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Faculty Meeting Minutes September 21, 2011

MINUTES

of the

LIBRARY FACULTY MEETING

 

Date: September 21, 2011

Location: 126 GSLIS

Time: 3pm – 4:30pm

Call to Order

 

Standing Items:

Adoption of the Agenda

The Agenda was adopted after the Parliamentarian ruled that a motion to strike the advisory vote regarding the ORR was out of order.

Approval of Minutes  

The Minutes from the July 20th meeting were approved.

Introductions  

Pat Allen introduced Sara Williams, the new Life Sciences Data Services Librarian. Sarah comes to us from Illinois State University.

            Report of the University Librarian

Paula and Rod Allen explained how we were asked to set aside money from FY11 and now some of that money, $175,000, has been released for spending down this year. If you have ideas for spending this money please submit your ideas to Paula as soon as possible as the money cannot carry over into the next fiscal year.

 

Paula briefly reviewed the lawsuit brought against the HathiTrust and five other universities by the Authors Guild regarding orphan works. The University of Illinois was considering signing onto the orphan works project but has taken a step back for the moment in light of the litigation. The two main issues appear to be: 1. Universities have no authority to declare items as orphan works. 2. the Google book scanning project violates the fair use provisions of copyright law. Paula encouraged us to look at the HathiTrust website and watch developments regarding its Constitutional Convention to be held in Washington D.C. October 8-10, 2011. The governance structuring proposal and proposal to plan for a distributed print monograph storage system may be the most contentious issues facing the HathiTrust membership.

 

            Executive Committee Discussion Items

 

  1. A.                 Managing Job Searches – Scott Walter and David Ward

Background

The library currently has a large number of searches getting underway and anticipates more retirements of faculty and staff by July due to changes in SURS. This anticipated influx of new people places a strain on the library infrastructure both in terms of conducting the searches and acclimating new faculty to the library. We anticipate more open positions as people retire in the upcoming year and we are trying to devise a way to get as many open positions filled as quickly as possible so as to avoid gaps in services arising from these openings.

 

Discussion Questions

  1. How can we move searches forward in a timely manner?
  2. What strategies would help with bridging the gap in units where multiple open positions exist?
  3. What is the best way to use visiting positions vs tenure track positions?
  4. How can we successfully mentor all of the new faculty who will be joining us?

 

(Comments by JoAnn Jacoby, Beth Sandore, Scott Walter, Mary Laskowski, Barbara Ford)

 

Possible things to do:

  1.  Create a more agile approach to prioritizing the filling of positions in the academic pool.
  2. Initiate searches in a more proactive way, well in advance of someone’s departure.
  3. Think about replacement strategies that are not a one to one replacement of existing positions. More positions need to be created that work across divisions and fill emerging needs that cross many departments within the Library.
  4. Consider ways to provide better mentoring to new faculty as more senior faculty retire. Perhaps the new mentoring model being proposed to replace the PRC may help to better support new faculty.
  5. Look at the hidden skill sets of all our employees to see where they may be able to fill in during a transition period.
  6. Routinely scan job ads. This can be a good way to learn how other institutions are describing the kinds of work librarians are doing. It can also help us keep a more broad view when creating job descriptions or envisioning new ways of working.

 

  1. B.                 Distinctions in Expectations and Responsibilities between Senior Library Specialist, Library Operations Associate, Academic Professional, and Library Faculty Positions – David Ward

Background

EC has revised the earlier document we distributed in early September. http://www.library.illinois.edu/committee/exec/supplement/s2011-2012/PositionClassification.html

 

One of the primary goals of this document is to clarify to campus the ways in which our faculty function as faculty, in comparison with APs and some of the higher end civil service positions. Additionally, the document serves to articulate the reporting structure of the library, both within faculty reporting lines, and also between faculty and other positions.

 

Discussion Questions

  1. What are ways to improve the document to clearly articulate these points?
  2. What are other faculty-specific issues that the document needs to speak to?

(Comments from Beth Sheehan, Bill Maher, Karen Hogenboom, Bill Maher, Scott Walter)

 

We may want to look at AP staff vs Civil Service staff job descriptions to see what people actually do. Travel support for AP positions needs to be noted in our document. We need to indicate the clear differences between faculty and AP positions. Since both may do research, the way to clarify the distinctions may be in the shared governance expectation of librarians.

 

Old Business:

(none)

 

New Business:

 

Dismantling the ORR – Tom Teper and Beth Sandore

 

Background

The decision to begin moving ahead more with the replacement of the ORR was made from recommendations by CAPT with the understanding that we were soon going to be dealing with a service for which we no longer had support. Some of the background that is important to know:

 

Talk about replacing the ORR first occurred in 2007 and then again 2009. We have since lost all staff that had the capabilities to support the ORR. CAPT discussed this in spring 2011. They concluded that we had 2 options. 1) Hope ORR doesn’t break. 2) Hope ORR doesn’t break while we start to replace it. CAPT recommended option 2. In early summer, we sent a message to Library Faculty asking for feedback. The overwhelming response was in favor of trying to implement a more robust service via A to Z Discover list. When the decision was made, there were a couple other facts in our mind. At the time, the ORR holdings were very out of date, missing the back-file purchases in the last several years. For example, the ORR currently is only listing 32,000 books of the over 500,000 books the Library has access to through Vufind and EasySearch. We’re using SFX, A to Z, we’ve migrated A&I Index into SFX, we have populated e-journals and databases to either Voyager or SFX database as quickly as we can. We’ve held weekly meetings to talk about what progress we are making and what we can do next. The plan is not to replace ORR with one thing just like it but to use a combination of several tools that will offer even more functionality all together.

  

Discussion Questions

  1. What are all of our options for replacing the ORR?
  2. What are the short and long-term plans for replacement of the ORR  and all its core   functionality and when can we expect final implementation of the SFX product?
  3. Can the ORR be maintained until the SFX product is modified so that it replaces the ORR and all its core functionality?
  4. If the ORR must be dismantled after the current semester, what can we do to minimize the impact?
  5. What are the most important functionalities of the ORR system members of the faculty think should be preserved for the long-term?
  6. How can we make sure faculty  members are more fully included in future major IT decision-making processes that may have a broad impact on the University Community?

 

(Comments provided by JoAnn Jacoby, Bill Mischo, Lynne Rudasill, Karen Hogenboom, Al Kagan)

 

Advisory vote Discussion:

Faculty need more clear upfront indication of when an advisory vote may be on the agenda. The precise language of an advisory vote would be better composed after a discussion and not just drafted and included on the agenda by the Agenda Committee prior to a faculty meeting. The language of the advisory vote put forth prior to the meeting was not helpful or clearly crafted. The Agenda Committee might put something up for an advisory vote if it’s more cut and dried but something like an advisory vote on whether or not to dismantle the ORR should come from the floor during a faculty meeting. Perhaps a more clear forewarning that a vote is coming up during a meeting should be sent to the faculty.

 

A motion to strike the advisory vote from the agenda was put forth and approved.


A motion to extend discussion about the ORR for 15 minutes was put forth and approved.

 

Further Discussion:

There is no intention to dismantle the ORR in its entirety before there is a replacement solution in place. One of the problems with how the replacement of the ORR is happening is that we just don’t know how to get things done, how to create guides in the current environment and whether or not the final solution will be sensitive to things like diacritical marks. Another problem is the loss of subject access and the lack of clear communication about what functionality the new systems will and will not have. Beth Sandore suggested further meetings about the ORR to be open to everyone.

 

Ad Hoc Items:

None  

 

Announcements

 

Adjournment

 

4:50pm