Prepared for the MAUT Librarians’ Section Meeting June 03 1999
Members of the committee are Melinda Reinhart, President (CUFA) from Concordia University, Louisa Piatti, Secretary (MAUT) from McGill University, Gary McCormick (APBU) from Bishops, Albert Tabbah (SGPUM) from l’Universite de Montreal and Ernest Monga (SPPUS) from l’Universite de Sherbrooke. The ad hoc Committee met on April 23rd 1999, January 15th 1999, September 11th 1998.
From February to October 1998, the committee completed its work on the document "L’impact des compressions budgetaires dans les bibliotheques sur le travail des professeures et professeurs dans les universites au Quebec. Enquete realise par le Comite ad hoc sur les bibliotheques de la FQPPU. Montreal, September 1998. ( 72pp + technical appendix) This report was sent to the comite executif for its meeting on September 22nd 1998. Ernest Monga presented the major findings of this report at the meeting of the conseil federal in October 1998. This body requested a fifteen-page synopsis that was deposited with FQPPU on December 07th 1998 and the results published in the journal l’Universite.
The study clearly demonstrates that professors in Quebec universities believe that budget cuts in libraries have had a negative impact on teaching and research. Results show that 91% of the professors buy materials not available in their libraries for their work, 84% use resources other than their own libraries i.e. Internet and other university libraries, and those who felt that budget cuts had no impact were the ones who rarely used their libraries.
Subcommittee on Librarians
The members of this committee (Melinda Reinhart, Louisa Piatti and Gary McCormick) have decided not to proceed with an analysis of the results as an insufficient number of responses to the questionnaire sent out in March 1997, regarding working conditions were received. The committee is currently working on a document concerning the impact of new technologies on the collections and services offered in University libraries and its effect on librarians’ working conditions. As a starting point, we are using an article published last June 1998 in the CAUT bulletin, authored by Gary McCormick entitled " Funding New Technologies". We are now doing a literature search and a study of available statistics to identify important tendencies concerning the costs of establishing the infrastructures needed to support these new technologies.
Respectfully submitted
Louisa Piatti
Secretary for the Comite ad hoc sur les Bibliotheques