Library Office Notes

Library Faculty Meeting Minutes
June 9, 2000

Paula Kaufman, University Librarian, presiding.

1.  Announcements (Paula Kaufman)

Bob Burger introduced our newest faculty member, Janice Pilch, who is at the Slavic and East European Library. 

John Littlewood will be retiring at the end of June, although he will continue to volunteer to work on collection development for gay and lesbian materials.  He will be based in the Education and Social Sciences Library.

Paula Kaufman reported that there is not much information available about the budget.   We will not receive as much as our earlier expectations suggested.  The $1mil temporary money has been made permanent.  We have also received a 5% increase on the state portion of our collections budget and will receive an additional $1mil, half in recurring money and half in temporary money that will eventually become permanent.   We also received funding for a multicultural librarian.  Final decisions about individual projects have not been made to date.

2.  The minutes of the May 19 meeting were approved as read.

3.  EC report (Bill Maher)

The EC met twice since the last faculty meeting.  They discussed requests for committee assignments, reviewed the Committee Handbook, and recommended external evaluators for tenure cases.  The second meeting dealt with the budget, and the EC discussed the need for ongoing faculty and staff input into the budget process between the time the budget is sent forward in the winter and the time that the final decisions are made in the spring, since situations may change during that period.

4.  UIUC Library Policy on the Management of Materials in Transit (Bart Clark and Karen Schmidt)

This policy, which was approved by the Administrative Council earlier this year, was brought up at the faculty meeting to make sure that faculty were aware of the policy.   Karen Schmidt discussed the need for the policy dealing with library materials taken off campus, for reasons such as conservation or exhibits.  The Business Office should be contacted whenever materials of value are taken off campus.  This does not refer to Interlibrary Loan, but does include items that are on deposit at the library but not owned by the University Library (such as documents on deposit at the Archives).

Bart Clark then spoke about general issues dealing with inventoried items.  The policy on materials is part of the overall state inventory code.  Rob Hildreth in the Business Office is in charge of the Library's inventory and should be contacted whenever inventoried objects (furniture, computers, etc.) are moved, even just to another room.

5.  Summer Meeting Moratorium (Paula Kaufman)

The faculty agreed that committee chairs should be urged to hold as few committee meetings during the summer as possible.  Some meetings will be necessary, but should be kept to a minimum.

6.  Discussion of Organizational Issues (Paula Kaufman)

Paula Kaufman has been hearing about organizational issues since coming here.   Issues relating to our organization have been raised at the Admin Council Retreat and through the sub-committee organized at the retreat, but no consensus was reached.   Kaufman wished to have a further discussion of issues and problems relating to the organizational structure.

As an example, Kaufman mentioned that when we hire a new unit head, the person is shown his/her desk and left alone.  There is no structure for mentoring.  Division coordinators do not feel empowered to intervene, though they feel that they can assist.   The need for a formal program teaching the new person about budget management and other activities was mentioned.  Other faculty felt that others should not encroach on the unit head.  Units vary, and the proper people for mentoring may be the coordinator or the library advisory committee.  Kaufman pointed out that all unit heads are not equally capable, and intervention may be necessary.

The role of the coordinator was discussed by several individuals.  The role has not been defined.  Division coordinators have moral power, but are not trained and may be nervous about exercising that power.  Since coordinators are also unit heads themselves, there may be possible conflicts of interest as well.  Coordinators are evaluated, but the process is ill-defined.  Another problem is that it has been suggested that nine divisions are too many; however, if we cut down on the number of divisions and increase the duties of the coordinators, that action will cause problems.

Divisions themselves are uneven in size and acitivities.  Some interact more with other divisions than others, and there is a need to provide a bridge between Technical Services and the public service units.  Units are also isolated and need to share more among themselves.  The divisions are set up as a faculty structure according to bylaws, but they also have an administrative function.  This may cause confusion.   The divisional structure also needs to work for staff members, not just faculty.   The present divisional structure locks us into a subject mindset and perhaps should be replaced by a structure that is dependant on function.

Several faculty indicated that personnel skills and resources are urgently needed.   We do not have safety nets when something goes wrong within a unit.  The suggestion was made that when problems arise, intervention by a library ombudsman, working with the Human Resources person, might be a better solution than having a coordinator involved.

