Library task force announced

A letter from Provost Larry Faulkner and Senate Council Chair Richard Schacht has gone out to the members of the Task Force on the Future of the University Library to confirm their appointments and to offer direction in their work.

The charges include:

• Defining and evaluating the challenges posed to the library by the escalation in costs for traditional materials and demands for new materials and services.
• Reviewing the library's proposals for addressing these challenges.
• Converging upon and recommending a specific strategy, based on clear assumptions and their implications, for developing the library in the next decade.
• Reviewing the disposition of the library's current resources in reference to the recommended strategy and recommending appropriate changes.
• Recommending an institutional policy concerning the development of new resources for the library, within annual budget requests, by internal reallocation, or other means, in the light of other discernible demands on the same resources.

The members of the task force: Thomas M. Mengler (chairman), dean of the College of Law; George F. Badger, associate vice chancellor, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research; Nina Baym, professor of English; Howard K. Birnbaum, director of the Materials Research Laboratory; Paul W. Bohn, professor of chemistry; Leigh S. Estabrook, dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science; Jesse G. Delia, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Lizanne DeStefano, professor of educational psychology; William R. Schowalter, dean of the College of Engineering; Tom R. Ward, professor of music.

A report has been requested by Nov. 15.

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