SEPTEMBER 3, 1998-vol30n2: Mail

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 2 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1998

The Mail

Dear Reporter:

We, the undersigned members of the University Libraries faculty, wish to express our support for the new Educational Technology Lab. We are anxious to participate in the lab's goal of assisting faculty in integrating computer and web technology into their courses.

Libraries pioneered the concept of collaboration between librarians and teachers with the advent of media resource centers in the late 1960s. Today's explosion of computer technology and information-literacy needs of our students again places us together in a common mission as the university moves to requiring all students to have computers by Fall 1999.

However, as stewards of the university's research library collections and services, we feel strongly that this lab should not be located in the basement of Lockwood Library. A severe storage crisis that impinges on the quality of the collection and physical aura of the university's main research facility is foremost in our minds.

Half of the space in question currently houses 50,000 volumes that are regularly retrieved on a "storage access" basis. Other temporary locations exist in Lockwood due to lack of shelf space rendering these parts of the collection inaccessible. The recent suggestion to move the 50,000 Lockwood volumes to a 30-year-old temporary building on the South Campus is not viable because of inadequate air-quality control, a lack of security and changes in traffic-control patterns on the South Campus that would hinder delivery and retrieval. Such a move would marginalize these important research collections and there is no voiced plan for a permanent home for these materials.

Weeding efforts have focused thus far on duplicate titles. Further reducing Lockwood space would force difficult choices in future weeding. Combining this with a 32 percent reduction in spending on monographs libraries-wide over the last five years places the research quality of the collection at risk. Erecting additional stacks in open user space would reduce the meager seating space and be aesthetically offensive. Both of these are important considerations in student recruitment and retention.

The University Libraries Five Year Plan: 1998-2003 addresses the serious space problems throughout the system, the need to maintain the libraries as a "focus of intellectual and social cultures" and the important challenge of balancing electronic and paper resources. Taking Lockwood space for the Educational Technology Lab will seriously impede our ability to carry on the traditional missions of the university's main research library.

We urge you to withdraw this space from consideration.

-Karen L. Spencer, Chair, Faculty Executive Committee

Terrance McCormack, Ellen McGrath, Mary Miller, Marcia Zubrow, Karen F. Smith, Judith Hopkins, Susan m. Neumeister, Jean E. Dickson, Howard Pikoff, Cynthia L. Seitz, Marilyn Kramer, Sharon C. Lin, Judith Adams-Volpe, Donald Hartman, Richard K. McRae, D. Carol Bradley, James B. Coover, Susan Davis Bartl, Serofino Porcari, Charles D'Aniello, Edward Herman, Dorothy C. Woodson, Glendora Johnson-Cooper, Miguel Juarez, Alysse Jordan, Christopher Densmore, Robert J. Bertholf, Gayle J. Hardy-Davis, Nina Cascio, Deborah Husted Koshinsky, Sharon C. Murphy, Amy J. Lyons, Renee B. Bush, Amanda Start, Nancy P. Stimson, Lori Widzinski, Jeanne M. Fielding

Electronic Poetry Center resource should have been cited in article

Dear Reporter:

A note to point out a rather egregious error in your "Briefly" entry for "Creeley to host collaborative performance, Sept. 5" in your Aug. 27th issue of the Reporter. That error is that you fail to mention an essential and widely acclaimed resource (twice acclaimed by the Chronicle of Higher Education; also cited by Publisher's Weekly) produced here at UB, the Electronic Poetry Center. In fact, the EPC Creeley author page is perhaps the essential page for any access to Creeley on the Web; the Reporter itself has cited the EPC on numerous previous occasions, more than once in relation to a Creeley-related event. I think that it's less than helpful to urge readers to "type 'robert creeley' into a search engine for sites to more than 400 sites" when, while some of those may contain errors, etc., one of the most carefully-built and responsible site resides on the UB campus. Further, when I tried your suggested URL of http://www.levity.com/corduroy/creeley.html, the site was unavailable. When there is such a nationally recognized poetry Web site on campus, why would you neglect to cite it? Creeley's EPC page includes numerous items by and about Creeley, including critical authoritative texts by and about Creeley not available elsewhere. Creeley is a UB professor who is well represented by a UB resource; I think it's a serious error not to cite this resource and I can't believe that, when it comes to a UB professor who is a poet, you do not even bother to consult the Electronic Poetry Center.

-Loss Pequeño Glazier, Director, Electronic Poetry Center http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc