This week I received a copy of a letter to Provost Choi from faculty in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. The letter lays out concerns regarding the cuts to the UConn Libraries budget this year and next. Since that letter was submitted, I have had the opportunity to address it with Dean Teitelbaum, Vice Provost Reis and Provost Choi. The authors of the letter provided a good amount of information and arguments backed by statistics and I took the opportunity in my conversation to correct any inaccuracies and confirm what is true and would like to address some of these with you directly. The first item in the letter that I would like to address is there is no proposal to eliminate our acquisitions entirely next year. As you know we reduced our book budget this year but this piece will be back on the table for discussion for FY 17. We are also not targeting major electronic journal packages. We will continue to look at all of our collections, including those larger packages. It may be necessary to break some of them up but no packages or disciplines are being singled out. We will continue to be careful with the responsibility to curate our collections, including making data informed decisions in conjunction with faculty feedback. Finally, while we have reduced the amount of ILL royalty costs we will incur, we have not eliminated all expensive ILL requests across the board. This is once again an individual conversation between staff and faculty on possible alternatives.

I would also like to address the comment about the lack of consultation with faculty. I believe this to be wrong, as I know that our subject specialists and other members of the staff have taken great care in reaching out to the faculty regarding the cuts. We have been working directly with them to minimize the effects of the collections reduction. The reality is that we are facing budget cuts along with the entire University and none of this is pleasant, but I personally want to thank you all for working through these difficult discussions with professionalism and respect for our users and each other.

In all of the conversations I have had, including the one with Provost Choi yesterday, I do my best to remind people of the great work this Library is doing. While it is true that we have one of the lowest staff ratios compared to many of our peers, I have never been so sure in the ability of this group of people to work together to maximize what we have been given. I believe in this staff and our commitment to work through these difficult times. This is likely not the last public or private concern for our budget and I am pleased that our faculty find our collections and services important to their work and the ultimate mission of the University. As we move forward with the comprehensive review of collections and services to address our 2016-2017 budget, I look forward to seeing the staff pull together towards our shared vision and mission to make this the best UConn Libraries we can.