printable versionFaculty Senate minutes - May 4, 2006 meeting
At its meeting on Thursday, May 4, 2006, the Thirty-eighth Senate of the Academic Council heard reports but took no actions..
EDWARD D. HARRISAcademic Secretary to the UniversityMinutes, may 4I. Call to OrderThe gentle milling about of senators among each other exchanging animated conversations ended as Chairman Eric Roberts called the meeting to order at 3:18 pm.
II. Approval of Minutes of April 20, 2006 (SenD#5831)The minutes of the April 20, 2006 meeting had been sent to the senators by e-mail and were approved without modification by unanimous consent.
III. Action CalendarThe Action Calendar was empty today.
IV. Standing ReportsA. Memorial Resolution Boyd Paulson (1941-2005) SenD#5829
Chairman Roberts called for Professor Ray Levitt to present a memorial statement in honor of his colleague, Boyd Paulson, from Civil Engineering. The full text of this resolution was included in the Senate packets and will be published in the Stanford Report on May 10th.
Professor Levitt thanked the Chair and the Senate, and began. "Boyd C. Paulson, Jr., the Charles H. Leavell Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University and a longtime advocate for affordable housing in the Bay Area, died on December 1, 2005. Boyd Paulson's research on advanced computer applications to the field of construction engineering and management earned him many honors, including the American Society of Civil Engineers 1980 Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Prize, the 1984 Construction Management Award, and the 1993 Peurifoy Construction Research Award. In 1961, Boyd was given the Project Management Institute's Distinguished Contributions Award, and he was elected to the National Academy of Construction in 2001.
"However, Boyd would probably rather be remembered for his many and pivotal contributions to the development of affordable housing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Boyd was honored with Stanford's first Miriam Aaron Roland Volunteer Service Prize in 2004, which is given annually to faculty members who have demonstrated a personal commitment to community service and have engaged students to integrate academic scholarship with significant volunteer work.
"Mr. Chairman, I have the honor on behalf of a committee consisting of Professor C.B. 'Bob' Tatum and myself to lay before the Senate of the Academic Council a resolution in memory of the late Boyd C. Paulson, Jr., Charles Leavell Professor of Civil Engineering."
Chairman Roberts asked the senate to stand for the traditional moment of silence. He Thanked Professor Levitt and the others on the memorial committee.
B. Steering Committee
Beginning the report from the Steering Committee, Roberts noted, "One of the things that's obvious is that today we have an abbreviated meeting, as you have seen on the agenda. Each quarter of the year we have an informal executive session. Today is the day. And so, about 4:45 pm we're going to adjourn upstairs to the Law School faculty lounge for a very interesting program. At our last meeting, when we were talking with the Dean of Admissions, there wasn't sufficient time to get at some of the harder questions about stress and the enormous competitiveness generated by our admissions process. In our informal discussion today we will consider the stresses on high school and college students with guests from CAPS, the School of Education, and the Vice Provost for Student Affairs' office.
"The elections for the Senate, the Advisory Board, next year's Senate chair, and Steering Committee are all closed. The results of the Advisory Board, the Steering Committee, and Senate chair won't be announced until next week's meeting of the Committee of Tellers, which must verify the results. But I wanted to just pass along, you know, my best wishes to whoever becomes Senate chair next year.
"The Academic Secretary tells me that the on-line voting wasn't quite what he was hoping for. He had hoped that when we moved to electronic voting, we could get to 100% of the Academic Council to vote. But, come to think of it, why stop there? Why not 110%? Various states have done it. But seriously, the new Web-based system did get more people involved in the election. Twice as many people voted this year as in recent years. Thanks to everyone who voted!
"On the printed agenda for today the upcoming agenda items are listed. On May 18th, the Vice Provost for Faculty Development, Pat Jones, will present the reports on status of women faculty, recruitment and retention, and faculty gains and losses. We'll also hear from the Committee on Research that will recommend revisions in the Scientific Misconduct Policy.
"The quarterly Administrative Session will take place before that meeting where a number of items that the Steering Committee has decided to handle administra-tively will be presented. When you receive the agenda, if you think that there's anything that you would like to speak to in the Administrative Session, please join us here at 2:15 pm.
