ANNUAL REPORT
             US & BRITISH HISTORY/WOMEN'S STUDIES CONSORTIA
                              1998/99
     
     
I. INTRODUCTION
     
The main accomplishments of 1998/99 include:
     
        a) Expansion of the scope of the consortia to include British
history and a change of our       official name to "US & British 
History/Women's Studies Consortia."
        b) Completion of CDL surveys for US history and women's studies. 
        c) Negotiation of a systemwide license agreement for Contemporary
Women's Issues.
     
I. MEMBERSHIP
     
With  British history being added to the Consortia scope,  three new 
members  joined the  Consortia: Ronnie Coates (SD), Sylvelin Edgerton, 
(SB), and Beth Remak-Honnef, (SC). Vicki Williamson, replaced Sam Dunlap 
as women's studies selector from San Diego and  Jane Kimball retired from 
her position at Davis and attended her last consortia mtg in June. Jane 
has been a consortia member since its inception and greatly contributed to 
its leadership and various projects and activities. A special celebration 
was held for her. Tomas Jaehn resigned from his position at Stanford in 
May so presently there is no Stanford representation.
     
II. PROJECTS AND ACTIVITIES    
     
        1. Consortia web page, reflector and archives 
     
        New material added to the web page this year included the CDL
surveys for history and women's studies.  Links were also made to several 
CDL documents on shared collections.             The Consortia listserv 
was transferred from Davis to San Diego with the new address as: 
consort@gort.ucsd.edu.  Our paper archive resides at Davis and is being 
regularly updated..
     
        2. Journal Lists
     
        Journal lists for both US history and women's studies were revised
and distributed at the June meeting. A major issue arose concerning 
Stanford's commitment to the cooperative agreements now that they are no 
longer a member of CDC.  This could greatly impact our journal agreements 
as Stanford is the only holding library for several journals. A letter is 
to be sent to the  CDC Chair to clarify their role. It was suggested that 
the lists be moved into a database for easier manipulation and that 
electronic access to titles be noted.  A core list of British history 
journals is now being developed with the expectation that another 
cooperative journal agreement will be the  result.
     
        3. Microform lists
        This year most campuses had extra collections funds and many
selectors used the money to acquire expensive microform sets. It was 
decided for informational purposes that a list of microform purchases by 
individual campuses  be compiled each year and forwarded to the consortial 
reflector. Women's studies selectors also agreed to maintain a list of 
microform titles  for potential purchase.
     
        4. CDL projects
        Much of the discussion and activity of the consortia this year was
focused on CDL issues and projects. In the Fall, UC selector groups were 
requested by JSCSC to identify electronic resources for the CDL.  These 
were to include commercially available databases that CDL  might license, 
freely available web resources, and UC digital resources. Members 
solicited input from faculty, students, and staff and submitted 
suggestions to survey coordinators who compiled the reports. Selector 
groups were asked to prioritize the databases and from these various lists 
JSC would determine the first tier databases for licensing by CDL.  At the 
December meeting  members expressed concern about the lack of knowledge of 
the decisionmaking process within JSC and CDL and questioned whether 
smaller and more narrowly focused databases like some of the women's 
studies titles might have much chance for selection when competing against 
larger more interdisciplinary databases.  Later when JSC announced the 
first group of databases that  selected for licensing and none of the 
women's studies priorities were on the list, the Women's Studies Survey 
Coordinator took the initiative and volunteered to negotiate a license 
agreement for Contemporary Women's Issues with access by all campuses. 
This was accomplished by the June meeting though there was a question 
whether CDL would commit any co-investment funds. 
     
Another area of concern was the beta version of the CDL Directory of 
Collections and Services which members reviewed and extensively discussed. 
The vocabulary lists developed by CDL staff seemed particularly illogical 
and incomplete for many areas of humanities and social sciences. The group 
felt that there was inadequate input from selector groups and that in the 
future more effort should be made to communicate with subject specialists. 
To that end, the Consortia requested that CDL establish a listserv of the 
chairs of selector groups that would facilitate discussion and input not 
only with CDL but among bibliographers as well. This was later set up as 
libchair-l@listserv.ucop.edu.           
     
Several of our members have been actively involved in CDL initiatives both 
inside and outside the consortia. Some have served as survey coordinators 
for other subject fields while others have been newly appointed as 
Resource Liaisons. One member, Cindy Shelton, serves on the JSC and has 
provided the group with detailed reports of their discussions and plans 
related to building the digital library.
     
        5. California Feminist Presses Project 
        Jacquelyn Marie continues to serve as coordinator for the project.
There is an ongoing  effort to identify new presses to add to the project 
and to encourage existing presses to donate their archives . This Spring 
Bancroft acquired the archives of Kelsey St. Press and Volcano Press. 
Eventually, finding aids should be created for these archives and the 
materials digitized as a part of the Online Archive of California.
     
Report submitted by Beth Sibley, 1998/99 Chair 
7/19/99