“It’s hard,” senior librarian Ginny Steel said. “I’m concerned about the future, and what will happen if we receive any more budget reductions.”

The project of reconstructing McHenry Library has been in progress since before money was the paramount concern for the university.
“The original plan for this project started in the early ’90s,” Steel said. “The library then was operating on restricted materials, few electronic resources, and not enough space for stacks. The other big concern was that the library rated poor in terms of the seismic capacity of the building, a serious safety concern the university had to address.”

But with the reconstruction finally finished, the question of whether or not the university will be able to operate at full capacity is a concern librarians are facing.

Elizabeth Cowell, an associate campus librarian, stressed the importance of libraries’ availability for education.

“We are here for the students and staff, committed to maintaining the current levels of accessibility and resources,” Cowell said. “But under current [budget] restrictions we can’t staff the university like we used to.”

Rather than wait for university funding improvements, library administration has been proactive in working toward generating external funding.

“We’ve raised a lot of money for the new furniture and equipment that you see in McHenry now,” Steel said. “The way it works on campus, is there are development officers assigned to each program division, such as the library. Their payroll, however, is split between university relations, who provide the officers, and the library 51 percent of salary paid by University Relations and 49 percent paid by the library.”

Private donations from mostly alumni and former faculty, according to Steel, have allowed libraries to sustain current levels of accessibility. Measure 42, which passed in the 2009-2010 school year, also has allowed some partial hiring and hour extensions.

But it might not be enough. Steel said there have been shortfalls over the past four years.

“I don’t have the exact number, but we’ve lost approximately 30 positions just for library staffing, which puts more stress on us because we run both libraries seven days a week, many hours a day, with less staff,” Steel said.

In the 2012-13 school year, the Measure 42 legislation will be re-voted upon, but there is potential for its expiration.
Though some are hopeful that the libraries will receive additional funding in years to come, many senior staff prepare for worst-case scenarios.

Ken Lyons, a longtime member of the library staff and Union Representative for the UC American Federation of Teachers, believes the state of the libraries couldn’t get much worse than it had become without jeopardizing the value of the libraries to the students.

“Staff in both collective planning and reference branches of the library is already stretched as thin as possible,” Lyons said. “A big issue we’re trying to get attention to right now is that UC librarians are compensated as much as 20 percent lower than our California State University sister schools.”

This same issue occurred during the funding crisis in 1992, but with the more recent budget restrictions, the flexibility of the department to adapt has already been removed due to the large remodeling.

“In response to the budget tightening, we’re trying to do strategic planning to assess which sources get used the most and which aren’t commonly accessed.” Lyons said. “The issue that we’re running across is that a lot of the resources we have aren’t common sources for most students, such as research materials. We have 200 audible databases, for example. I don’t think most students are even aware of their existence.”

In 2009, the university issued the 34 percent cut to the UCSC library — as seen in most other departments as well — to be carried out over the next four years. Now as the cuts come into place, databases like this may seem less valuable to the staff looking for places to cut. In addition, reconfigured positions have become a new trend for library positions.

“We have a lot more people contacting us with questions on how to begin research, but a lot of these questions are through email and chat, not necessary people coming to the reference desk, which has commonly been the resource for answering these questions,” Steel said. “In response, we’ve cut back on hours that we staff the reference desk, and changed the model for how we answer questions.”

Lyons actively manages the reference desk and has seen this shift in student research habits as well.

“We have seen less students coming to the reference desk for help. Students seem often overwhelmed by the expansiveness of the library itself,” Lyons said. “Although we have more online resources like the redesigned website to direct students, resources like reference desk librarians are invaluable to the accessibility of the library.”

Though no direct layoffs have occurred in the 11 years Lyons has been with library services, the number of full-time employees has decreased dramatically and attrition (the cancellation of retirees’ positions) has continued steadily since budget restrictions were approved.

Though the remodeling of the McHenry Library has been a valid project and offers students an expansive, almost luxurious interior, the future outlook of library staffing and hours of availability could certainly be in trouble.

Steel hopes the libraries can continue their current levels of availability for students, even with the future budget looking increasingly slim.
“We want this space to meet the needs of students and faculty,” Steel said. “We think of this as a community space and a space for collaboration, so if students have ideas of things they want to see, we’re interested to hear those ideas. That’s why we’re here.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at New McHenry, Same Budget

Illustration by Matt Boblet.

Story updated 11/12/2011 at 3:25pm

Though it won’t be open to the public until next April, dedicated fans were able to attend the first preview of the Grateful Dead Archive on Nov. 5, while simultaneously helping to fund its continued existence. Tickets ran for $250, and the funds from the event are going toward maintenance of the exhibit.

