Vance Holloway (Spanish and Portuguese) has filed a minority
report on the recommendations from the Library Committee for changes to
the current policies regarding library loan periods (
D
467-468).
This legislation will be considered at the Faculty Council
meeting on April 17, 2000.
<signed>
John R. Durbin, Secretary
The Faculty Council
This legislation was posted on the Faculty Council
web site (
http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/)
on April 11, 2000. Paper copies
are available on request from the Office of the General Faculty, FAC
22, F9500.
I write as a Faculty Council appointee to the Library
Committee, and vice chair of the latter, in disagreement with the majority's
recommendation regarding changes in library loan periods. I believe the
proposal to increase the general library's loan period for graduate students
and classified staff to one full semester, matching the loan period for
faculty members, will be detrimental for faculty and students alike.
Currently, graduate students have a four-week loan period
and may renew materials on-line simply by going to the library web site
(
https://utdirect.utexas.edu/lib/services/due.wb)
and making the appropriate selections. In these circumstances, increasing
the graduate student (and classified staff) loan period should be viewed
as a convenience, or privilege, but not a necessity.
What is the consequence
of changing the loan period from
four weeks to one semester (i.e., 20 weeks)? Human nature is such that
many people will not return books until they are due, whether or not
they
are using them. I do not believe that the majority of graduate students
or classified staff use books over the course of an entire semester (although
students who have advanced to doctoral candidacy probably do). I think
the consequence of extending borrowing periods will be less books on
the
shelves and more recalls, which will shift the burden from those who
previously had to renew electronically to those who now must first recall,
and, more
important, wait for materials to become available.
Having books on the
shelf is not just a matter of serendipity. As one faculty member has
said, whether one is looking for something on
combinatorics or the history of mathematics or the industrial revolution,
it is much more efficient to be able to look quickly at what's available
than to ask for a recall of every book that looks promising. Furthermore,
if more items remain checked out for the entire semester, the quantity
of books turned in at the end of the semester will increase, causing
more
of a processing delay while large numbers of items are re-shelved during
a period when many faculty are actively using the library resources for
research while not teaching.
I believe a more appropriate solution would
be to leave the classified staff loan period unchanged, increase the
graduate student
loan period from four to eight weeks, and increase the period for those
advanced to doctoral candidacy to one semester. The resulting student/faculty
loan periods would be:
Undergraduate: 2 weeks
Non-professional staff: 4 weeks
Graduate students: 8 weeks
Doctoral candidates: semester (20 weeks)*
Faculty: semester (20 weeks)
*This option was dismissed in committee as unfeasible.
I am very skeptical that this is so. The current loan system already contains
nine different borrower categories. Why not ten? Likewise, the net software
adapted for renewal can be reconfigured for one additional category, and
UT identification cards can contain the appropriate encryption, even if
doctoral students have to acquire a new card when they advance to candidacy.
