NYSHEI News

The Albany Times-Union reports on a rising debate about three prospective law schools.

The below article describes the challenges faced by PASCAL. Importantly, it is also a cautionary tale of what can happen when a issue is not continually heralded to state policy makers.

South Carolina Legislators Slash PASCAL Consortium Budget

Academic libraries in South Carolina are scrambling as legislators have slashed state funding for PASCAL (Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries), a consortium serving 58 colleges and universities statewide. PASCAL officials said lawmakers have virtually eliminated their support, dealing libraries a 90 percent cut, from about $2 million to around $200,000 for the 2008-9 academic year.

“Frankly, it’s astonishing,” Mark Herring, dean of libraries at Winthrop University (Rock Hill, SC) told the LJ Academic Newswire. “For every dollar the state spends, PASCAL delivers $7 dollars in return access.”

On June 19, librarians from 35 PASCAL libraries attended the consortium’s spring business meeting, and unanimously approved “a survival plan” and an operating budget that increased membership dues by 20 percent. Their goal: to keep the consortium together in hopes of having its funding restored and to partially cover the cost of the consortium’s two major programs for next year, electronic resource licenses and PASCAL Delivers, which, Herring says, makes “the state’s 12 million volumes available for use to any student at any institution of higher learning in about 72 hours.”

With the new service fees, PASCAL will be able to maintain access to several core databases through the end of FY 2008-9 and will operate PASCAL Delivers on “a reduced basis,” doing deliveries three days per week instead of five, PASCAL executive director Rick Moul reported. “We’ve more or less bought a year to figure out what our long-range strategy will be,” he told the LJ Academic Newswire.

Unfortunately, necessary cuts have begun. As of July 1, PASCAL no longer provides statewide access to LexisNexis and Access Science, and Herring concedes that if funding isn’t restored for next year, it could be the end of a critical program for South Carolina higher education. “The 90 percent cut in the program is the death knell for PASCAL if it isn’t reinstated,” he told the LJ Academic Newswire.

Is this a case of the economy sneezing and libraries catching a cold? More like “pneumonia,” Moul quipped. “In February, our state budget forecasters hit the red button as the legislature was meeting, and there was a frenzy of budget cutting,” he explained. While public higher education overall in the state absorbed cuts of between three and five percent, PASCAL was inexplicably “eviscerated.”

“I don’t think there was any particular logic or malice,” Moul said. “I suppose…we were still a bit below the radar in most folks’ eyes as to just how critical we have become to our institutions, and we probably still had some selling to do with some legislators that this comparatively small amount of money was an appropriate state responsibility.”

Indeed, what has made PASCAL such a “smart program,” Herring noted, “is its coverage for all of the state’s 58 institutions, public and private, two-year and four-year, and the 300,000 students who attend there.” The schools that will be hurt most this year, he added, are the smaller schools located in more rural parts of the state. “You hear a lot about the haves and the have-nots these days. Here is a program that equalized those disparities and yet our state government decided to kill it. It’s odd, to say the least.”

South Carolina librarians, however, along with university administrators are fighting to restore next year’s funding, along with “several legislators” who understand the value of PASCAL. “I think we have some reason to be guardedly optimistic about our ability to regroup,” Moul said, noting that the state legislature made the remaining 10 percent of PASCAL’s funding recurring—an important silver lining going forward, as it gives the consortium a toe-hold in the regular budget. “Many of the chief academic officers at our institutions have become engaged in our problems, so I think we will go into the budget discussions for the next fiscal year with a strong and clear voice.”

Testimonials from campus-based researchers have been trickling in. More are needed. Please help in this effort by finding a friendly library user who is willing to avow their support for the importance of your library.

This is an important project that needs your help. Review the initial draft poster and an out-of-state testimonial.

Here are some examples of received testimonials.

“We rely on access to these resources to provide the most current information for our students and our faculty in their class work. But perhaps most importantly the ability to use medical databases effectively is essential to Evidence Based Medicine which is the standard of practice now in the medical field. Without the ability to train our students in this critical skill, we would not be able to prepare them adequately for practice after graduation,” Emily Davidson, Physicians Assistant Program, York College/CUNY.

