Please attend today's Faculty Meeting to learn more about the substantial
new cuts in our periodicals. As Professors Steinhoff and Resnick and
several Department Heads have pointed out, this issue is central to our
"mission" as a university. Despite recent Lupton support, and a SACS team
that was concerned about library issues, we quite suddenly learn about the
need to cut yet again. The faculty Library Committee was not consulted.

Frankly, I am not concerned about the research needs of faculty and new
graduate programs at UTC; they are hopelessly unsupported. But I would like
to see a library that at least has enough print resources to support a good
undergraduate teaching university. We do not have that now: $800 a year for
books does not begin to cover my own fields, and I had to cut periodicals
to a minimum last time. I am sure you have a similar story.

We are "promised" new "reasonable" interlibrary loans resources ($1,000 per
faculty per year?), but anyone at UTC longer than 3-5 years knows the
emptiness of such administrative promises.

One is tempted to blame the library for putting too much hope in electronic
data bases, which are going up in price along with periodicals. At some
point we will not have funds to access those either, without the equity of
print copies of earlier runs on the shelves. But the real responsbility
lies in those allocating resources at UTC, including the present and past
administrations. How many Lexans will we save by cutting periodicals?

I am also concerned about the manner in which the budget crises was
presented to Department Heads and the Faculty Council last week. If you
attend the Faculty Meeting today you will receive the same information that
will allow you to make an informed and reflective choice: 1) like it (cut
your periodicals 50%) or 2) lump it (let the library cut your periodicals
50%).

Instead of this perverse choice, we should demand a full and longitudinal
study of allocations to the library. Costs have risen, and that needs to be
considered in the light of overall institutional costs. Faculty already
have to do the bibliographical work good libraries (UTK, for example)
provide; now we will have to use abstracts to guess at the importance and
relevance of an article before ordering on ILL. I use the net almost every
day, but there is still a great and lasting need for immediate access to
journals.

Richard Rice