Correction Appended

In the wake of substantial budget cuts for Cornell’s libraries, the University signed a deal this past weekend to sell a 95,000 volume duplicative collection in Uris Library to Tsinghua University in Beijing, according to Anne Kenney, University librarian for the Carl A. Kroch Library.

Cornell has been collaborating with Tsinghua on research projects, faculty exchanges and student work and study options for the past decade. In 2004, former Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman '77 visited Tsinghua to initiate a “strategic partnership,” which laid the groundwork for future cooperation in the fields of engineering and physical sciences, according to the Cornell website.

Yesterday the Tompkins County Public Library’s Board of Trustees confirmed Susan Currie as the new library director, despite objections of the UAW Local 2300, the union representing the library staff. Currie, who served for the past year as a member of the library’s Board of Trustees, generated a strong backlash from the union, who felt that her position on the board of trustees while they were considering her for the directorship tainted the nomination process.

Open access — the free availability and use of library materials online — took another step forward this month when the Cornell University Library dropped restrictions on the reproduction of public domain items from its collections.

The Library no longer requires users to secure permission or pay any accompanying permissions fees to reproduce or publish material from its digital collections. This announcement, which comes amidst plans by the Cornell Library Board to establish a fund to support open access publishing, has been eagerly received by many in the online community.

According to a press statement, “the Library, as the producer of digital reproductions made from its collections, has in the past licensed the use of those reproductions.”

To the Editor:

Re: “Library Website Hacking Arouses Confusion for Site Visitors,” News, April 8.

Yesterday’s Sun ran piece on the Library website being hacked, “Library Website Hacking Arouses Confusion for Site Visitors.” I’d like to provide you with an update on this incident.

Note: The author of this column is not an economist, a financier, an expert on how universities spend money or even majoring in a field related to anything presented in the following work. Even worse, he’s a physics major, which means people like him caused the recent financial debacle and thus should be the VERY LAST person you should take advice from. To compensate for this lack of expertise, he has attempted to include academic footnotes to make him sound smarter1.

This month, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill that would make the National Institutes of Health public access policy permanent, signaling a move towards greater transparency in academia. Under this policy, NIH-funded research, including work by Cornell faculty, will be publicly avaliable. However, another bill introduced in Congress last month seeks to reverse this public access policy and has prompted Cornell’s librarians to take action.

Since last April, the NIH required final, peer-reviewed manuscripts arising from research it funded to be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.

To the Editor:

Re: “A Eulogy to the Physical Sciences Library,” Opinion, March 26

The Physical Sciences Library in Clark Hall will close at the end of 2009. The current budget climate necessitated this decision, and although the physical facility is shutting its doors, the library’s presence will remain as a portal for scholarly resources, a virtual collection and a service staffed by research specialists.

Einstein was a clever guy, who asked many clever questions regarding life, the universe and everything. What would it be like to ride alongside a light wave? What is the difference between the force of gravity and the force of acceleration? But for me, the first question I think of when someone mentions Einstein is: “Haben sie ihre hände gewaschen?”

Have you washed your hands? That question, along with a black-and-white portrait of Albert himself, looking stern and paternal, greets me each day when I leave the men’s bathroom in the Edna McConnell Clark Physical Sciences Library, on the second floor of Clark Hall of Science.

The Physical Sciences Library in Clark Hall — like Tower Café and the Knight Visual Resources Facility before it — has fallen prey to the University-wide budget cuts in reaction to the current financial crisis.

According to a recent announcement on the Cornell Library’s website, “Janet McCue [associate University librarian for teaching, research, outreach and learning services] met with PSL staff on Wednesday to let them know that their library will be closing at the end of 2009.”