Attendees:  Michael Cook, Oliver Habicht, Maureen Morris, Laura Heisey, Keene Silfer, Pat Viele, Phil Halcomb and Annemarie  Morse

Scribe:  Pat Viele

Michael opened the meeting by welcoming Annemarie, who is replacing Aaron Wade from the Engineering Library.  We then introduced ourselves.

Mark Butcher, who represented the vet library, has left Cornell.  A replacement has yet to announced.

Oliver brought us up to date on the Microsoft License.  CIT did a feasibility study and decided not to obtain a campus wide license.  CIT opted for status quo--each college unit obtains its own license.

There are two options for the license:  pay by FTE which would allow free use of the software on public machines or pay by the number of machines that have the software installed.  Several questions arose regarding how to count FTE.

Michael spoke briefly about the ARL Spec kit he is working on:  management of public computing in libraries. He and a colleague from Brown University have submitted an abstract.

We discussed the changes in CUL structure and longed for a new organizational chart.

Michael drafted a recommendation to be given to PSEC regarding membership this group.  The following points are addressed:

Issues:

1. Term lengths of PCAC members have never been clearly defined.

2. Having PCAC members serve only one year at a time presents a problem. Because public computing responsibilities are held by very few staff in any given CUL unit, maintaining representation from year to year is difficult for most units (even the larger ones) because there are so few people with these kinds of duties and/or technical inclinations in CUL.

3. The kinds of issues and topics that PCAC deals with requires members with the kinds of responsibilities described above, but even more importantly it requires people with the interest and drive to champion computing issues both from a public services standpoint on behalf of library users. This quality is what our group prizes most.

4. Current members of PCAC would like to continue serving on the committee if allowed.

Recommendation:

1. In order to keep the group both active and relevant, PCAC membership should be somewhat different that other PSEC committees. Members serve two (2) year terms, with the option to continue indefinitely.

3. Since PCAC aims to maintain representation for each unit library, in the case where members either lose interest, become too busy, etc. they can step down provided that effective unit responsibility is maintained by a replacement.

4. Co-chairs and the liaison from PSEC all have permanent terms. In the event that one cannot continue to serve, they may step down under the same rules that apply for regular members.

5. All changes in the membership of PCAC are subject to the approval of PSEC.

6. Pat Court serves as the official liaison to PSEC.

7. Oliver serves as the official liaison to ITEC.


Phil raised the topic of LCD signs.  In order to up date the sign in the lobby of Mann, someone has to manually collect information from Oracle Calendar and enter it into the sign's software.  There is software that would automate this process, but it is fairly pricey.  If more than one or two library units have signs, it might make sense to purchase the software.  Phil will follow up with John Hoffmann.

Annemarie suggested these items for discussion at future meetings:

    * lending equipment --policies
    * white noise in cubicles
    * general noise level in various units
    * there is currently a $35 cap for an overdue laptop


Pat mentioned a study by Joyce Rosenbaum "Fine-Tuning the Acoustics of Libraries at College and Universities".  (I will try to find more information).