October 21, 2025 – Libraries Committee – Minutes

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Time: Tuesday at 1:00 p.m.
Location: Microsoft Teams

Present: Rachel Baum – ULC Chair, Anne Bonds, Michael Doylen – Library Director, Jenny Hutton, Maura Lucking, Jesse Malmed, Victoria Moerchen, William Musinski, Ermitte Saint Jacques, Analise Sandoval, and Lance Weinhardt

Excused: Martha Carlin and Shevaun Watson

Guest: Chris Doll, Library Associate Director for Collection and Resource Management

  1. Baum called the meeting to order at 1:01 p.m.
  2. Approval of September 17, 2025, meeting minutes
    The minutes of September 17, 2025, meeting were approved by unanimous consent.
  3. Director’s report
    1. General updates
      “Scholarly Publishing with Springer Nature” workshop will be held on October 23 from 12 noon to 2 p.m. in the 4th floor conference center of the Golda Meir Library. Representatives from Springer Nature will talk about their “read & publish” agreement with UWM and faculty will discuss their experiences publishing with Springer.

      On October 30, Gabriela Nagy, UWM assistant professor of psychology, will present the 2025 Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture. The title of her talk is “Resilience, Resistance, and Rhetoric:  What Latino/a Immigrants Teach Us About Health and Humanity.”

      Items from Special Collections are currently on loan to the UWM Mathis Art Gallery for the exhibition “Rebellious Stripes: The Flag in Activist Art” and will be on display November 6-December 12.
    2. Staff/budget
      Doylen shared information about the Libraries’ plan to manage the 5% budget cut (-$360,883) in FY26, plus the usual 6% increase in collection costs ($180,000). Doylen also discussed the impact of year-over-year budget cuts on library collections, services, and staffing levels. He asked committee members to share this information with their faculty.
  1. Read & publish agreements
    Chris Doll, Library Associate Director for Collection and Resource Management, reported on the Libraries’ read & publish agreements. These are contracts between the library and a publisher that bundle the costs for reading journal content and publishing articles open access. This model removes the immediate cost burden for authors who can publish their research in open access journals without paying individual Article Processing Charges (APCs). Over the past 4 years, UWM authors have saved $153,000 in APCs through these agreements. ULC discussed their publishing experiences.
  2. The meeting was adjourned at 1:56 p.m.