January 24, 2019 Meeting of Library Staff Support Committee

1. Approval of Meeting Minutes
2. LSSC Secretary: Vote
3. Liaison Reports
4. Staff Lounge Furniture Update (Angie)
5. E-mail to Civil Service Award Recipients (Cristina)
6. Reaching Forward South (Erik)
1. Update
2. Going Forward
7. Other Professional Development Opportunities for Staff
1. General Discussion
2. ALA (will be here before we know it!)
8. Library Building Project
9. Other Items, Concerns, and Comments

Erik Chapman (Life Sciences)
Lonnie E. Clark (Central Public Services)
Angie Gruendl (Physical Sciences & Engineering)
Kim Hutcherson (Administrative Services)
Tony Hynes (Special Collections)
Cristina-Maria Kuhn (Technical Services)
Ben Riegler (Central Public Services)
Gennye Varvel (Social Sciences)
Shoshana Vegh-Gaynor (Arts & Humanities)

Approval of Meeting Minutes: Minutes were approved with corrections.

LSSC Secretary – Vote: Angie was approved as LSSC Secretary.

Liaison Reports and Updates:

Life Sciences / Physical Sciences: A joint meeting of LSD/PSED was held with Tom Teper in attendance to discuss the building project. The Library is waiting for contract approval to hiring a consulting firm. The Altgeld Hall renovation project will happen simultaneously with the Library building project. An item was placed in Grad Links to reach out to graduate students for input on the project. A concern of the LSD/PSED faculty is where students will go if/when the Undergraduate Library is closed. Bill Mischo mentioned that Grainger Engineering Library Information Center has already seen an influx of students.

The rest of the meeting was spent discussing collections. The question of how to extend the capacity of the Oak Street Library was raised. Tom said this will largely be accomplished by deduplication efforts. Bill asked what the project goal was for moving items out of Main Stacks. There are no numbers at this time but the plan is to have a more focused collection in the new space.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Shared Print Repository (SPR) was discussed. There had been some negative experience it trying to access the material from this collection. There were also concerns about getting materials for retired faculty.
Technical Services: William Schlaack is the Technical Services representative on the planning group. The civil service reclassification was discussed but there was no information to share regarding the civil service reclassification.

Arts & Humanities: No updates.

Special Collections: A meeting was held with Tom Teper to discuss the building project. Indiana University’s Lilly Library (http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/index.html)was discussed as a library that combines remote storage, general collections, with archival and special collections.

Next year there will be a combined exhibition with all of the special collections units. The theme will be the 1920s.

The report from consultant Kris Kiesling arrived on the afternoon of January 23, 2019. The report will be reviewed by the Special Collections Division, any comments will be collated and sent to Kiesling via Tom Teper and John Wilkin for corrections on factual errors or clarifications. A final report for the Dean will likely be back before the end of the month. There is no word on when it might be available through the project website.

Central Public Services: The meeting was dedicated to the building project and included a question and answer session with Tom Teper. From the meeting it was clarified that the new building would have space for collaboration and cross disciplinary work but it would not be an institute. Institutes have a very specific meaning on the University of Illinois campus and must meet certain criteria. The building project will be a chance to do something that has not been done in academic libraries.

Instruction space is important. A concern is what instructional space will be available during construction.

In the Undergraduate Library, Susan Muirhead is the new Media Commons Innovation and Instructional Services Specialist, Josh Hollingsead will manage technology and collaboration spaces, and Stefanie Postula will be assuming the duties previously covered by Janelle Sander.

Social Sciences: No updates.

In the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library, the Social Sciences Research Librarian position in has been posted.

The collection working group has held two meetings. The group plans to send a survey out to stakeholders to see how they use the stacks. They will also ask about what subject areas are being used. Data from the Ithaka survey will also be used to inform decisions.

Administrative Services: Administration is reviewing the surveys from the recent Library recognition event. So far, the surveys show that people found the location convenient and enjoyed the speaker.

As mentioned in Greg Knott’s email to LIBNEWS, Library IT is making some tweaks to the 2019 evaluation program. There will be more information next month.

Administrative Council:Cristina Kuhn was unable to attend the December 17, 2018 meeting. Minutes of the meeting can be found at https://www.library.illinois.edu/staff/agenda/december-17-2018-meeting-of-administrative-council/#uofi_library_committee_meeting_elements.

Staff Lounge Furniture Update (Angie): On January 8, 2019, the following items from Kimball were submitted to Wendy Wolters to order:

One – POSE,LOUNGE,THREE SEAT,W/O ARMS – Silvertex Carbon, Canyon
One – POSE,LOUNGE,ONE SEAT,W/O ARMS – Silvertex Blackberry, Canyon
Three – BINGO,SIDE,ARMLESS,EBONYFINISH,STACKING,WOOD SHELL
One – DOCK,MEETINGTABLE,ROUND,LAMINATE/DOCK,ROUND DISC BASE – Canyon

When Angie checked last week, according to Wendy, the order is now at purchasing. It may be six weeks before the new furniture arrives. Once the furniture arrives, LSSC can evaluate the space and see if any of the furniture from surplus needs to be removed.

Angie has volunteered to work with Greg Knott and Jeff Schrader for possible updates to the cafeteria side of the lounge.

E-mail to Civil Service Award Recipients (Cristina): Cristina suggested sending a congratulatory email to the civil service award nominees and winners. Erik will send the emails out later today.

Reaching Forward South (Erik):

Update: Erik has been talking to the conference coordinator. The conference will be held May 17, 2019 at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The theme of the conference is “The Future is ALWAYS Beginning Now.” At this time, the conference program schedule is not available.

Going Forward: Erik looked the conference program for Reaching Forward that will be held in Rosemont. That conference seemed to be more geared to public libraries. As late registration for Reaching Forward South does not happen until April 30, 2019, it was decided to wait before sending an email to staff about the opportunity to attend Reaching Forward South.

LSSC talked about how the three hour drive even with the option to carpool may discourage participants. Depending on interest, LSSC may ask if would be possible to leave on Thursday even and see if Administration would cover the cost of a hotel.

Other Professional Development Opportunities for Staff:

General Discussion: Would attending the Illinois Library Association or Association of College & Research Libraries conferences be more beneficial than attending Reaching Forward or Reaching Forward South? Would it be possible to attend conferences in other states? Would CARLI have professional development opportunities for civil service staff? Would it be possible to have a travel fund for civil service employees?

Erik will look at what opportunities other Big Ten libraries offers to staff. LSSC may also be able to bring together information on campus-wide scholarships and conference scholarships.

ALA (will be here before we know it!): The ALA annual conference will be held June 20-25, 2019 in Washington, D.C. LSSC will need to get confirmation from Administration for funds to send staff to the conference. Gennye brought information from the LSSC Coordinating Conference(s) Procedures page (https://www.library.illinois.edu/staff/coordinating-conferences-procedures/).

Library Building Project: Ben and Gennye have attended salons. From the salon that Gennye attended, the question of whether the needs/concerns of the undergraduates are being noted.

Ben said that members of Administration attended the salon. At the salon he attended, Jake MacGregor wanted to make sure that staff were supported during the building project. In the initial conversations about the building project, there was also discussion of the instructional space that was to be built in connection with the Gies College of Business. The space for this was to be over the mechanics room outside of the Human Resources Office. Due to limitations of this pace, building would be limited to one floor. Potentially, if built, it may be used as instructional space for the Library. The Gies College of Business is still looking for instructional space. The corner of 6th and Gregory may be an option.

Other Items, Concerns, and Comments