The archive itself consists of thousands of books, recordings, posters, films, stage props and other Grateful Dead memorabilia, all of which were on display for attendees who paid the $250 to see them on Saturday night.

Though official numbers for attendance have yet to be tallied, university librarian Virginia Steel said they “were expecting about 150.”

Despite being a relatively static exhibit, Steel says maintenance costs have to be taken into account.

“It’s a huge archive, and there are a lot of costs associated with organizational materials,” Steel said. “Putting things in boxes, folders — the [library] staff has to do that.”

The amount raised by the event has yet to be finalized, but funds raised by the event will supplement private donations and a federal grant of $618,000 intended to fund the digitization of archive materials, like photos and illustrations.

“We’re hoping to have the archive online by early spring or early summer,” Steel said. “We’ve digitized and scanned over 50,000 images.”

Steel said there will be no more previews between now and when the exhibit opens to the public in April 2012.

“Between now and December we’re really in a design phase,” Steel said, adding construction of the exhibit’s physical room would likely begin at the end of the year.

Construction itself will also be funded privately.

“The construction itself was paid for by a donor who attended the event,” Steel said.

The archive has been fortunate in garnering the support of philanthropists in the past as well, with both materials and funding donations.

“Now more than ever cultural heritage institutions rely on private support to carry out their missions,” said archivist Nicholas Meriwether in the archive’s official newsletter, Reliquary. The publication of the newsletter itself is funded by two anonymous donors.

When the event opens next spring, there will be no fee for viewing either the physical exhibit or the website.

“It’ll be free, physically and virtually,” Steel said.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Sneak Peek for $250

Illustration by Christine Hipp.

Though the UC system may be in dire straits financially, some of its most vulnerable workers have achieved a small victory. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union ratified a wage increase for librarians in the UC system late last month.

“We believe this is a fair proposal that rewards librarians for their dedication and their hard work, while being mindful of the tough economic climate the university is facing,” said labor relations contract negotiator Peter Chester in an official statement released Oct. 10.

Aspects of the agreement include merit-based wage increases.

“An employee [would] meet with his or her supervisor and be evaluated on an objective set of criteria pertaining to the job. Based on this, the supervisor determines the merit increase,” said Dianne Klein, a media specialist from the UC Office of the President.

This increase was prompted in part by a similar increase being given to other nonrepresented academic faculty.

“The librarians, who are considered academic employees, were in effect put on the same wage schedule as nonrepresented academic employees,” Klein said. “The university’s financial crisis informs everything we do.”

UC librarians are not alone in their negotiations with the UC system. Their increase negotiations were among several union contract negotiations recently settled.

“With 12 systemwide unions and 14 local bargaining units, the university is almost constantly in labor negotiations,” Klein said.

Despite this gain, the UC library system remains on difficult terrain.

“The UC library unit is pretty small — we had about 420 [employees] last time we negotiated in 2008, and we’re down to 350 now. This is through attrition,” said UC-AFT representative Kenneth Lyons, a UCSC reference librarian who has been at the university for 10 years. “With fewer and fewer librarians, the workload has increased.”

In addition, UC librarian wages don’t measure up to other systems’ standards.

“We’re behind CSU librarians by about 20 percent, and we’re behind community colleges as well,” Lyons said.

Though the McHenry Library’s recent facelift may project a hopeful air, Lyons is less optimistic.

“There’s not as much money for materials anymore,” he said. “We were lucky enough to be able to refurbish McHenry, but they started that project 15 years ago.”

The negotiations themselves went about as well as could have been expected, Lyons said.

“I feel like both sides came to some understandings this time,” Lyons said. “They agreed there were some recruitment and retention problems in the UC library system, and that something needs to be done about that disparity. If it hadn’t been for rank and file actions to inform and get support, I think nothing would have happened.”

The negotiations were representative of a give-and-take between the UC system and the unions it deals with.

“The university appreciates deeply the AFT’s willingness to craft an agreement that recognizes the current fiscal crisis we’re facing,” said UC vice president for systemwide human relations Dwaine Duckett in a February UCOP press release.

Though aspects of the UC librarians’ contract have been hammered out, the entirety of the contract will be subject to renegotiation next September.

“We’ll be back at the bargaining table next year,” Lyons said. “The library workforce is shrinking, so it costs [the UC] less to bring us up to parity with other universities in the system.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Librarians’ Union Scores Wage Victory

Illustration by Patrick Yeung.

