At the beginning of December, the University will say goodbye to the Physical Sciences Library in its current form. But the facility — one of the victims of last semester’s 5 percent across-the-board budget cuts — may be the first of many library facilities that closes its doors.

Addressing head-on the need to trim its operating budget and respond to the changing publishing industry, the Libraries Task Force Report has recommended a number of bold and controversial changes to its current system that could leave the University libraries looking quite different in the coming years. Among other things, the report suggests closing some of the 18 existing library facilities in an effort to organize physical spaces around disciplines rather than colleges.

This suggestion represents an expansion of the model of closing the Physical Sciences Library, which last semester relocated its resources in order to save on operational costs. The report outlines a couple of scenarios, including possibly cutting the number of physical spaces in half, or in the most drastic case, reorganizing the library around four central spaces.Cornell University Library’s Budget

Reorganization is necessary, the seven-page report said, in order to “cope with falling purchasing power, align with strategic directions for higher education and meet new needs and expectations of faculty and students.”

“The tensions between shrinking budgets and the needs of users underscores the importance of evolving library structures and programs to ensure sources will be invested where they have the most impact,” the report read.What a headache: A student studies in Mann Library last Wednesday. The Libraries Task Force report lists potential methods to cut the Library’s budget by $2.1 million.

But these changes — as well as the way in which the report itself was conceived — have raised eyebrows amongst faculty. In a panel meeting with University Librarian Anne Kenney and Provost Kent Fuchs last Tuesday, a packed audience of about 200 predominantly faculty members expressed their dissatisfaction with how the process was unfolding.

Faculty “should have determinative force,” said Prof. Eric Cheyfitz, English, about the process of deciding what to cut. Amidst applause, many faculty members voiced their concerns over the level of inclusion in the decision-making.

The official task force report was produced by a team of 14 people, seven of whom were associated with the library and five of whom were on the faculty. Prof. Lauren Dubreuil, Romance studies and comparative literature, and Bernadette Meyler, law, who served on the Libraries Task Force, created their own contrary “minority report,” evidently in disagreement with the reports’ suggestions.

An Unsustainable Model

The University library has been under the pressure of cost constraints since well before the financial collapse last year. With the costs of publishing rising at a much higher rate than the University is able to increase its collections spending, Cornell has lost ground to other schools in its support for collections, according to the report.

The Physical Sciences Library, which will soon close its doors, had seen a significant drop in resources over the years — the library went from having 1,000 journal subscriptions 10 years ago to 400 today.

“Rather than continue to diminish the collection in order to retain a service point in Clark Hall, we are strengthening the collections by reassigning endowment support to online journals and reference resources and away from operational costs,” the report stated.

Earlier this semester, the University took another strategic action to eliminate the library’s deficit by selling 95,000 duplicate volumes from its collection to Tsinghua University in Beijing. On Tuesday, Kenney announced that the University received $890,000 for the sale.

On Nov. 4, The Sun reported that Cornell has cut 1,100 journal subscriptions over the past year. 23 library jobs have also been eliminated in the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

But with more budget cuts looming, it was clear to task force members that more drastic solutions were necessary.

The FY 2010 budget for the libraries comes to $47.9 million, and without restricted endowments and sponsored funds, that number comes to $44 million. Subtracting the $14 million collections budget — which the report recommends not cutting — leaves $30 million of salaries, benefits and operating costs that are subject to reductions. A 10 percent cut from that pile would mean $3 million. With $900,000 in savings, that brings the tentative number to be cut to $2.1 million.

Making the Cuts

The report suggested that the consolidation of units would be the most effective way to realize cost savings. This could mean a savings of $1.4 million to $2 million with a return of 68,000 net square feet of unused space to the University, according to the report.

Most of these savings come from the savings in operational costs. The report estimates that two-thirds of the cost associated with the Physical Sciences Library came from operational costs, and this is true across most of the subject-area libraries.

While the number of consolidated libraries is not yet known, Kenney said: “I think it would be incredibly drastic to move down to four.”

Considerations for which libraries would be axed would be based on four factors: the physical condition of the library, the level of use of the collections, the percentage of the collections available online and the proximity to other libraries.

