February 23, 2015 Meeting of Strategic Planning Steering Team

Agenda not yet available.

Peg Burnette, Jim Dohle, Lisa Hinchliffe, Lisa Renee Kemplin, Bill Mischo, Lisa Romero, Lynn Wiley

Members Absent: David Ward

Also Attending: Sarah Crissinger (Information Literacy GA)

 1) Proposed Revision to Charge

At the first SPST meeting, it was noted that the group’s charge needed to be edited as it was still a bit unclear. Lisa drafted the below charge based on comments. She asked for feedback in order to revise again before submitting to Dean Wilkin. The most significant change is that language specific to doing retreat work was removed and the charge now focuses more broadly on representation and working on the framework, not just facilitating other groups’ participation.

Purpose/Role of Steering Committee – The Strategic Planning Steering Team is charged with ensuring opportunities for broad participation in discussion and drafting processes throughout the planning processes, soliciting feedback on draft documents, and communicating process and outcomes to all stakeholders. The Team is responsible for advising the Coordinator for Strategic Planning on the overall process and specific planning activities as well as assisting in the development of the Framework for Strategic Action, which will be submitted as a recommendation to the University Librarian.

Some members noted that it was still unclear where this document was going and what power or role this committee actually had in created. The final strategic planning document will need to go to EC and Dean Wilkin for ratification and vetting. Many members thought it might be helpful to have a more shared governance process where all library faculty should vote. Bill said that he would bring that proposal up to EC. He thought that this voting process might have happened on prior strategic plans but he wasn’t sure when. The SPST hopes that this will create more buy-in and investment from faculty.

Lisa mentioned that overall retreat participants’ feedback was positive. They felt it was a good use of their time and they were happy they were able to contribute. One suggestion was to sustain that excitement and create a word cloud or other visual summary of each of the prompts so participants have feedback they can read quickly. Sarah will look into creating these and provide an example for the group to review.

As the committee looks at the feedback, they decided to keep in mind that other groups are also doing work and the strategic planning process should benefit from that. For example, a lot of the feedback from the retreat about staff morale is already being addressed by the Staff Development Committee and will be further addressed by the ClimateQUAL instrument. The SPST might need to think of other opportunities like this one where they can participate.

The Team decided to recommend the following purpose/charge to Dean Wilkin:

Purpose/Role of Steering Committee – The Strategic Planning Steering Team is charged with ensuring opportunities for broad participation in discussion and drafting processes throughout the planning processes, soliciting feedback on draft documents, and communicating process and outcomes to all stakeholders. The Team is responsible for advising the Coordinator for Strategic Planning on the overall process and specific planning activities as well as assisting in the development of the Framework for Strategic Action.

2) Two Possible Focus Events: Transformative Education and The Research Enterprise

Both events of these discussion events would internal to the library. The Transformative Education event would be around two hours long and would start with someone from the Provost’s Office talking about campus educational goals.

The Research Enterprise event would be around three hours and we could ask the Associate Chancellor of Research to frame the discussion. It would be based off of ARL’s 2030 scenarios. The document includes a section on how to workshop the ideas, which would be useful. We should think about what the UIUC library’s role is in the greater research library landscape during this event. Bill will add some ARL documents to the G Drive folder on this topic. He also mentioned that all colleges have an associate dean for research we could talk with.

It was noted that the committee needs to give back feedback before asking library staff to come to another event. This could be framed by letting participants know that their feedback helped guide these events and these are meant to be a deeper dive into these topics. Everyone within the library system will be invited.

The STSP will need to think about how the discussion will be framed after the panel and what the best way to engage people will be. It will be important to turn ideas into overall library strategy.

Lisa will meet with the AULs to further scope and specify these events.

3) Proposal for “Campus Conversation on the University Library”

This event could be modeled after similar recent events on undergraduate activity. It could involve similar activities to the retreat. Lisa will draft a proposal for the committee’s feedback before passing it along to Dean Wilkin.

It was also suggested that the committee meet faculty where they are by going to faculty committee meetings. This work doesn’t have to necessarily be done by the embedded subject librarian; instead, anyone can ask these questions to get faculty feedback. We will need to draft a list of talking points/questions (which will be similar to questions asked at the retreat but also include questions on faculty opinion on what the library’s strategic plan should have to better serve them). We will also need to find a way for committee members or other librarians that would like to do this work to be able to report back to the SPST. Valarie will look into phrasing and options for these activities.

It was noted that we should not focus on asking faculty to come up with potential library services but instead ask them what their changing teaching and research practices are and how those might change their needs.

Right now there are no events in place to engage the general public. Some ideas include reaching out to Urbana Free Library or asking the public what’s important in order to create services that might have increased value, especially in the current budget climate.

4) Next Steps/Open Discussion

Lisa will continue to update the Strategic Planning blog that feeds to the Strategic Planning website. These updates include summaries of every group meeting Lisa has about SP. Revised retreat documents should be added to the website soon. Minutes of each SPST meeting are there as well. Anyone that has questions can be pointed to these resources. Additionally, Lisa will be having strategic planning office hours in March. Details will be in Library Office News and LibNews.

Lisa will be scheduling more Team meetings soon.