The lack of general understanding regarding the purpose and relevance of the Apple iPad has caused a lot of controversy since its release in April. Is it a laptop, an electronic reader? Now, the controversy continues, this time within one of our libraries at UC Santa Cruz.

The McHenry Library now has five iPads that students or faculty can check out for four hours at a time. In total, the five 16-gigabyte Wi-Fi gadgets cost $2,800, which comes out to $560 per iPad.

After experiencing a $1.9 million cut in their already dwindling budget, the library administrators thought that what the students really needed was iPads.

But what can the iPad possibly do to enhance our learning experience?

According to the UCSC Library Facebook page, the iPads were bought because “we wanted to continue our recent experience with small scale projects that offer students access to technologies they might not otherwise have.”

Admirable as it is that our library wants to keep us on the cutting edge of technology, this was just the wrong time for the purchase to be made.

Couldn’t any of that money have been used to keep the library open a few more hours in a quarter, or to add another staff member? While $2,800 isn’t very much, it’s still something, and it could have been put to better use.

Anything the iPad is able to do can be done anywhere else, in a completely viable way, within the library. Need to read something on E-Reserve, or conduct research for an essay? The library offers a computer lab with multiple computers for just those purposes.

It’s difficult to see a real use for the iPads, beyond allowing students to fool around on them, say, “Ooh” and “Ahh,” and then return them. They are useless.

We, as a campus, do not need iPads. What we need are more hours in the library. What we need is for the lines of communication between us and the administration to be open, and a change in the way the UC is being run and opperated. Transparency is paramount.

We had protests all last year, and have already had one this year, which pointed out ways in which the administration wastes money on items that are not essential to the school.

It’s the little things, like five iPads, that always, ultimately add up.

Mismanagement of finances has become a recurring trend, and it will continue as long as the student body goes along with it.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Library Throws Away Money on iPads

McHenry Library now offers five iPads for student checkout. The touchscreen computers were bought in June with end-of-the-year discretionary funds, a decision that has raised criticism in light of budget cuts and limited library hours. Photo by Prescott Watson.

Pressing a dime-sized button at the bottom of the 10-by-8-inch touchscreen platform lights up the iPad and its applications, and with it, the newest gadget at McHenry Library.

Jenesis Bonilla, a fourth-year Oakes student, heard from a friend about the library’s new acquisition, and went to see for herself.

“I did not know they had iPads,” Bonilla said. “[I checked it out] just to actually play with it. I’ve never actually been able to use it or experience it.”

Virtual pages with application icons slide from left to right with the touch of a finger across the tablet computer’s smooth screen. 3D Brain, Amazon Kindle, New York Times’ Editor’s Choice, NPR, Pulse Newsreader, the Elements, Wall Street Journal and World Factbook are among the 41 applications equipped in the iPads. Netflix, Facebook, YouTube, Brushes and Virtuoso are included as well. An application to annotate directly on PDF files was also added, per the request of a student user.

The new gadgets allow students the chance to use these applications for both schoolwork and entertainment.

“I’m going to play with it for a bit, and then I have o­nline articles that I have to read, so might as well just read them off of here,” Bonilla said.

Calling it an experiment to see how popular iPads are among students, Greg Careaga, the head of teaching and learning services at McHenry, confirmed in an e-mail that for the past three and a half months the five iPads together have circulated 274 times, averaging out to 17 times per day.

The iPads have been available since late June for four-hour checkouts by students, and late fee charges apply as they do to other books or electronics.

On the UCSC Libraries’ Facebook page, a post informing students about the new iPads received two “likes” and one comment by fourth-year Kresge student Samuel Corbin.

“Students have to levy a fee against themselves in order to get slightly more reasonable hours because the library budget is so tight,” Corbin said on the Facebook post, “but the library is buying IPADS?”

In response to Corbin’s statement, the UCSC Library Facebook account wrote, “We wanted to continue our recent experience with small scale projects that offer students access to technologies they might not otherwise have.”

An estimated $2,800 was spent on the five iPads, which included the cases and some software, university librarian Ginny Steel said.

“[The iPads] were bought with a small amount of year-end discretionary money that we had last year after scraping and saving all year long,” she said. “We got the iPads in June. The [fees charged to increase library hours] weren’t paid until the fall. We are very clear that we are using that funding to restore the library hours.”

College Nine fourth-year Clare Angami compared the utility of iPads against the laptops that McHenry already rents out to students.

