academic use. Without an adequate budget for this purpose, however, USC can only fall farther and farther behind.

4. Electronic Communications Policy

In the Spring of 1999, the Academic Senate approved a document entitled "General Policies Regarding the Electronic Communication Infrastructure at the University of Southern California," which the Provost then forwarded for comment to the University's various Deans and Directors. Several minor amendations were proposed, which the Provost asked this committee to review. Dean Jerry Campbell chaired a task force whose members largely concurred with the proposed amendations. A final version of the policies statement was approved by the full CIS for forwarding to the Provost at our April meeting.

5. Library Services and Resources

Our Library Services and Resources group, which I chaired, examined three principal issues over the course of this academic year. They are:

5.1 Role of the Reference Librarian

Driven in part by a widespread demoralization among University librarians, in part by a need for agreed-upon guidelines for future hires, the task force worked to articulate the following series of principles on the role of the reference librarian:

• The academic competencies of subject specialists are, and will remain, crucial to the vitality of the University's library system. Subject coverage is currently spotty-a situation aggravated by several recent transfers away from domains of expertise.
• What we want from our librarians is not technological expertise for its own sake, but a full, subject-driven understanding of how information is best processed and delivered in this increasingly electronic age. Corollary to this…
• We should avoid fetishizing the distinction between print and electronic media, especially in the context of an integrated organization such as ISD. Divisions of labor should be conceived along academic, not technological lines.
• Crucial to the success of the reference librarian is the ability to make critical assessments and analyses. Given the rapidity of change in the field of information services, those whom we hire should be self-starters, hired not for two or three years out, but for the duration. Related to this… 
• Training and mentoring of current library faculty and staff could be much improved (especially as concerns changes in applicable technology). The literature on this topic repeatedly stresses the untapped reserves of competence and loyalty that one finds in long-term librarians-reserves that our library system could better exploit.
• University librarians need to combine a strong service ethic with a deep-seated appreciation of the librarian's pedagogical responsibilities (toward undergraduates, graduates and faculty). Video conferencing may one day have its place, but on-site dialogue will remain crucial at elite universities.
• Librarians should evince strong managerial skills, including the ability to listen to and sort through competing viewpoints. 
• Finally, they must communicate effectively with the faculty and students they serve. The universalization of email is an opportunity in this respect, allowing librarians better to consult with faculty on collection strategies, announce the acquisition of new resources, and so on. 

5.2 Review of Library Issues

In 1998-1999, a task force of this committee, chaired by Carolyn Dewald of Classics and Gil Blount of the Thornton School of Music, issued a report on the state of the university's libraries suggestively entitled the L-RAP report, the full text of which can be found on the CIS website here. So as to examine where faculty stood one year later on the issues identified by the L-RAP group, I polled a representative group of our colleagues and arrived at the following general conclusions:

• Faculty tend to be far more satisfied with smaller, school- or department-based libraries (such as Dentistry, Cinema and Hoose, which one respondent memorably termed "the scholarly equivalent of an old-growth forest"), than they are with the larger libraries. Opposition to the further convergence of library facilities thus appears to be firm.
• Respondents repeatedly stressed the importance of strong, academically trained librarians, with well-defined subject specialties, to work with and for faculty in the building of collections, often going on to bemoan the serious marginalization (and consequent demoralization) of library faculty.
• Most respondents felt that the accuracy of book records in Homer has been much improved, though the search engine routinely returns cross-reference data that is more or less useless and serials records remain seriously deficient. (The updating of the latter is slated to begin this summer).
• There is strong faculty support for keeping the Doheny stacks open, despite the demonstrable cost in decreased security for the collection.
• On the institutional front, it is widely conceded that we have not done a good job-either historically or of late-at convincing deans and administrators of the need to provide a reasonable budget for the library and its facilities. 

5.3 Electronic Reserves 

At our March 27th meeting, the Library Services and Resources task force heard an excellent report from Charlotte Crockett and Sarah McDaniel of Leavey Library on the state of our electronic reserves operation. While electronic reserves offer significant advantages-including round-the-clock operation, off-campus access, simultaneous access by multiple users, and seamless integration with course websites-usage of e-reserves here at USC still lags behind that of print reserves. Faculty frustration at the long turnaround time for the uploading of reserve material is a major reason, as is continuing uncertainty over copyright, yet it is far from clear that the University is ready to pay the potential cost of a universalized e-reserves operation. Sarah McDaniel's fine "Review of Electronic Operations" arrived too late for review by the full CIS, but should be placed on the calendar for next year's group. Among its many recommendations is the suggestion that e-reserves be reconceived as organization-wide effort within ISD, not run as a marginal piece of Leavey Library.

