Like the rest of campus, Cornell University Library must reimagine itself to weather the current financial storms. It must strategically plan for its future while remaining at the forefront of technology, expanding its collections and forging new collaborations. University Librarian Anne Kenney recently spoke about the library's efforts to remain at the center of Cornell's academic enterprise.

What are some of the issues confronting Cornell Library?

Libraries everywhere are being challenged by budget constraints, but there are other challenges as well. While many users increasingly access information online, other disciplines use the library as their lab. Rapid digitization and worldwide access to information brings forth issues such as copyright laws, scholarly communication and digital literacy. Balancing our commitments to open access and responsible stewardship in these hard economic times requires flexibility and rethinking business as usual.

In the provost's response to the Library Task Force report, he asked you to initiate a planning process to explore the consolidation of some unit libraries. Which libraries are under review?

Unit library reviews are taking place this spring and will be finished by June 1. The College of Veterinary Medicine launched a review of its library, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is reviewing the pros and cons of possible consolidation of the Entomology Library with Mann Library. The ILR School, the Hotel School and the Johnson School libraries are looking at potential synergies. And the dean of engineering and I are launching a review of the Engineering Library. No other reviews are in the works. Faculty, students and staff will have input on recommendations.

The faculty senate passed a resolution Feb. 10 calling for the Faculty Library Advisory Board to work closely with you on strategic planning.

I welcome the faculty's interest in and support for the library, and I recognize that a very strong and vital library is in their best interests and critical to their academic success. The Faculty Library Advisory Board will play a strong role in reviewing options considered as part of the strategic planning process. Faculty will also be heavily involved through various efforts to address the six key recommendations from the provost, including increasing support for library collections, considering unit consolidations and developing partnerships with other universities.

How else are you engaging the faculty?

In addition to working closely with the Faculty Library Advisory Board, there are a number of faculty advisory groups for specific libraries (e.g., Mann, Fine Arts). A new group is the Library Humanities Research Collections Committee with six faculty members and two librarians, which is considering issues related to humanities collections in Olin and Uris. We also work closely with faculty in other ways, such as the Undergraduate Information Competency Institute, co-teaching courses, and scholarly communications initiatives and collections development issues.

How will the new budget model affect the library?

The provost has asked me to "proceed with the design of a plan for an appropriately integrated budget process managed by the University Library that maintains effective participation by the colleges and schools." Any plan needs to address how much budgetary discretion will be given to unit library directors, administrative department heads, and input from the respective deans in the new budget process.

In addition to considering budget cuts, have you looked at enhancing revenue?

Yes. In addition to making support for collections our top priority for the remainder of the campaign, we have launched an effort to expand support for the ongoing operation of arXiv.org by asking for voluntary contributions from the top 200 institutions worldwide that use it most. Most of the top 25 institutions have already committed their support. The library supports the annual operating costs of arXiv (approximately $400,000, comparable to the costs of the university's collection budget for physics and astronomy). Nearly 600,000 research articles in physics, mathematics, statistics, computer science and quantitative biology reside in arXiv. Last fall, we also sold the duplicate undergraduate collection housed in Uris Library to Tshinghua University Library in China for $895,000. Harvard donated its duplicate undergraduate collection to Sun Yat Sen University Library.

Final thoughts?

Through our partnership with Columbia's library, we will expand the reach of the resources we can provide to both communities. We're launching a project to determine whether the library can help lower the attrition rate of humanities Ph.D. students. We are expanding the use of VIVO to other universities and addressing data curation issues. That passions run high about the library is a heck of a lot better than apathy, and I welcome the opportunity to work more closely with faculty and students in developing solutions to real budgetary problems and addressing new needs.