Wednesday, April 26, 2006
3:00 – 4:30 pm
GSLIS Room 126
Paula Kaufman, presiding
No changes. Tina Chrzastowski made the motion to accept the minutes and Mary Laskowski seconded. Passed without discussion.
Visiting academic librarians from universities in Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda (Barbara Ford and Susan Schnuer) 10 minutes
Barbara Ford passed out a list of names and addresses for 16 visiting librarians. They are here for April and May. They introduced themselves. (see list for full names and positions they hold) Sue asked for all librarians who will be working with these individuals to stand up. Barbara said it took a library to raise a librarian. Barbara also mentioned that she had their schedules for those librarians interested in talking with our guests more during their visit.
There was no new budget information because State law-makers had not met their legislative deadline. See the News Gazette for further information.
Strategic planning documents have been received by most colleges. Paula said she would pull the highlights from these documents and share them with the staff.
The first Deans Meeting with the new Provost occurred last week. Deans will be much more involved in the University’s administrative decision process than they have been in the past. They will be meeting every other week with a different dean facilitating each meeting. The Chancellor has asked the Provost and Deans to consider restructuring how budgets are developed for the University. A revised structure must be delivered by December 2006. The Faculty Excellence Program also will be continued under the new Provost.
Paula talked with the new Provost about the Library and its budget. She also discussed a revised collections development policy that will enable the library to remove duplicate items. The Provost has asked the Library to delay the implementation of this policy until she has had more time to reflect on its impact to the University.
Katie Newman asked about the recent CDC meeting and the possibility Library units may have to give some money back (3%) to the University. Paula said it was unclear whether the Library will be asked to do this. Paula will meet with the Provost on May 23 rd to talk about this situation. More information to follow. Paula said the Provost sees the value of continued development of the Library.
(See EC minutes (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/committee/exec) for this report)
Lisa Hinchliffe asked about the June 1 deadline for the Strategic Priorities Document. Lynn Rudasill said they have a final form that will go to EC this coming Monday. It will articulate criteria for making decisions on which positions will be filled in the Library.
Library Gaming Initiative (Karen Schmidt, David Ward, Chris Hamb and Lisa Hinchliffe) 15 minutes
Karen said gaming was a universal language. She said that early work on this preservation and documentation effort was a daunting task. Gaming is a cultural artifact that illustrates how students from today’s generation network and communicate with one another. This is particularly true for the development of game strategy manuals.
Lisa talked about the Second Life environment and its relationship with library research and instruction.
David talked about what the Library is collecting. He talked about the Second Life environments and its impact on real business environments. He emphasized that today’s games can have an educational component that was not anticipated during early game development. Much more research is being done in this area. The Library is trying to develop a research collection related to gaming. There are other public and academic libraries doing similar things. The criteria for game selection is based on best seller status. In addition the Library is looking at vintage games as another area for collection development. Chris and David are creating a “gaming night” that will be open to the public and students, and will welcome them to the Library’s new collection. This event will help Library staff better understand how students use games as tools for learning. David will develop a statistical analysis from these gaming events to identify who uses and plays games. He mentioned that most gamers are much older than people believed play these types of games.
Lisa mentioned gaming is a larger business than the movie industry.
Jo Kibbee asked about stats for people who play games during the day while at work. David was unable to answer this question.
Sue Searing asked about the possibility of the Library licensing new games. David said this was a good question. A new model, MMOG, was being developed, but it was not Library friendly.
Second Life models are web-based according Lisa. Then Francis Harris talked about her second life gaming experience.
Scott Schwartz asked about the mission or purpose of this collection. It was said that this collection will eventually become a primary information source for future study. Karen said that there is still much work to be done with this area. More information to follow.
Federated Searching Team (Peggy Steele) 10 minutes (see http://www.library.uiuc.edu/committee/faculty_meeting/meeting2005-2006.html)
Peggy explained FEDs was a federated search portal mechanism, utilizing “ Webfeat,” that was developed for undergraduate students. A usability study of Webfeat was conducted for nearly a year and it was determined that the University could not use Webfeat strategy as a search strategy because of its incompatible user interfaces and translators. A few months ago FEDS switched to “Search Assistant” that was developed by Bill Mischo. Other members of FEDS have been conducting a usability study of Search Assistant for the past couple of months and their study suggests it is easier to use. FEDs has decided to do a “soft rollout” of Search Assistant with a link off the Library web gateway and the Undergraduate website. There will be no advertising of this tool, but there will be some training sessions on May 29 and June 9. More information to follow. Search Assistant will be available this summer to help FEDs gather statistical information on how this tool is used. Assuming everything goes well over the summer it is very likely Search Assistant will remain available in the fall. It is unclear how and who will maintain this tool after the summer, but FEDs will create a report of their findings and submit it to CAP. Once this report is completed FEDS will disband. Peggy emphasized that this was a pilot project for federated searching.
Katie Newman asked if staff will be able to see the new tool before the training sessions. Peggy said it was unclear at this time because development and implementation were so fluid. She reminded people that nothing was carved in stone related to the databases that will be available.
Lisa Hinchliffe said they do not have a stable URL for this tool.
Because Search Assistant was developed by Bill Mischo the Library will need careful thought regarding how to proceed if it decides to move forward with the production of this tool.
