A new fee of $25 per student per semester to help the Parks Library offer services to students was discussed in an open forum in the Parks Library on Wednesday.

The fee by the University Library Committee would raise $1.5 million for the library to use per semester. It could be used to lengthen hours, extend or create services, buy textbooks or build specific group project rooms.

“This fee would help the library to keep doing what it needs to be doing to benefit the students,” said Olivia Madison, dean of Parks Library.

David Hopper, professor of veterinary diagnostic and production animal medicine and chairman of the University Library Committee, said the fee is based on inflation from the cost of textbooks and upkeep of professional journals, which has been rising by 10 percent a year.

“Those materials [texts and journals] are inflating, the budget is decreasing, and that is where you get hit,” Hopper said. “The rate of decline of resources is growing faster per year. The fat [from the budget] is gone, if there ever was any.”

The proposal resolution, which has undergone two meetings by the Government of the Student Body, has been tabled pending student reaction to a survey that has been sent out to one-

quarter of ISU undergraduate and graduate students.

“We must have a majority of the students agreeing to the fee before the GSB will authorize it,” Madison said.

Depending on the results from this survey, the proposed fee would go on to be decided with formal action by the Special Fees and Tuition Committee. If the committee finds it to be of sound purpose, then it will go to ISU President Gregory Geoffroy, who will only sign it if there is clear student support.

From there, it will go on to be ratified by the Iowa Board of Regents. If all of this takes place, then the fee could be put into effect in fall 2008.

If the new fee is ratified by GSB, the Graduate and Professional Student Senate and the Board of Regents would first create a 50-50 student and faculty committee called the New Student Library Fee Advisory Committee, which would take proposals on fee uses from students and faculty.

The proposals would help the NSLAC and the University Library Committee to know what services and texts are needed by the students or faculty, and to allocate the funds appropriately.

Mitchell Hayek, senior in public service and administration in agriculture and GSB senator, attended the open forum and said he was in favor of the fee.

“I think it is strongly what we need and I personally will be voting for it [again],” Hayek said.