While all of the report’s considerations are in their most preliminary phases, Fuchs might have hinted at some areas that could be on the chopping block at the forum on Tuesday. Responding to faculty concerns, he mentioned that he was going to “push back” on some of the changes that the faculty members opposed. Specifically, he said that he would pressure the deans of the Hotel School, Engineering School, and College of Veterinary Medicine to consider closing their library facilities. But Kenney said that it was too early to tell whether those libraries would actually be considered for cutting.

The report also calls for implementing some suggestions made by Bain & Co. by combining overlapping services, and eliminating “duplicative operations and services.” This could save up to $1.5 million, according to the report. This may also result in more layoffs, and move towards “a greater reliance on student workers.”

Kenney said that none of the numbers have been finalized for these savings, but that such considerations would be made as the cutting process evolves.

The report cites the need to keep the budget for library collections and purchasing intact. Faculty members strongly agreed that the collections formed the core of the library, and thus should be preserved to the largest extent possible.

“Everything has been open for examination,” Kenney said. “If you are faced with tough changes, it’s going to concern a lot of people. What is the good of the whole? Clearly, it’s the collection.”

Other methods that would minimize the impact of these cuts would include enhancing Borrow Direct, which allows Ivy League schools to share material; continuing to digitize many of the library’s resources; and encouraging the use of open access material. In addition, the University has also started the 2CUL program , a collaboration between Cornell and Columbia University to share resources between their libraries.

Faculty Concerns

Members of the faculty were quick to criticize the report at last Tuesday’s forum, citing foremost a lack of scholarly inclusion during the process of its creation.

“Will you say on public record that libraries exist to serve the teaching mission?” one faculty member asked.

“Of course,” Kenney replied.

Other faculty members at the forum were quick to pick apart the specifics of the report. Prof. Nick Salvatore, industrial and labor relations and American studies, asked why there was no breakdown of the management within the libraries in the report. Prof. Abby Cohn, linguistics, noted that she was “concerned that we’ve lost ground,” in terms of collections, and asserted that the collections budget should be increased. Prof. Charles Britain, classics, remarked on the need to keep books in the libraries, rather than relegate them to storage. Many professors had specific questions about how the budget would affect their research and teaching.

A number of less vocal members of the audience spoke with Kenney afterwards to express their solidarity with the librarian’s direction.

In the cover letter to the “minority report, written by Dubreuil and Meyler, they wrote: “We generated a very brief document collectively, and then the librarians on the Task Force met through July and August to figure out ways to implement our suggestions. The faculty were not invited to participate in or hear about these discussions as they occurred.”

The counter report recommended that before consolidating libraries, administrators should look to outsource “superfluous” units like communication and research assessment, as well as the activities of digitization and book-binding. Additionally, the minority report recommended shrinking the number of top-level library managers and eliminating redundancies with Information Technology.

Fuchs noted that he was happy with the level of faculty engagement. “I think that’s important and it’s something for me to hear,” he said.

A New University Library

With universities across the country facing similar budget deficits, Cornell has looked to its peers in considering its options.

“The [task force] report is in many ways similar to other libraries. Duke speaks to the same issues, and so does Columbia,” Kenney said, adding that they have been “coming to similar conclusions.”

Duke Library endured nearly a $500 thousand cut for the 2010 fiscal year, which resulted in the need to trim down its subscription lists, according to Duke Library’s website.

Harvard also received significant mention at last Tuesday’s forum. Harvard released a library task force report this month that calls for five substantial changes, including the centralization of its administrative and purchasing structures.

Prof. Jonathan Culler, English and romance studies, said during the forum that because Harvard’s librarian, Robert Darnton, is also a scholar, he was able to make cuts to Harvard’s library in a sensitive way. On the contrary, “we have a librarian who we don’t yet have confidence in,” he said.

Kenney expressed the hope that faculty and librarians could work together to form a plan for the libraries, and also recognized that the report contained merely preliminary suggestions. She noted that many of the suggestions would likely change with time, emphasizing that as the cuts proceed, any restructuring needs to be made in tandem with changes to the colleges. While all decisions will be made by top-level administration, she said that some decisions may be made alongside the college-level decisions, with some “course correction” along the way.

“It’s easy to build a library with strong support,” she said. “It’s tough to figure out how best to protect the core mission in tough economic times.”