“A lot of things, such as the iPad, are new innovations to technology,” Angami said. “But … given the context that we were overcharged for library hours, I feel that whatever the iPad can bring, we have already fulfilled those needs for the students in renting laptops and having computer labs.”

From a scale of one to 10, Subhas Desa, professor and undergraduate director of the Information Systems and Technology Management Program, would give the necessity of iPads a two or a three.

“Is it necessary? I would say probably not,” Desa said. “I think the world would still go on and people would be doing what they have to without the iPads.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at New Technology at McHenry Raises Questions, Concerns

Illustration by Patrick Yeung.

On Monday, May 10, over 100 UC Santa Cruz students crowded the floors of the Science and Engineering Library in protest of the severe reductions in campus library hours of operation. This reduction followed a $1.9 million cut from the library’s budget over the last two years alone.

The next day — Tuesday — the administration retaliated. The libraries closed at 4:30 p.m., nearly five-and-a-half hours before each of their typical closing times.

And now, as we enter a stage of conflict in which our actions are met with draconian reactions, an even bigger loss is occurring beneath the shaky terrain of student and administration relations — the disintegration of communication between students and staff.

Through the majority of this year’s student unrest, we’ve found solace in the knowledge that, while the administration is the figurehead and therefore the problem, the students and the staff were on the same side. What these rash retaliations to the attempts at civil protest do is hinder that bond.

The fact of the matter is that the campus’ reaction to the study-ins was far more problematic — both morally and financially — than the study-ins themselves. For the extra two hours that students spent sitting in the entrance of the Science and Engineering library, refusing to leave until the original closing time of midnight, both libraries closed five-and-a-half hours early. In an attempt to demonize the students who participated in the sit-in, a combined total of 11 hours of library time were taken.

“Since [student] action required extra library staffing, fewer people were available for [Tuesday’s] shifts at both libraries. In other words, the sit-in further reduced funds available to pay our dedicated staff to keep our libraries open,” University Librarian Ginny Steel said in an e-mail sent out hours after the early closure. In it, she explained that the strain on resources due to the protest required immediate action, and the early close was meant to show exactly that.

Library staff members were in attendance at the sit-ins, and as a result, were forcefully compensated for their two extra hours spent working. The staff has, until now, been on the side of the students, feeling the same strain that we have. There is no denying our common goal. While the extra time spent in the library was surely strenuous, now is not the time for the collectively affected to be bullied into turning on one another. The administration is already pitting students against students, as non-protestors were irritated to find their library closed even earlier because of a handful of students’ reactions. Pitting staff against students sharing a common cause is not the way for us to find a conclusion to what is sure to be a multi-year roadblock.

Most of all, what needs to be understood is that this issue goes far beyond our students and our staff, our campus and our administration. This points to an overall lack of support for higher education. We must recognize the need to be collectively focused against these cuts, whether that entails students and staff or students and administration. The answer to the problem at large will not come from over-the-top reprimands directed at those students choosing to fight for their campus, nor will it come from uncommunicative protests that could be more constructive.

For those unaware of the power of the proper collective, I suggest they read up on it.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at A Protest for the Books

Property restoration vehicles line the outside of McHenry Library six days after a faulty cord sparked an electrical fire. The library continues to be closed while many of the 1.4 million volumes within are inspected. Photo by Isaac Miller.

About one half of the 1.4 million volumes of McHenry’s library, bookshelves, desktop computers, and furniture required extensive clean-up and inspection due to the fire that broke out last Thursday on the second floor of the construction portion of the library. The amount of smoke and soot present in the open wing led to its closure until further notice.

“I didn’t realize the severity of the soot and thought that it could be cleaned up easily,” said Ginny Steel, a university librarian. “In some areas, the soot is heavy enough that you can see footsteps on the rugs.”

After becoming aware of the fire around 9 p.m. on April 15, the library security guards pulled the fire alarms, which served as a notification to the circulation staff. About 100 people were asked to evacuate, however, no lives were threatened.

“My friends and I were studying on the third floor, and we noticed that the room became hazy and it started to smell bad,” said Ian Campbell, a first-year politics major from Merrill, who was present when the fire occurred. “After the fire alarms went off we packed our things and left.”

UC Santa Cruz fire officials have indicated that the fire was triggered by an overheated extension electrical cord used to charge batteries for construction and power tools. The cords caused nearby insulation and other plastic materials to catch fire.

Rick Rodewald, assistant chief and campus fire marshal of the UCSC Fire Department, said that the damages caused by the soot and smoke would have been greatly reduced if fire protection features such as fire alarms and sprinklers had been installed in the area undergoing renovation.