6. The Future of VKC Library

This Spring, a small task force chaired by Steven Lamy of International Relations began to discuss ways of redefining the Von KleinSmid Center Library as an applied social sciences research and learning center, unified around such themes as urban, international and interdisciplinary studies. A strategically important resource for the Schools of International Relations and Policy, Planning and Development, and for the Department of Political Science, VKC is currently the fourth busiest library on the University Park campus. Taking a strong working paper by Robert Labaree of VKC Library as its point of departure, the committee has begun polling social science faculty and graduate students as to the resources they would like to see made available in a reconfigured applied social sciences center. Analyzing the results of that poll and articulating a desirable resource mix will be among the task force's first orders of business in the fall.

7. New Doheny

In 1998-1999, a great deal of effort went into planning for the Doheny retrofit and envisioning the sort of facility we would like to see emerge from the retrofit effort. In 1999-2000, as the retrofit has gotten underway, Doheny has been surprisingly absent from the public debate. By most accounts, the paging of materials from the unaffected portions of Doheny, the Grand Depository and East Library has gone fairly well. Although hardly perfect, accuracy of the on-line catalogue has been improved. But significant challenges remain: the serials records badly need updating; several key vacancies must be filled in the department of Research Services; plans for the collection's return must be made so as to maximize storage in the Doheny stacks and facilitate access to that collection. Above all, perhaps, the input of faculty and students needs to be sought on what is arguably the most ambitious of the "New Doheny" initiatives-the creation of a University Research Center serving as both an archival research and/or reading room and a venue for scholarly events in the humanities and social sciences. There is great faculty support for the goal of placing Doheny Library at the very center of intellectual life on campus. How that is to be done, and whether the focus on archival materials is conducive to that goal, is precisely what needs elaboration in the months to come.

8. It's the Budget, Stupid

"New Doheny" is as good a segué as any into what has to stand as the final point of this (or any such) report-namely, the chronic underfunding of the various initiatives within this committee's purview. Salaries on the information technology side of ISD lag far behind those offered elsewhere, leading to significant retention problems. Exponential growth in requests for basic computing support, and in the cost of providing that support, has resulted in a shortchanging of faculty, students and units with high-end computing needs. This explosion in the cost of ISD's computing operation, coupled with the rapidly escalating cost of journal and electronic resource subscriptions, has in turn put the acquisition budgets for books and journals into serious jeopardy. In order to cover the cost of acquisitions in the current fiscal year, and after exhaustion of the regular acquisitions budget, ISD was forced to spend down to zero most of the endowed funds income targeted for the libraries, leaving significant expenditures to be carried forward into the new year. Preliminary estimates suggest that the currently budgeted increase in the acquisitions budget for next fiscal year is but 40% of what would be needed simply to stay even with already inadequate levels of print acquisitions and to make needed gains in acquiring new electronic resources. As a result, and barring a fresh infusion of funds, the libraries are looking at cancellations of serials subscriptions, most likely in the $250,000 range, though possibly higher. 

In the case of New Doheny, one would have hoped that the occasion of the retrofit would have allowed the University simultaneously to undertake a significant updating of the library facility, fully consistent with the building's historic character. But such will not have been the case. Lack of funds have dictated that any such updating, should it occur, will have to take place after the return of the collection, in a way that cannot help but further disrupt the lives of students, faculty and librarians alike. Jerry Campbell has recently put into place an operation to raise funds for ISD in general and Doheny Library in particular, but the success of this operation is far from assured. If we as a University are to attain the stature to which we aspire, we cannot afford to continue shortchanging those operations-now united under the ISD banner-that assure the storage, retrieval and exchange of knowledge and information. Many of the dividing lines that now enliven public debate around ISD-such as that between print and electronic media-will most likely blur over time. But time can only compound our failure to invest in what constitutes the lifeblood of the academic enterprise. Making this case will likely be the single most important mandate for the Committee on Information Services in the months and years to come.