Colleagues,

 

Here is an update on the PASCAL funding situation, and some of the activities that I’ve been involved in with your board, the Commission on Higher Education, and others to begin address the devastating reduction in operating funds by the state legislature for our electronic resource and delivery programs.

The House has adopted the Senate proposal for $200,000 in recurring funds, so this should provide us with a floor for rebuilding.   That said, a 90% reduction in operating funds obviously means that the programs cannot be sustained neither in the short-term nor the long run without redefinition and new strategies for revenue generation and partnership.

 

The Board has been developing scenarios, or cases, that will hopefully facilitate the memberships’ evaluation of several strategic options.  Meanwhile, a number of institutional presidents have asked the Commission on Higher Education to explore options, and the Executive Director at the Commission, Dr. Garrison Walters, has responded by initiating a conversation with us, and expanding the discussion to all the institutions in the state through a letter to College and University presidents.  Thus, we are challenged to develop an adaptive plan.

 

Throughout this process, I believe that we need maintain a duality in our thinking and planning – how do we deal with the immediate crisis facing us for FY2008-9, and how do we reposition our programs and organization to engineer for ourselves the best chance of rebuilding what will be swept away in a new fiscal environment.

 

One of the first steps is to get a handle on our electronic resource renewals. The board has charged the Consortial Purchasing Committee with prioritizing our electronic resources to better help in developing a plan for attempting to maintain an essential kernel of our collections. One element of the CPC work will be a survey that each member library will be asked to complete.  The survey will help us both in the performance of triage and also to begin the documentation of loss that we will need as we educate other stakeholders. The survey is being sent today by Gail Julian (Clemson) to the licensing and purchasing contacts members have provided to us, and we’ll be following up next week to make sure that each institution has been appropriately contacted.

 

In the Board’s discussions, as well as in discussions I’ve had with individual librarians around the state, it becomes quickly apparent that the role of PASCAL Delivers in this new environment looms large in the framing of both our tactical one-year and our strategic multi-year planning.   The board will be soliciting input from member libraries on the relative weight that each of our programs has for them.  Library directors should expect to hear more from us regarding this question next week.

 

The PASCAL team has been working on tools that will facilitate communication and documentation of program value in this new environment.  One of the first of these tools is a simple form for soliciting on the value of PASCAL from librarians – and more importantly – users.  We’ve linked to this form from several places on our website (including our front page), and will be reviewing and posting responses.  We plan to utilize this information in a variety of ways as we sharpen our communication with stakeholders.  Please feel free to link to this page from your own websites, and please share any suggestions you might have along these lines with us as well.  To check out this page, or to add a comment, please take a look here: http://pascalsc.org/content/view/165/1/

Between now and the General Membership meeting on June, and as conversations unfold between us and the CHE, we’ll be in dialogue with you. This will not be an easy process, but one element we have going for us is the unique and strong culture of collaboration you have developed over the years.  Please don’t hesitate to contact me, or one of your board representatives should you have any questions, comments, and, especially, suggestions.

As always, thanks.

Rick

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Richard H. Moul
PASCAL Executive Director
(803) 734-0910
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http://pascalsc.org

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