By Barbara I. Dewey

I hope you will attend in person or on Media Site the first Dean’s Forum of the year where you will hear about important developments in strategic planning and space planning as well as exciting kudos from our faculty and staff. I especially want to invite our new faculty and staff. We are thrilled to have you on the library team for many years to come. The Dean’s Forum is Wednesday, October 2nd from 2-3pm in Foster Auditorium and through Media Site. Many of you know that I am the current chair of Penn State’s Academic Leadership Council, an elected role for 2013-14. As ALC chair I am a voting representative of the Faculty Senate, a nonvoting attendee of the Board of Trustees meetings and a member of the Penn State Facilities Resources Council. I am excited by the visibility this role brings to your activities and initiatives. Let me know if I can answer any questions about these groups and their meetings as the year proceeds.

Earlier in the month I was on a conference call with the CIC Library Directors. Some of the projects discussed included:

Shared Print Repository Project – Ohio State is piloting with Indiana University on an initial transfer of 12,000 Elsevier titles to the shared storage facility located in Bloomington, IN. In the coming years this project will provide us with additional flexibility in our collections retention decision-making.
Digitization – CIC Libraries continue working on digitization with Google including a focus on government documents. There is some interest in collaborating on special collections digitization projects or other projects.
Task Force on Discovery – Barbara Coopey is part of this group working on issues related to discovery, ILL, and the various platforms in use today.
Collection Development – CIC libraries continue to be involved in large-scale joint acquisitions. The priorities for 2013-14 include serials back files, historic monograph purchases, and historic digitized collections. Also in the works is the Springer e-book renewal.

Many thanks to all who participated in and worked on the UPLEA Arts Fest last week. The talent of our faculty and staff is simply outstanding.