“It is a very large building to protect without fire sprinklers, which are a tremendous asset,” he said. “We would have had a major fire if there were bookcases, tables, and chairs providing fuel loading.”

Roughly 50 firefighters extinguished the fire in the old wing of McHenry within about an hour.

“The main fire wasn’t a big deal, but it was hard to locate because of the smoke,” Rodewald said.

A firewall — a fire-resistance wall that separates and subdivides buildings — kept the fire from speading into to area of the library used by students.

“[The firewall] made a tremendous difference and prevented fire spread from the side under construction to the renovated side, as if they were two different buildings,” Rodewald said.

Compact shelving used in McHenry creates a problem in terms of cleaning, because only certain shelves can be opened at one time, instead of having fixed aisles.

While Jim Burns said the cleanup efforts of McHenry are “a pretty painstaking process,” Steel positively acknowledged the university’s response.

“The campus has been wonderful in terms of arranging an international cleaning company where hundreds of people are working around the clock,” Steel said. “It is still uncertain when the library will reopen, but I am hoping the cleaning will be finished toward the end of this week. Areas of the building are still being evaluated.”

Special chemically-treated sponges and high efficiency filter vacuums are being used to clean off and pick up the soot particles.

University officials explained that measures will be taken to prevent accidents like this from happening again.

“[The efforts] are intended to make sure that this does not happen again and that [the library] is safe for students to occupy,” Burns said.

Many students are frustrated with the closure of McHenry, and are anticipating the reopening, which is still unknown.

“I usually go to McHenry to study, and now it is an inconvenience,” said first-year evacuee Campbell. “I’ll just have to deal with it until it’s repaired.”

Some of the operations and services usually offered at McHenry will be provided at the Science and Engineering Library to accommodate students and faculty during the time being.

Materials on reserve and Special Collections from McHenry as well as DVDs and CDs are available to be checked out by request. It is also still possible to return texts as well as research and entertainment media items to McHenry. Research assistance will be available in all subjects.

McHenry librarian Ginny Steel was grateful that the library holdings were not further damaged, but is also disappointed with the library’s shutdown.