"On June 1st, we'll hear from Provost Etchemendy as he gives his annual report on the University Budget for FY07. We'll also hear from the Committee on Graduate Studies that will recommend Senate approval of a degree program in Human Genetics.
"At our final Senate meeting on June 15th, we'll hear the Emeriti Council report from its representative to the Senate, David Abernethy. As is always true for that last meeting of the year, we will adjourn early so that we can join at the reception sponsored by the President at the Faculty Club for Senate 38 and 39 and the Board of Trustees"
There were no questions for the Steering Committee.
C. Committee on Committees
Sheri Sheppard, chair of the CoC, reported that "…we're almost through our work. There are only seven or eight committee members for 2006-07 to be found, and we will find them! We are slightly ahead of schedule."
D. Provost and President
President Hennessy allowed as how he did not have any report but that he was happy to answer any questions anyone might have. He looked up expectantly. Nary a hand was raised. He noted, "All is calm."
When Provost Etchemendy was asked if he had any reports or announcements for the Senate other than what he would be presenting later, he put on a Dick Cheney face and said, "I don't have any reports or announcements, … and I won't answer any questions!" But, his subsequent smile gave him away, and he admitted, "Just kidding!" Despite this challenge and opportunity, the Senate was mute.
Chairman Roberts turned to the President at this point and said, "I saw in the Stanford Report yesterday the announcement of the new head of the Stanford Management Company. Would you like to expand on that?"
President Hennessy nodded and noted, "We did indeed appoint a new head for the Stanford Management Company, a Stanford graduate, John Powers, who was the chief investment officer of Offit Hall Capital Management in San Francisco. We're delighted to attract John, who has a distinguished record as a chief investment officer. He will be a real addition to that team. And as you know, we appointed both a new Director of Athletics, Bob Bowlsby from the University of Iowa, who will be starting on July 10th. I thank for that a wonderful search chaired by Provost Etchemendy. I think that worked out very well, and we're very happy to have him on board."
V. Other ReportsA. Infrastructure Charge - Provost tchemendy
The University Budget and Infrastructure Charge
Or…How I learned to stop worrying and love the ISC
Provost Etchemendy was either truly concerned about the Senate's reaction to changes in the infrastructure charge, or was feigning worry… one could not be sure.
He began. "Knowing how popular the infrastructure charge is, when I looked for a literary reference for a subtitle, it ended up being a tossup between Daniel in the lion's den and Dr. Strangelove." Looking up to the students in the back row, he suggested, "Now, those of you who are young in the back might not know that second reference." The back-benchers laughed, not giving themselves away.
He continued the apologia. "I volunteered to give this because I think the infrastructure charge is extremely unpopular but it's something that you really need to understand. There are good reasons for it. I hope by the end of this you will have learned to love the infrastructure charge. Hope springs eternal … right?
"I want to start with a review of the overall gross structure of the budget. This will be a review for those of you who have been in the Senate for a year or more. And for the rest of you, it will probably go by really quickly. The Consolidated Budget, about $3 billion in 2005/2006, is the overall budget of the whole University, including the medical school but not the hospitals because they're separate corporations. Everything else, every penny that comes in the door and goes out the door, is reflected in the Consolidated Budget.
"The most important part of the Consolidated Budget is the General Funds Budget ($746 million). These are the only flexible funds that the University has. They're the funds that keep things running. The primary source of General Funds is tuition (50%). About 25% comes from indirect costs from Grants and Contracts, and about 20% represents investment income.
"Another component is the Auxiliaries ($234 million) covering the parts of the University that, in theory, and in practice as much as possible, are self-supporting. They have their own sources of revenue, and they cover all their own costs. An example is Housing and Dining. It charges the room and board and it pays for all its expenses. The Department of Athletics is an Auxiliary. It brings in money from football ticket sales and so forth and then it pays all of its expenses.
"Grants and Contracts ($906 million) are mainly government grants and contracts that the faculty bring in. The SLAC budget ($300 million) is included under this component.
"Finally, we have Restricted and Designated funds ($580 million and $456 million, respectively). Restricted funds have legal restrictions on how they can be used. Suppose we get a gift and the donor says, 'I want you to use this for purpose X,' and writes that into the gift document. We legally can only use it for purpose X. Designated funds are funds that are not legally restricted, but for all practical purposes, they are. They're restricted because we have decided that we need to use them for a particular purpose. An example of this would be a corporate affiliates program in a department. The corporation pays membership fees that are technically unrestricted gifts to the university. But we let the department keep the fees to use for the purposes of supporting the program. Obviously, if we decided to yank that money and use it for some other purpose lots of people would get upset, and the affiliates program would fall apart. Another example is patent royalty income. We allocate a third of the royalty stream into the department of the faculty member who came up with the invention.
"It is important for you to notice that about three-quarters of the revenue that comes into the Consolidated Budget is restricted in some way or other. General Funds, the unrestricted revenue, can be used for anything but only constitute 26% of the budget. But actually, only 21% of the Consolidated Budget is centrally controlled General Funds, allocated each year by the budget group and by me to the various different schools and administrative departments. The remaining General Funds are provided to the Graduate School of Business and the School of Medicine, in accord with pre-established formulae.
"Now, what do General Funds pay for? First of all, it pays most faculty salaries. One exception is faculty who have endowed chairs. These are paid out of a restricted endowment fund given by a donor. Another exception is SLAC salaries, which are not paid out of General Funds. School of Medicine faculty salaries are paid partly from the General Funds that flow by formula to the School of Medicine, but also partly by clinical revenues and research grant revenues. Most of the people in this room have salaries paid for out of General Funds.
"Administrative staff salaries at the 'local' department level and at the central level, such as the Controller's Office, Research Administration, HR, student services, the Office of Development, and so forth, are all paid by General Funds, as are maintenance, utilities, and capital debt service in the University. Basically, the funds that build a building, maintain the building, keep the lights on and water flowing… all come from General Funds. In addition, libraries, information technology (ITSS), and other academic and research support are paid out of General Funds.
"Now, let me talk about how the budget has changed in the last ten years, although the pattern began about 30 years ago." The Provost showed that, adjusted for inflation, non-General Funds have grown 5 percent per year. Within this component, Restricted and Designated Funds have grown 8 percent per year above inflation for the last ten years. "That's an absolutely extraordinary growth rate!" he exclaimed. "And it's wonderful. It's good news. It's a sign that our Office of Development is doing a wonderful job. It's a sign that the Stanford Management Company is doing a wonderful job investing our endowment, and it's a sign that the faculty is doing a wonderful job generating income that goes into Restricted and Designated Funds. So that's really great news. Grants and Contracts and Auxiliaries have grown about 3% per year after inflation. These successes cause problems, however, because General Funds have grown only 2 percent per year above inflation.
"It causes problems because the increased Restricted and Designated Funds generate more activity at the University, bring additional people here requiring additional buildings to house them and their activities, additional utilities, and additional people in, for example, the Controller's Office to pay the payrolls. The activities funded by the increase in Restricted and Designated Funds impose all sorts of costs that must be paid for out of general funds."
Etchemendy then gave a specific example of this quandary, taken from one day in deliberations of the Budget Group, in which $3.3 million in incremental General Funds were requested for administrative support of activities funded by Restricted Funds. "But suppose we had funded all of this $3.3 million?" he asked. "What does that mean? Well, for example, we could have increased faculty salaries by 2% with $3.3 million. We could have increased staff salaries by 1.5% above what we're in fact increasing them. What would it cost to charge this $3.3 million to tuition, the main source of General Funds? It would create about a 1.5% additional increase in tuition over the 5.75% increase already in place." He then went on to describe in some detail how different kinds of activities impose costs on General Funds:
graduate students or postdoctoral fellows
o housing
o student services
o office/lab space
o maintenance utilities
o networking
o e-mail
o payroll processing
new faculty, staff or visitors
o space
o maintenance
o utilities
o computer support
o networking
o e-mail
o HR costs
o gift processing
o payroll processing
purchases
o purchasing costs
o accounts payable
o travel and reimbursement
o inventory management
research
o research administration
o compliance costs
o library collections
o space
program additions or expansion
o staff administrator
o faculty director
o TA funds
o library collection
o space
"The moral here," pointed out the Provost to those who hadn't yet figured it out for themselves, "There is no activity that does not impose some costs that must be paid out of General Funds. That doesn't mean these activities are bad. They're wonderful. It's great that we're bringing in this money. But it does impose these costs on General Funds.
"Which activities of the University actually pay a significant amount of their infrastructure costs? Auxiliaries cover their full costs. We calculate the costs for all the central services and so forth that the Auxiliaries are using, and charge those to them. So they pay the full costs of their infrastructure. Grants and Contracts do not pay their full infrastructure costs. We under-recover from the government. We currently have a 56% indirect cost rate. This generates about $180 million in General Funds that contributes to the infrastructure required to support that research. That's a good chunk of what it really costs to support the research, but not the entirety.
"How about Restricted and Designated Funds? Prior to the new policy, we had an infrastructure (or "space") charge of 6 percent. What did it generate? Well, in 2005, it generated a total of $7 million. That's an absolutely trivial contribution to the infrastructure costs of these activities. The new policy of an 8 percent ISC will generate $15 million into central General Funds, and about $35 million University-wide into the various schools and formula units.
"Why wasn't the old policy working? First of all, it contained all kinds of exceptions. For example, if you used it to support students or to support faculty salaries or in various different ways, the charge was waived. The charge was waived if the donor or the foundation asked for it to be waived. It was not charged if the funds were transferred into the school's operating budget and used there. The old policy set up all kinds of ways to game the system." Looking for every bit of help with their budgeting, the senators sat up and took notice. The Provost then pleaded, mea culpa, in a way that came across as fond memories. "When I became chair in my department, the first thing I did was to teach my administrator how to spend which money in which ways so as to avoid as many charges as she could. I made sure that I spent the dean's money first and saved the department gift funds for last. You know, all chairs do that. I'm not criticizing you. It's just awful!"
The Provost then described a number of types of "gaming" the ISC policy that include artful use of gift funds, creative transfers of funds, and, the worst kind, encouraging donors or foundations to ask in writing to have those costs waived for their gift or grant. Senators were pleased and relieved to hear that the Provost had never played that last gaming tactic!
What do other universities do? Penn charges a 20 percent ISC on expendable gift funds. Harvard charges up to 20 percent, though it varies by school. Yale charges 12 percent. Only Princeton, "which has more money than God!" asks for no infrastructure charge. It was noted later in the discussion that not all schools are forthright when approaching donors about the infrastructure charge they impose on gift funds.
In contrast, Stanford's 8 percent ISC is completely transparent to potential and actual donors. Etchemendy described some details about the ISC. "We charge 8% on expenditures from restricted and designated accounts. Two percent goes directly to the school. Six percent goes into central General Funds, which are then allocated back to the schools through the normal budgeting process. The formula schools get all 8 percent. Exceptions include endowed professorships, undergraduate research funds, and gifts or endowment that are earmarked for financial aid." He went on to point out that a department can apply for an exemption, but if it is granted, the department or individual faculty member must find an alternative source of the ISC.
The Provost finished his oration with compelling closing arguments. "Remember, the ISC is not a tax. It's used to pay the actual, real costs of funded activity. It's fair and significantly less than other institutions, and the charge helps, but it certainly doesn't solve the growing imbalance that we see between the growth rates of Restricted Funds and General Funds. Now, the most important thing to remember is that unless you think that other allocations of General Funds are overly generous, for example, faculty salaries, graduate aid, TA budgets, or staff salaries…or, unless you think that tuition is too low, then you should be happy to pay the infrastructure charge! So, have I succeeded?" The Senate erupted with both abundant applause and laughter.
During the discussion period, Professor Bruce Wooley and Provost Etchemendy talked back and forth about how endowed professorships are designated, and what represents and incremental professorship. The questions were not resolved entirely, and they agreed to talk off-line about them.
Professor Bender was looking into his crystal ball, "…and it tells me that this charge is likely to go up in the future, given everything you've been presenting. And I just wonder if you have any comment about my crystal ball." The Provost could say honestly that he thought the 8 percent ISC would have to be sufficient for the near future. "First of all, we feel that 8 percent, even though it doesn't cover the real costs, or even come close to it, is something that is not an upsetting number for donors. It's sort of like sales tax. We believe very firmly in being up-front with our donors and informing them of this. The other thing is that we're exploring other alternatives and trying to figure out other ways of generating monies to cover infrastructure costs or to provide additional sources of General funds. The main reason we've survived, the main savior, has been the fantastic investment performance. That and rental income from the Stanford Research Park are the only revenues going into General Funds that have grown significantly above inflation and have matched the growth rate of designated and restricted funds.
Professor Rush Rehm asked, "If someone gives a lot of money to the athletic department, are they charged the ISC?" Provost Etchemendy explained that if, for example, a gift comes for the football program, the donor pays the ISC. That 8 percent goes to the central athletic department administration which, in turn, can use it to support tennis, lacrosse, or to pay the university charge for electricity and other indirect costs.
At this point Chairman Roberts thanked the Provost, who was looking around for sincere and grateful smiles among the senators.
B. Committee on Libraries Annual Report (SenD#5809)
Chairman Roberts welcomed David Riggs, the chair of C-Lib, to present the high-lights of the annual report, adding that there were no items for Senate action in this report.
Professor Riggs began with discussion of budget issues. "We spent many of our meetings helping Mike Keller formulate his requests. And, in the end, as the report noted, we did get a lot less than we asked for. I just want to be clear, however, that this was not meant to set off alarm bells. It was a significantly larger increase that we asked for than in previous years amounting to $7.2 million on top of a $48 million budget. We knew we were asking for a lot. I think a lot of the requests for new funding reflected our belief that the time has come for Stanford to lay the foundation for the digital library and academic collections and services that will enable us to support what's coming to be known as e-scholarship, initiatives like the media preservation lab, the digital repository, and, of course, the Google project.
"In response to our requests, the University decided to take a more incremental approach. Nevertheless, we are finding that faculty increasingly wants materials in digitized formats. As examples of our investment in this technology, we have digitized 2.2 million pages of documents in support of Judy Goldstein's research on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, have digitized U.S. Senate documents from the '20s and '30s in support of David Kennedy's research on immigration, and we've invested heavily in Elizabeth Bernhardt's digital language lab so that it now includes teaching tools for Asian languages. I would say our success in these and other pilot endeavors has put us in an excellent position to compete for funds from grants.
"Again, I want to emphasize that this demand isn't going to go away. It's going to increase. I should also note that mass digitization is not going to replace printed books in the near or even the foreseeable future. The number of books being marketed in electronic form is still relatively trivial. Thus, the only way for us to obtain new materials that you need is to obtain them in printed format. We are experiencing an enormous increase in new information and new ways to format existing information. But there hasn't been any corresponding decrease in the supply of materials in physical format.
"To emphasize the positive side of this budget picture, we did get funding for the initial phase of the next generation of CourseWork, and a significant allotment of new phase funding for the library materials budget, also known as the book budget. During the past ten years, the library materials budget has been rising at an annual rate of about 3%. And we think that this formula is unrealistic. There's just an enormous disconnect between the formulaic rate of increase and the CPI in the publishing industry.
"Please bear in mind that our research collection at Stanford is only about 50 years old. It's wonderful to see, for example, the Initiative for International Studies bring in new faculty and programs in Korea, Middle East, East Asia, India. But we have to grow the collection and, as the Provost noted a few moments ago, and we also have to supply curators and bibliographers and technical processors to support their needs. I want to note especially the need for added staff, which tends not to show up on the budgetary radar."
Riggs continued his eloquent plea for better library funding. "SULAIR is going to try to get funding for some needs filled through the upcoming university Capital Campaign. I'm happy to discover about an hour ago that the Capital Campaign draft of Challenges now includes as its last item a paragraph on the libraries, with the note that the Stanford challenge will strengthen further Stanford's position as an innovator and educator in that area. I want to acknowledge the Campaign's recognition, however provisional, of SULAIR's contributions to innovation and education at Stanford, and to encourage the President to accept the paragraph as a permanent feature and to include SULAIR in the Campaign.
"On a more mundane level, I would just like to make a request to faculty. As you think about your research programs, please think holistically about your needs with respect to library collections, services, and academic computing, and contact the staff at Green about those needs. The library, as we all know, isn't supported by big donors. We don't have alumni! So we depend on your help in identifying prospective funding sources to pay for initiatives."
Professor Riggs gave some details about the cuts in serial subscriptions that has happened and will continue. "In the last 15 years, science and engineering resources were cut by over 1600 serials at a total cost of $2 million per annum. That's a 25% cut in expenditures. And we really are getting near the point where we can't cut more. We'll hear more about that later."
One problem for the library has been the "orphan" books, works that are out of print but still under copyright, but the authors, the owners of the copyright, are hard to find. Section 108 of the copyright law, which deals with the right of libraries to make copies for preservation, was written before the onset of digitization. We're working to get the law amended so that libraries and archives, including nonprofit educational institutions, can make use of certain presumptively orphaned works.
"Now, Grace Baysinger will present to you more about the serials crisis and scholarly publishing issues."
Ms. Baysinger came forth and presented material on PowerPoint. "I appreciate the opportunity to speak before you here. I was head of the science and engineering libraries for five and a half years, and then went back to being head of chemistry and chemical engineering. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm also chair of the American Chemical Society joint board council committee on Publications and chair of their Chemical and Engineering News editorial board.
"One misconception about serial subscriptions is that if journals become available online, the costs will go down. Not so. In many cases, they go up. An example is Science Online. On their website, UCSF has compared their online subscription to Science Online, which is $11,000, with 'everyday modern luxury goods'. We are at the bare bones level after cutting the science periodicals…we really cannot cut more without generating serious repercussions. From fiscal year 1999 to 2005, the science and engineering libraries have canceled 1.6 million titles, about 1200, or 25% of the subscriptions. And of those, 400,000 were duplicates, mostly between the SUL libraries and the coordinate libraries or Hopkins Marine Institute. At this point virtually no duplicates remain and all the low-use titles have been cancelled." She pointed out that Elsevier is the most costly publisher, followed by Wiley-Springer.
To help educate users, a Web page has been set up, called "Scholarly publishing and scholarly communications." The URL is http://library.stanford.edu/scholarly_com, and there's a link to this in the news area of the main library page. There are sections in it on what Stanford is doing, what you can do, what's happening in scholarly publishing generally, what's happening at other institutions, and contact information. Other areas that the Web site covers are some suggestions and guidelines on copyright. And there are some tools to help people evaluate journals. Choosing where to publish is one of the important everyday decisions.
"As many of you remember several years ago the Senate passed a resolution on the serials crisis. We've spent a lot of effort trying to make sure we spend our funds wisely. Another area that people are less familiar with is copyright. And I emphasize the importance of retaining some degree of intellectual property rights so that you can use materials in the course of everyday needs. So in discussing copyright with publishers, don't just automatically take what is given. If you possibly can, see what negotiating room there is. Consider how you need to use materials for your everyday work on campus. Larry Lessig's Creative Comments license has been very helpful I think in providing an alternative to the standard copyright. The General Counsel Office also provides advice on intellectual property."
The Senators were urged to use the multiple aids built into the web site. At this point, Chairman Roberts asked the Stanford Librarian, Michael Keller to come forth to present an update on the Google digitization project.
C. Google Digitization Project
https://www.stanford.edu/dept/facultysenate/2005_2006/reports/SenD5846_google_project.pdf
Mr. Keller, realizing that he had less time than he'd hoped to make his presentation, started at a fast pace. He asked the rhetorical question: "What would you do with an offer
To digitize every book in your library with no damage to the book
To return to you a digital copy for preservation and for other purposes, and
To present you and the world with a combined word index to millions of books???
We're taking that opportunity to provide much deeper intellectual access to the contents of our collections that we have been gathering intensively here for the last 50 years, but really since the founding of the institution. For background, I want you to realize that when we finished digitizing the card catalogue here in 1999 (you may not have noticed that) we got 50 percent more use of the collection after the digitization than we had experienced when we had begun the coversion process about 15 years earlier. 50 percent more use indicates to me that when we get word access, even to little bits of information about the collection, we will get a lot more use. In addition, HighWire has been a modeling ground for us for advanced features such as subtle searching, citation linking, and taxonomic indexing that we'd like to provide for the digital versions of the Stanford book collection. We've done a few surveys, and we have seen that scholars make good use of these new methods of searching for information and making use of information. It speeds their research. They report most favorably on these methods. And, of course, we see a constant demand here at Stanford for more digitization services. We have CourseWork coming online. We're linking CourseWork to the e-collections. You're able to assemble your e-reserve, and all other kinds of services are becoming integrated for both research and for teaching.
"What have we done so far on this project? About 200,000 books have been digitized. In the course of that, about 4,000 books have been identified that need preservation treatment. They're too brittle to turn over in the digitizing process. John Etchemendy is the CEO for the Google relationship. Especially with regard to this book project, we've had an ad hoc committee of the chairman of the Board of Trustees, Burt McMurtry, and trustee Walter Hewlett. They are good, careful advisors, and have spent a lot of time with us. I must take particular care to praise both Catherine Tierney, who's the Associate University Librarian for technical and access services; she's been the operations chief of this project. Lauren Schoenthaler, University Counsel, has been just fabulous in all the many legal aspects.
"What are we focusing on at present? We're digitizing books that are out of copyright, books that were published before 1923. We will turn then to books published between 1923 and 1964 for which copyrights were not renewed. Copyrights for books published between 1923 and 1964 had to have been renewed to have kept copyright protection to this day. Only 300,000 or so of those books out of several million, were renewed. So we have several targets."
He then peeled through a number of visuals of the Google Book Search that illustrate what will be available. In searching on the word "Stanford", for example, the first one that came up was a Bureau of Fisheries book by David Starr Jordan. On the page one could get the title page, the table of contents, the index, and even buy the book from a used bookseller. The entire text could be expressed on line because the copyright has lapsed. In contrast, when a book is chosen that contains copyrighted material, the program shows "snippets", brief paragraphs of interest and a guide of where to purchase the book.
"What," said Mr. Keller, "are our primary principles? First of all, we want to digitize every book in the Stanford Libraries, all nine million volumes." He went on to explain exactly what tasks the partner libraries in the Google project (University of Michigan, Harvard, New York Public Library, and the Bodleian at Oxford University) had taken on. Senators were pleasantly surprised to hear that within all of the partner libraries there was only a 40 percent overlap of content, and between any two partners, only 10-15 percent duplication. The Bodleian content was almost unique, with virtually all of its material in the public domain, much of it published before 1885.
Just warming up, and running smoothly, Keller described how the digitization process worked. "Every day, books get selected and taken to Google in Mountain View to their lab. The books are returned in about seven days. We've had a few books that patrons have requested; these come back in one day. Rarely is there damage to the books during digitalization. And by the way, our conservators have gone over to the Google lab and approved the method that they're using. I can't tell what you that method is because it's protected. We are fairly well assured that our books are not getting damaged. Mylar bindings used for some government documents are very bad bindings. They have long since become brittle. And a few torn pages is, well, a few torn pages. Once again, we've identified a bunch of books that we ought to preserve if we ever get the money to do it.
Keller then addressed the purposes of the Google project, and what the library wants to achieve once the digitization is complete. These purposes include preservation; enhanced searching and research tools such as subtle searching, taxonomic and associative searching, citation linking, alerts and recommendations, and improved navigation tools like Grokker. Digital books will also provide a test bed for research.
"Digitizing all the books will give us a digital record of those books to store in the Stanford repository in the 'virtual' bookshelf section. At some point we're going to make those books visible on campus. We have some other ideas for enhancing what Google already does. For example, just as you can search in the online catalog for authors, words, and phrases, we want to provide some subtle searching by category so you can select where you want to look with your key words. We also want to make use of the library subject headings and new taxonomies similar to those that we've built into HighWire to make it possible for you to search for ideas in books, not just the expressions. We also want to use this 'associative searching engine', which is a kind of statistical rendition of the relationship among words that allows you to search across languages and even across character sets. Pretty neat, right?!
"We want to do citation linking which is very big in HighWire. And we want to use the 'Info Tools' approach which allows you to highlight a word and go get a definition; highlight a name, go get a biography; highlight a place, go get a map. We'd like to provide you and your students with the words, so that when new books come into the collections you can match the contents of other books with content or subject in the new books. And we want to provide, as Amazon does, recommendations by categories. So if you, John, were to become interested in a book on 18th century opera in London and you wanted to know when new books came in on that subject, you'd be able to just set up an 'Alert' to be notified when they arrived.
"We think there are much better ways to navigate complicated information topographies than just getting a list of hits. In Google, the page ranking system provides you with a list of hits based on a secret formula, and it's good! But when you get 5,000 or 50,000, or five million hits, you have to go laboriously through page after page to find what may be really relevant to you. We hope to allow you to go very much more quickly using a visual navigator into the topics and into the books to see what may be useful.
"Finally, we want to provide these digitized books and that huge amount of text in many different languages and character sets as test beds for your research, whether it's in sociology, in linguistics, for better search engines… you name it. We think there's a lot that could be done with this huge file.
"If we do all nine million books, we'll end up with a file of about 1.5 petabytes in size. That's ten 10 to the 15th. It's a big number, a wonderful number!" said Mr. Keller finishing on a major chord, fortissimo.
The senators applauded, and were much impressed with what had happened, as well as what would happen, and moderately anxious about their own capabilities of navigating the new world of digitized material.
Questions and Discussion
In response to Professor Corn's question about access to the digitalized collection, Mr. Keller noted that, "Everyone in the world has access to the indexing that Google provides. Only the Stanford folks will have access to the special features we're going to try to build and to the digital books that come from the Stanford collection." Professor Corn followed up, "Can you sell that information at all to other schools?" Keller responded. "We can't sell the information. If it's a copyrighted work, we can't sell the information." Professor Corn was mildly disappointed. "I was just trying to make it a revenue center like the Department of Athletics." Keller admitted that he had not thought of selling tickets to the Libraries.
In response to a question about digitizing images, Mr. Keller answered, "It's not just text that we're interested in. There are images and tables and all the rest of it. There are some things I can't talk about. But we have great interest in making those available in such a way that you can make use of them as well. There are some tools that we've developed at HighWire that allow you to take an image and just hit a virtual button and drop that image down into a presentation manager or a course manager system. We think that can be done also to spreadsheets and the like."
Professor Bender said, "If the faculty, whether in the humanities or sciences, were to use all of this stuff, they need the kind of support that's possible through the academic computing part of the whole library operation. And I just wondered if you could comment on how you and John and others intend to bring about that kind of support that will allow us all to be literate, have the staff, and all of the resources that are needed to mobilize this material for our use?"
The answer, said Keller, was, "We will build the online tools that make it easy for you to use a browser and make it easy for to you do the next steps. You already know how to use CourseWork. The central computing lab staff will be helpful by offering training sessions to you, and training sessions for the TAs and undergraduate students. I have to say, though, the undergraduates and the TAs go through those sessions and rip right through them. And they will help you, I think." The senators laughed self-consciously, realizing the computer facility gap that exists between them and their students.
Provost Etchemendy had the last words. "I just wanted to say that this is an incredible project. If you think about it, if there weren't indexing and searching, the Web would not be what the Web is today. And now think about the bulk of human knowledge is out there in books for which there is no search engine. This is going to make searching possible. It just boggles the mind.
"I also want to echo your words that Lauren and Catherine have done a wonderful job. But Mike, you have done a wonderful job too! The vision for this partly comes from Google and the people at Google, but, really, a lot of it comes from you, Mike Keller. You have made sure that the project is done the right way. We should be very proud of our University Librarian for doing this!"
There was abundant applause for Mr. Keller and his report. He has joined a tiny group of presenters to receive an ovation twice in the same Senate meeting.
VI. Old Business, New Business and AdjournmentWith no further discussion, old business, or new business, the Senate adjourned to executive session at 4:43 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Edward D. Harris, Jr. M.D.Academic Secretary to the University