“Library access has been transformative for both me and students – we can teach our students how to do scholarly work, as well as keep our teaching and research in touch with cutting edge advances. I felt like I have emerged from the Dark Ages! The fact that we couldn’t previously afford – and still can’t afford full access – highlights the problem – especially in science – that information has become so expensive that it’s essentially unavailable to small institutions like us. We can’t do our work without the ability to access the work of others,” Leah Olson, Assistant Professor of Biology, Sarah Lawrence College.

“Our library is a living fount of knowledge. It offers the best collection of organized information to aid students. Consequently students can access our print and electronic collections with confidence that they are using bona fide academic resources. Although the Internet seems quick and all pervasive, students using our library soon learn the difference between quality information and Internet clutter,” Matthew Hendley, History Department Chair at SUNY Oswego.

“I use the library to research articles published in the area of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. I often download peer reviewed articles published from Journals such as the Journal of Magnetic Resonance, Chemical Physics and Physical Review. These articles allow me to learn about techniques that the community has developed as well as results that have been published in areas relating to our laboratory’s effort. Without the library, I could not easily connect to the work of my peers around the globe,” Greg Boutis, Assistant Professor of Physics at York College, CUNY.

Please keep the testimonials coming. Email me at nyshei@nyshei.org.

Inger Curth, Library Director at Jefferson Community College in Watertown, this week hosted a North Country regional meeting of NYSHEI. Recognizing the need to project the voices of the library beyond the stacks, Ms. Curth invited a wide array of guest to the meeting. The result was an exciting example of the collaborative partnerships NYSHEI has sought.

Attending the meeting on behalf of NYSHEI were Ms. Curth and Jason Kramer, NYSHEI Executive Director, as well as Connie Holberg, incoming Library Director at JCC, Rebecca Thompson, Library Director at SUNY Potsdam, and Mary Beth Bell, Library Director at SUNY Oswego.

Attending the meeting from the Jefferson Community College administration and faculty were, Jill Bettinger, Dean for Continuing Education, A. Pope Vickers, Business Professor, Ed Knapp, Dean for Curriculum and Instruction, Linda Dittrich, Dean for Mathematics and Science, and Betsy Penrose, Vice President for Students.

Attending the meeting were three individuals with a workforce and economic development charge, Eric Constance, Director of the Small Business Development Center, Karen Delmonico, President and CEO of the Greater Watertown-North Country Chamber of Commerce, and Michelle Gefell, Director of Career Planning and Placement.

As well as educating more people about the importance of academic and research libraries, and their need for ARIA, one tangible result of the meeting were a few ideas to improve NYSHEI outreach to the small business community.

A meeting of the Innovation & Workforce Development Committee of the Business Council of New York State offered a glimpse into emerging developments in higher education.

The exceedingly interesting meeting featured David King, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at SUNY Oswego and Diane Fodell, Program Director for Innovation and University Relations at IBM.

Dr. King’s presentation (psm_nysbusiness_council) explained the Professional Science Master’s (PSM) program, currently available at nine SUNY institutions and a host of others across the state and nation. The PSM, clumsily thought of as a “Science MBA,” is geared to prepare students for work in scientific endeavors outside of pure research by developing professional skills, such as marketing, management, communications et. al, alongside rigorous scientific training in specific disciplines.

The PSM program goal is to develop both technical and leadership skills to bridge the fast moving worlds of research science and real-world business. Dr. King argued that this sort of training is essential to maintaining a competitive, if not premier, workforce in the emerging knowledge-based economy.

Extending the idea of improving the utility and training of the emerging workforce, Ms. Fodell introduced attendees to the a program in Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME).

Ms. Fodell’s presentation (ssme-overview-2008_bcnys ) overcame skepticism about a new academic program by reminding that IBM in union with Columbia University first posited the idea of a computer science degree to widespread jeers. The SSME has goals similar to the PSM, that is the development of people with broad, interdisciplinary knowledge, but with significant depth in one or more particular fields. She spoke of training a “trilingual” leader, one who was fluent in science & technology and business management, as well as cultural/societal/political realms.

Ms. Fodell’s presentation offered keen insights and opportunities to stay informed of similar, innovative ideas.

For NYSHEI, this fascinating afternoon drove home the importance of attaining leading information resources at the full spectrum of academic and research libraries, as both programs envision broad application of the idea of a flexible and responsive workforce, often with education builds upon, or fits outside of, a traditional “college experience.” The presentations also offered much food for thought to collections development personal who must find ways to support such hybrid programs.