“[The fire] was a huge surprise, an unwelcome surprise,” she said. “I’m really sad that it happened, and that we have to be closed for a week. This causes hardships for students and faculty, but it could have been a lot worse.”

~~~~~~

Updates regarding McHenry Library are posted regularly at http://library.ucsc.edu.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Smoke and Soot Fill McHenry

Illustration by Patrick Yeung.

Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor (EVC) David Kliger released the campus budget reduction plans on April 1 for the 2010-11 fiscal year.

The plans detail how UCSC will distribute cuts of approximately $8.2 million, or 4.5 percent of the university’s overall budget, a cut that is substantially lower than the $19.5 million reductions last year.

“We have tried hard to protect the instruction and research mission of the campus — the reason [students] chose to come to UC Santa Cruz,” said Kliger in an e-mail.

For the third year in a row, the campus has been hit with heavy budget cuts which have resulted in an overall permanent budget reduction of about $32.2 million since 2008-09.

Jerroyd Moore, a student representative on the Academic Senate Committee on Planning and Budget (CPB), said that with the state budget not yet finalized there is no guarantee UCSC’s 2010-11 cuts will be limited to the anticipated $8.2 million.

“The figure is based on the assumption that we will get a certain amount of funding from the state — if we don’t receive that funding we will end up with additional mid-year cuts next year” Moore said.

In determining how to distribute the cuts this year, EVC Kliger began consulting with various campus groups last fall including the Vice Chancellors, University Library, Deans, and the Academic Senate Committee on Planning and Budget (CPB).

“The EVC wanted to get it right this year, and the outcome is there have been big improvements over last year,” said Matt Palm, Commissioner of Academic Affairs.

Early in the budget planning stages, the EVC asked the deans of academic divisions to prepare a plan on how they would handle a cut of 5.5 percent and, in a worst case scenario, 11 percent. Academics, which make up 52 percent of the campus’s budget, received a 3.5 percent cut.

“The EVC considered reduction scenarios submitted by deans in determining the cuts,” said Lori Kletzer Chair of the Academic Senate. “The scenarios were so drastic that the academics received a cut lower than 5.5 percent.”

Kletzer said that while cuts to academics are far lower than last year, the cumulative effect over the past few years is taking toll on the divisions.

“I am relieved that the cuts are smaller than last year — but they are still significant … it is a worry that with students not being able to get into classes it could take longer to graduate,” Keltzer said.

The CPB came out with a series of recommendations in March to inform Kliger’s decisions in all three areas of the campus: academics, academic support and institutional support.

According to the EVC’s Reduction Plans for 2010-11, both parties consider maintaining the campus mission of “instruction, research and service” and satisfying the legal responsibilities of the university as important.

However, Kletzer said that the CPB’s recommendations and the EVC’s cuts reflect different priorities.

Academic support, which accounts for 10 percent of the budget, received a 3.9 percent cut. The key difference between the CPB and the EVC’s decision in academic support was the $180,000 cut to the library, for which the CPB had recommended no cuts.

“The library is the intersection between all academic divisions, undergraduates, graduates, faculty. We all utilize these resources. I am disappointed that Kliger cut the library after student leaders have been fighting tooth and nail to keep it open,” Moore said.

In the past three years the library has received a total of $2.1 million in cuts. The current budget for 2010-11 is about $9.3 million.

Similarly to Moore, Palm disagrees with any further cuts to the library.

“It’s hitting something that is already barebones, it will be another chip out of hours, or collections, or both,” Palm said.

Kliger maintains that there are areas within the library’s budget that can sustain a cut.

“I disagreed that the cut to the library should be zero because I saw places where I believe the library could reduce their budget without doing undue harm to its function,” Kliger said in an e-mail.

The amount cut from University Relations is also controversial.

University Relations is a division of the University with a $5.33 million budget which works closely with the trustees of the UCSC Foundation and the Alumni Council to raise funding. The Senate suggested an 11 percent cut, but the EVC decided on a reduction of 1.1 percent — $60,000, instead.

The EVC held that maintaining the campus’s ability to generate private funding as a “high priority” in determining cuts while the CPB did not.

Palm says that the discussion of campus priorities is especially valuable now as the campus prepares for a transition to the next EVC.

Kliger, who has held the position for five years, will officially step down in June. A committee has been formed to select Kliger’s replacement.

“It is going to help students and deans and the campus community better understand the EVC’s priorities versus some of the faculty’s priorities and student’s priorities” Palm said. “It’s good to start having these conversations now because the next EVC will set the context for the future.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Campus Faces Third Year of Cuts

Illustration by Joe Lai.

Prospective students and their families will be flooding UC Santa Cruz spring quarter looking to get the facts about our campus.

Tour guides will brag about the 2 million volumes contained in our campus libraries, the helpfulness of librarians, and the innovative interlibrary loan system that helps make the UC one of the world’s preeminent public research universities. However, prospective students may be surprised to realize that, just as the walls of the renovated McHenry Library are being raised from the ground, the doors to the vast knowledge databases of UCSC are being closed. Those who arrive next year to find the library understaffed and locked on weekends will start to see the UC’s claim of excellence for what it is slowly becoming: a joke.

Executive Vice Chancellor (EVC) Dave Kliger’s budget cuts for next year will reduce the libraries’ budget by 1.9 percent, or about $180,000. Library funding has been reduced by 18 percent since 2008, resulting in the library opening later, closing earlier, being closed on Saturdays, and reducing staff and resources. Kliger’s decision is disappointing not only because of the already dismal availability of the library resources, but because it disregarded the recommendation of the Academic Senate and clear efforts from students throughout the year to protect the library.