Our current structure is a hodgepodge.  It may be inefficient, but had been developed with checks and balances, with much of the power based on the unt level.   There is a need to acknowledge the uniqueness of individual units, but still provide consistancy and evaluation.

It was pointed out that much of the foregoing discussion revolved about where we've been, not how to move forward.  There has been a history of feeling powerless, which is changing slowly.  Communication issues are also involved.  Some minutes are not useful, though administrative assistance is now being provided for groups such as the Administrative Council and the Excecutive Committee, and a half time person will be hired to help the FRC and P&T committees with their responsibilities.  Other committees may also benefit from this administrative assistance.  Several people brought up possible mechanisms to improve communications, such as monthly division reports, regular reports at AC meetings or faculty meetings, and publicizing library annual reports.   Library annual reports will be mounted on the web this year, and a University Library annual report will be written.  Paula Kaufman will be creating a list of accomplishments library-wide, which should be finished in July.

7.  Other Business

Lisa German announced the results of two elections.  Dick Griscom will be the new Faculty Secretary, and Gene Rinkel has been elected to the Bylaws Committee.

Jo Kibbee suggested discussing visiting committee issues at a future faculty meeting.   The FRC is reading the visiting committee reports, and any further discussion should wait until that process is over.

Paula Kaufman announced that CODSULI is working on a pilot project dealing with reference service for distance learners.  It will be based at Governors State and will probably begin this fall.  The project is aimed at students taking credit classes at the online university.

The faculty meeting was ajourned at 4:15.

Respectfully submitted,

Diane Schmidt
Faculty Secretary

Present:  J. Gammon, H. J. Kim, T. Hooker, P. Lindell, C. Kopp, L. Roberts, E. Schroeder, A. Schoenberg, G. Witte

Guests:  Bob Burger, Cindy Mottin-Kelly

I.  Minutes of the June 28, 2000 meeting were revised and approved.

II.  Reports

A.  Administrative Council---AC posted minutes on e-mail.

B.  Faculty Meeting--Next meeting will be held July 21, 2000

C.  Library Reconfiguration--Nothing to report

D.  Strategic Planning--G. Witte reported that the next meeting is scheduled for July 27.  The report to the library is being finalized.

E.  Division Meeting Items.

Since his retirement, John Littlewood has relocated to the Education and Social Sciences Library where he is serving as the Gay Literature Bibliographer on a volunteer basis.

III.  Updates/Discussions

A.  June Word class survey results are being compiled by T. Hooker.

B.  Names for MS Excel class are being collected.

C.  The next Word class will meet Aug. 1-4 from 10 a.m. until noon.

D.  Certificates--The color and font style were selected for the

MS Word & Excel certificates.

E.  G. Witte will send an announcement about a pine e-mail hand out being available.

IV.  New Business

A.  Responses to the morale issue question were discussed. A copy will be sent to B. Clark and P. Kaufman.

B.  Conferences and Meetings

B.  Burger said should send a memo concerning work release time and support for meetings to P. Kaufman.

C.  The Staff Retreat schedule was discussed and revised.  Two videos to be shown at the retreat were previewed.

D.  A welcome center has been proposed by Central Public Services.  Staff support this idea.

E.  The final cataloging task force report has been revised.  An additional cataloger and a GA will be added this year, and another cataloger will be added next year.

F.  G. Witte announced that 18 support staff positions are vacant.

G.  For the next meeting, LSSC was instructed to think of questions for the retreat and to think of possible outcomes from the retreat.

Respectfully submitted,

Jane Gammon
Transcriber

PROFESSIONAL VACANCY LIST

Copies of job announcement are available from the Library Personnel Office.

JOB TITLE, LOCATION, CLOSING DATE:

Reference Librarian for Physical and Mathematical Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC; position available immediately and applications will be accepted until position is filled

Librarian for Public and International Affairs and Population Research, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; applications accepted until position is filled

Pacific Northwest Librarian in Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives Division, University of Washington, Seattle, WA; 5:00 p.m., August 18, 2000

Head, Information Sciences Department, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL; August 18, 2000

Head, Information Resources in Health Sciences Library, University of Washington, Seattle, WA; 5:00 p.m., September 15, 2000

Director of Public Services, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; September 15, 2000 or until position is filled

Head, Information Services for the Science Library, University of California, Riverside, CA; September 22, 2000

Team Leader, Catalog Management and Enrichment Team, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR; 5:00 p.m., September 29, 2000

(Joyce Lowder)