David Ward said they are thinking of different ways to effectively utilize this type of federated search tool and incorporate it into the Library website redesign.
Open Access Issues (Karen Schmidt and Katie Newman) 10 minutes
Karen gave an overview of the issues associated with open access publication and the Library’s decision not to renew its subscription to the BioMed Central database. BioMed Central enables individuals to publish articles at a cost and make them openly accessible to the public. The Library submitted four articles and had two published. Karen talked with Paula Kaufman and Interim Provost Jesse Delia about the cost of open access publishing and asked if the library should be held accountable for these fees. The question was whether this was a good use of Library resources. If there was a “run” on this type of publication within the University the cost to the Library would be prohibitive. Katie mentioned that was another supporting membership model which would provide a 15% discount for these types of publications. She said that it was important for us to get information out to the public access publication. Katie said they are looking at other viable publication models for the Library. SPARC is a similar publication model utilized by the Library. There are many other ways to make articles available through Open Access Publication. If the Library wants to promote the concept of Open Access Publication it needs to maintain its associations with these types of publication databases.
Tim Cole talked about the problems that have been encountered with some American and European open access journals. BioMed Central may be a bad model for us to use to evaluate open access models.
Paula briefly explained how SPARK was developed and that its focus changed to become exclusively an open access publication database.
Kathleen Kluegel asked if NIH was the driving force behind Open Access Publication. Paula said Open Access was offered as a viable model for scholarly communication. However at this point, until publication requirements change for tenure, the push is toward a truly open access publication system is questionable.
Library Faculty By-laws Amendment (Al Kagan and Vernon Burton) 30 minutes ( see http://www.library.uiuc.edu/committee/faculty_meeting/meeting2005-2006.html)
Al introduced Vernon to the faculty.
Vernon talked briefly about the principles of shared governance for higher education. He said it has been an important element of this country’s system of higher education and we now need to rethink the concept of shared faculty and administrative governance for moving academic institutions into the future. Maintaining the checks and balances is crucial to the academy of this country, especially as institutions move toward a more corporate administrative model.
Tim Cole said that one issue we struggle with was the fact that we must run a responsive library operation. We have parallel structures for management. How do we create a more nimble governance decision-making structure for the library? Vernon said Canadian models for shared-governance are the most typically utilized by US institutions. Organizations have to be flexible, but current shared governance models used today can make this difficult to achieve.
Bob Burger asked if Vernon could define the domain of shared governance. Vernon said shared governance enables faculty to have an influence in the administrative decision making process. He said that he was unaware of what domain the Library would want to pursue. However he warned if faculty don’t buy into a single model of governance for the Library it would be difficult to define such a domain/community for the Library.
Alvan Bregman remarked that he was confused. He said he thought the University already utilized a shared governance model. Vernon gave the example of the Faculty Senate’s decision to retire the Chief and the University Administration deciding not to follow this recommendation. This was just one example of the lack of effective shared governance at the University. Alvan said he continued to be confused how the Library and University is currently governed and how faculty could become more involved in university governance.
Lisa Hinchliffe asked what outcome Vernon was seeking from his time with the Library faculty. Vernon said he came here as a favor to Al.
Kathleen Kluegel asked how the University administration was hearing or ignoring the Faculty Senate and how this did or did not represent shared governance. She said that she felt that she’s indirectly part of shared governance. Vernon said that if faculty felt this way then we have a form of shared governance.
Alvan asked if there was a model that we could follow. Vernon said that there are many models that work or do not work.
The discussion ended abruptly and Al introduced his revisions to the Library Bylaws. He said that over the past couple of years there have been major disagreements over issues of shared governance.
Mary Stuart asked Al to summarize the process for the faculty. He provided a brief description similar to the one provided by Vernon.
Bob Burger asked for the reason for the revision of section 6 of the Library Bylaws. Al said that in the past “advice” meant a vote from the faculty however this has not always been the case when some administrative decisions have been made in the past. This suggested revision was meant to reinforce this concept.
Bob Burger suggested that the Bylaws Committee should consider these revisions and their impact on the intent of the current Bylaws.
Bill Maher said that the words “advice” and “vote” were intentionally left in the Bylaws for a specific reason, especially when decisions affect the entire structure of a unit within the Library. A negative vote by a particular Library unit would not prevent the forwarding of a proposal. He affirmed the need to make this clear in the Bylaws.
Mary Stuart voiced a concern regarding section 6 over-reaching the governance of the Library. Al said his revision was designed to clarify what already exists.
Mary Stuart asked if we’re codifying the method of our governance within the Library.
Nancy O’Brien said that was important to recognize that Divisions are administrative units and not separate Departments.
Bill Maher said Library Divisions are equal to Departments in other schools within the University. We are free in our own bylaws to do what we want as long as they aren’t against the statutes of the University.
Kathleen Kluegel asked if there was a motion on the floor. Al said no. She said section 5 of the proposed revision doesn’t share the intent of the rest of bylaw revision. She suggested the ByLaws Committee work on refining the language of this proposed revision.
Al Kagan moved to send these revisions to the ByLaws Committee. Bob Burger seconded
Paula asked for a voice vote. This failed so she took a hand vote. The motion carried.
An open house, May 12 from 2:30 until 4:30, for Natural History Survey at their new location in Research Park was mentioned to the group.
Meeting concluded at 4:48
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