In light of the state’s continuing fiscal downturn, the administration this year anticipated cuts of about $8.2 million to UCSC’s core budget.

Kliger consulted with a range of campus officers, and the Academic Senate’s Committee on Planning and Budget (CPB), which is made up of faculty and some student representatives, in his budget distribution.

The Academic Senate and EVC agreed on cuts in many departments, but their differences show that the administration fails to understand needs of members of the university — the faculty, staff and students.

The Academic Senate’s recommendations for cuts saved the same amount as Kliger’s plan, and recommended cuts in every region of institutional and academic support — except the library. Kliger instead chose to cut the library budget while maintaining more funding for University Relations, the Chancellor’s Office and the Campus Provost/EVC’s Office.

The Senate recommended an 11 percent cut for University Relations — which handles alumni relations and donations — but Kliger cut it by only 1.1 percent, the lowest percentage cut of any area.

Kliger said that efforts to obtain private funding for the university should be preserved at a time when public support is unreliable.

In a perfect world, private funding would be a priority, but not when those efforts come at the price of a basic educational institution of the university.

Both the senate and the administration wanted to maintain funding for research, but what’s the point of having volumes and volumes of information if students can’t access it?

By all appearences the EVC made an effort by consulting with the faculty on this round of cuts, but in the end, he ignored their voice on a key issue. The Academic Senate is made up of professors who interact with students on a daily basis — they hear of students’ attempts to fit in studying on top of a job, or difficulty attaining classes while paying more than ever for a UC education.

UCSC students have spoken out in various ways — a library study-in during the fall, and now a new measure that will be on the ballot in May to have students front the bill for increased library hours. If that measure passes it is estimated to generate about $311,000, but when when the new cut is subtracted, that only leaves about $130,000 in new revenue for the library next year. If the measure doesn’t pass, hours and staff will likely be reduced further next year.

Kliger may have the best interests of the university at heart, but in such dire times, he should listen to students and faculty when they make such a clear statement about the preservation of a certain resource.

The irony is almost palpable when we see construction crews building the physical structure of McHenry Library, while its budgetary foundation erodes year by year. Private donors who do give money to UCSC years from now may be surprised at what the definition of a research university has become: one that values accessibility of knowledge less and less.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at EVC’s New Library Cuts Dismiss Student and Faculty Voices

despite a 33.5 percent reduction of the library’s open hours, further budget shortcomings mean more cutbacks are necessary — this time from the collections department. Photo by Nita-Rose Evans.

The doors to the McHenry Library opened to more than 1 million visitors last year hoping to find a quiet place to study, a helpful librarian, an online journal, or a book on reserve.

However, some of these services are in danger. Library administrators are currently implementing a cumulative 14.5 percent reduction. Online resources, which include journals and databases, are some of the services being reconsidered.

“This is the first time we’ve had to go after collections in a major way,” said Kerry Scott, chair of the library’s collection development department.

The proposed cutback in online resources comes in response to an overall cut in the library budget. This year the library received $1.9 million less than in the fiscal year 2007-2008.

“Everyone is going to be impacted,” Scott said. “We really didn’t want to have to make these cuts. It’s not why we became librarians. We’re cognizant of how horrible this is.”

According to the university library’s website, the collections budget in particular needs to be reduced by approximately $1 million. This is attributed in part to campus budget reductions, but also to inflation and the rising cost of journal publishing.

Scott’s position normally entails purchasing books and serials, licensing databases, and signing up for online resources, along with teaching classes about how to use the online resources and working at the reference desk. However, because of the $780,000 permanent cut to online resources, she has started making decisions about which online databases and subscriptions the school cannot afford.

“Instead of identifying material to pick up, I identify material to cancel,” Scott said.

Online subscriptions such as “Chemistry and Industry,” which costs the library $925 per year, and humanities materials such as “Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations,” which costs $5,386 per year, are both on the chopping block.

From late November through December, faculty were encouraged to give their input on what materials to cancel. Kerry also looked at usage statistics before adding materials to the list.

In a presentation given by executive librarian Ginny Steel, the cumulative permanent reduction of the library budget was projected to be 28.8 percent: 14.4 percent this year and a proposed 14.4 percent next year. To implement these cuts, there has been a 33.5 percent reduction in open library hours.

“In spring 2008, we were open 99 and three-fourths hours per week,” said Ken Lyons, a university librarian. “Now we’re open 67 hours per week.”

Lyons has been working for the UCSC library for nine years and has seen three major cuts in his time, but never one so severe as this.

As his coworkers retire or leave for personal reasons, there is no money to replace them, and the librarians are forced to cover their work.

“There are not enough people to maintain services as there should be,” Lyons said. “We’re living in 2010 making 1999 wages. After nine years, I’m just now making a few hundred dollars more a year than I made at the post office carrying mail. You put in more effort, get a higher degree, and expect to be enumerated appropriately, but that’s not the case.”

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For a complete list of materials on the list of proposed cuts, visit library.ucsc.edu/collections/budget-reduction-process.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at UCSC Library Faces $1.9 Million Reduction

