Library Office Notes

Present:  Paula Kaufman (chair), Margaret Chaplan, Richard Griscom, Beth Sandore, Mary Stuart, Leslie Troutman, Beth Woodard

Absent:  Tim Cole, Sue Searing

I.  Approval of the Past Meeting Minutes

The minutes of the December 4, 2000, meeting were approved as revised.

II.  Question time

1.  Are there any new developments in the search for the AUL for Services?

There are two internal candidates and possibly one outside candidate for the position of AUL for Services.  EC suggested that, since this is such an important position, interviews should be scheduled after the break so there will be a good attendance at the presentations.

Paula also reported on the status of other Library searches:  Afro-American Studies, Commerce, Documents, Preservation, Cataloging, Multicultural Studies, and Psychology.  The effort to attract a Faculty Excellence person is continuing.

The report on current searches led to a discussion of recruiting problems and how to address them.  Paula reported that Sue Searing and Bob Burger are working with GSLIS on ways to encourage students to enter academic librarianship.  It was also suggested that perceptions about our intimidating tenure standards should be addressed, perhaps by better explaining to candidates the promotion and tenure portion of UIUC Library requirements in order to demystify without de-emphasizing them, or by having a junior faculty member, or someone who has just been promoted, write an article for publication about the benefits of working in an academic library.

2.  What is the status of the division coordinator position description document?

AC looked at EC's suggestions for improving and clarifying the division coordinator position description and will send their suggested revisions back to EC.  One area of disagreement is whether it should be required or should be recommended that a division coordinator be a unit head.

III.  Old Business

A.  Update on budget preparation

The Budget Committee sorted through all requests and decided what could be funded through internal reallocations or from different categories of money.  Bart is working on a draft of the narrative that will appear on the web for all to view and comment on.  Some items were added that had not previously been discussed by the AC or EC, such as the establishment of a faculty equity pool, a permanent pool for clerical upgrades, funds to increase the student hourly wage, and an assistant for Paula.   Rewiring in the Main Library, scheduled for March, and in Undergrad, scheduled for October, will be funded by the Campus.

The budget contains internal reallocation money, that will not show up in our request, for opening the Bookstacks.  A series of discussions will take place before the final decision is made.

Paula has also asked the Library Information Technology Committee to study the positions and utilization of research programmers in the library.

The budget includes $2.2 million for Collections; our total request at this point is $4,011,000 with $11,000 to trim off before submission.

Some items on the request lists will be taken care of internally.  Paula will ask Bart to develop a procedure to inform units whose requests are in that category.

IV.  New Business

A.  Process for evaluating administrators

Paula explained the process she has been using.  It starts at the beginning of the fiscal year when she meets with each individual to set goals for the year.  She meets with each administrator at least once a month to go over the goals, adjusting them when appropriate.  At the Annual Report time, Paula will send out the goals set by each administrative staff member to the Faculty and ask for written input.  That input and her end-of-the-year discussion with the administrator would be the basis for the administrator's evaluation.  The report will be filed and will remain confidential.

The administrators involved are AUL for Planning/Budget, AUL for Collections, AUL for Preservation, AUL for Services, Director of Electronic Resources, Head of Systems, Director of the Mortenson Center, Director of Development (this position has dual reporting), and the Assistant to the University Librarian (if funded in the new budget).

EC noted that a significant part of the process is step #3, which gives faculty an opportunity to discuss fulfillment of goals and to articulate expectations and provide comments.  Some of the points EC suggested for consideration as part of the assessment of goal fulfillment were accountability, collegiality, communication, timeliness, expertise, consistency, and team building.

Paula will draft a standard statement soliciting faculty input for the administrator evaluation for EC review.

B.  Recommendation of emeritus status

The procedures for recommending emerita status for a retiring faculty member were initiated.

The faculty member's division will be considering this vacancy and will make a recommendation to EC.

V.  Pending Items

Since all of the pending items have either been taken care of, or are no longer pertinent, they were removed from the agenda.

The meeting adjourned at 2:30 p.m.