Illustration by Kenneth Srivijittakar.

“The Daily Show” has launched UC Santa Cruz into the public eye. On November 11, Jon Stewart lampooned the McHenry Library’s announcement that they are looking for a Grateful Dead archivist to help organize their massive collection of memorabilia from the acid rock band.

Part of the reason Stewart found the announcement so humorous is the same reason we find it so troubling. The library plans to offer $68,000 for the position. That’s right. $68,000 a year to have various posters, t-shirts, set lists and other items organized into a comprehensive and properly archived collection.

Much of the funding for the Grateful Dead archive comes from private sources, but the University has put the archive at far too high of a priority. On Sept. 29, UCSC’s Public Information Office celebrated a $615,000 grant to the collection. Meanwhile, the McHenry librarians are concerned about a cumulative 28 percent budget reduction that began in fall 2008 and will continue into June 2011.

The administration encourages people to donate and help the Grateful Dead archive grow. We want to see that level of support for other programs, departments, classes and lecturers that are routinely threatened to be placed on the chopping block. This is not the time to be adding a new salaried position for archiving when many faculty members are seeing their salaries dwindle under a difficult furlough plan.

The $68,000 archiving salary is not our main concern, however. Our main concern is what it represents: the misdirection of a school that does not prioritize the needs of its students. It is about the the construction on the McHenry Library that began in 2007 and chugs along even as the library takes away more hours. When it comes down to it, students would rather have a library that’s open than one that is “state of the art.”

The University needs to make a greater effort to prioritize the needs of its students. Rather than trying to “wow” the world with an extensive collection of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, we need to encourage donors to better support the things that make college intellectually stimulating, enriching, worthwhile and affordable.

If the rapid deterioration of the University continues, the student body will turn into the walking un-Grateful Dead, only able to admire the enthralls of a library from outside locked doors.

But at least we will have a well-organized rock band archive.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The Grateful Who?

Illustration by Maggie McManus.

One hundred fifty-two UC Santa Cruz and local high-school students recently put their pens to paper to compete for first, second and third-place cash prizes as part of McHenry Library’s annual essay contest. 

The competition, now in its 42nd year, was sponsored by the Friends of the McHenry Library, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the welfare and growth of UCSC’s main library.

According to the contest rules, entrants were to “imagine a collection of books and other written or recorded sources on a subject of global importance,” and write up to 1,500 words describing the collection and its impact.           

This year’s topic was chosen by Astrid von Soosten, director of library development, and Letitia Bennett, associate director of library development. 

Bennett said they chose the topic after watching Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration. 

“We both felt more hopeful and wanted to encourage our students to think more globally,” Bennett said. “What’s dumped in the ocean in Hawaii ends up here on the mainland. The air quality in China affects the air quality here in California … We have also realized recently that economic activity is not isolated by any means.”

The top three finalists in the college category are third-year Jesse Wilkie for her essay “Forget the Industrial Revolution,” fourth yearSean Dudas for “Achieving a Multicultural Global Perspective,” and second-year Celeste Noche for “The Importance of Understanding.” 

The finalists were chosen on the basis of which contestants best articulated the intricacies of today’s globalized world and the problems facing it. 

Three judges worked together to select the strongest essays before announcing Wilkie, Dudas and Noche as the finalists on April 15. The first, second and third-place assignments will be announced today, April 23, at 5 p.m. at McHenry Library.

At its inception in 1967, the contest was intended as a way of honoring students for extensive book collections in their specific areas of interest. 

Prize money for the contest winners is sponsored in part by funds donated by Ethel Curtis, a longtime donor and one of the friends of the UCSC library. Curtis started the fund in 1994 in memory of her late niece, who worked at the library.

The contest is divided into three sections with one level for ninth and 10th-graders, one for 11th and 12th-graders and one for college students. 

Reference librarian Ken Lyons was a judge for the group of high-school students and said he was impressed by the scope of topics and ideas in the essays he read.

“Some people wrote about [the] guitar and guitar history,” Lyons said. “If there was one general theme that students wrote about, I would say it was about music.” 

Each writer in the college section of the contest had the additional requirement of submitting with each essay an annotated bibliography with at least 25 sources. 

Wilkie, a College Ten student, said that with globalization, “the world is becoming a lot smaller, and we have to work together. Whether it’s poverty or global warming or disease, it affects everyone in the long run because we’re all connected. It’s important to understand the global community now. We’re global citizens.”

Noche echoed the importance of a more sympathetic global community. 

“I don’t think that any issue that people think is important can be solved without understanding,” Noche said. “No one is going to empathize with world hunger if they don’t understand what’s going [on] and they don’t put themselves in that position. They’re not going to help because it’s not important to them.”

Bennett expressed gratitude to the Santa Cruz community for showing so much support for the contest. Many donors — including Capitola Book Café, the Literary Guillotine, Bookworks, Logos Books and Records, Borders and Bookshop Santa Cruz — provided gift cards to the high schools of the winning students.

Bennett says she is happy to be in an academic setting working with the students she loves.

 “Students offer a fresher approach to problems and may be more likely to bring solutions,” Bennett said. “Students do have the opportunity to think about things differently.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at McHenry Library Congratulates Essay Contest Winners