March 13, 2014 Meeting of Library Staff Support Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Skye Arseneau, Becky Burner, Debora Pfeiffer, Dani Postula, Laura Poulosky, Barb Trumpinski, Julie Watkins, Sandy Wolf

UIUC Recruiting Booth at ALA:  Skye will be staffing a UIUC booth at ALA this June for recruiting faculty and staff.  Her booth will be right next to the GSLIS booth.  Skye will be able to scan ALA badges to save information about potential employees.  She’s thinking about what hand-outs to bring for interested individuals and welcomes Library hand-outs to distribute.  She plans to give out information that includes links to the main Library page and other useful UIUC and C-U websites. She asked LSSC members for ideas to emphasize to potential job candidates.  We talked about the benefits of free (although now taxed) tuition for University employees, which is especially beneficial to Library staff who’d like to take GSLIS classes; the size and breadth of UIUC collections and access to I-Share and easy Interlibrary Loans; and the many advantages of living in Champaign-Urbana (good transportation system; diverse communities; good schools, public libraries, and park districts; job opportunities for family at Research Park; arts at Krannert Center, Spurlock and Krannert Art museums; proximity to Chicago, Indianapolis, and Saint Louis, etc.)  Visual Resources Librarian Sarah Christensen and colleagues have compiled a useful site for information on arts and culture in C-U at http://explorecu.org/

Meeting Reports:

Faculty Meeting:  Barb and Julie attended the most recent faculty meeting, which began with John Wilkin’s report on the Council of Deans retreat, where the structure of University faculties and the status of tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track faculty were discussed.  At UIUC, there are currently over 700 non-tenured faculty members teaching and doing research.  Following University High Librarian Frances Jacobson Harris’s retirement, her position may be replaced by an Academic Professional position rather than a Faculty position.  Jim Hahn talked about how the WayFinder app is being used to help patrons find materials in the Main Stacks, the Undergraduate Library, and ACES.  Kirk Hess reported on the Digital Newspaper Project, which permits crowd-sourcing of research by means of OCR (Optical Character Recognition).  A new LibQual survey will begin on April 3rd.  The Edible Book Festival will take place on April 1st, and this year will emphasize a special category for banned books.

Life Sciences Division Meeting:  Barb reported that most of the Life Sciences meeting was spent reviewing the bylaws in preparation for their revision and also on revising the website.
Physical and Life Sciences Division Meeting:  Becky reported that the Faculty and Academic Professional structure at UIUC was one of the main topics of discussion at this meeting, as at the faculty meeting that Barb and Julie attended.  There are about 50 non-tenure-track faculty members in the Library system.  Michael Norman and colleagues will be creating a virtual “missing” location on Voyager that will be visible to faculty and staff on the Voyager Circulation module, but not to patrons on the OPAC, so that we can maintain records of missing items without confusing patrons about these items’ availability.

Social Sciences Division:  Sandy reported that the Social Sciences Division did not meet in March.

Arts & Humanities Liaison Needed:

Since Laura has left her position in the Architecture & Art Library for a position in the Residence Hall Library system, LSSC needs a new liaison from Arts & Humanities.  Please let us know if you or a colleague from Arts & Humanities might be interested in joining LSSC.

Bylaws Change:

LSSC voted to propose an amendment to the committee’s bylaws in order to include civil service liaisons from any UIUC “satellite” libraries, such as the Residence Hall Libraries, which are funded and administered by Housing, but included in the Voyager modules and the loaning of items to other UIUC libraries and I-Share.  This amendment was then voted upon by the Library staff at large and passed.  Therefore, Laura Poulosky will be able to continue serving on LSSC as the Sr. Library Specialist from the Residence Hall Libraries.

SURS:

Skye strongly recommends that any staff members who are considering retiring within the next one to three years, as well as any individuals who have 30 years or more of service and are around age 55, go talk to SURS to figure out the best retirement plan and timing for themselves.  UIUC President Robert Easter recently sent out an email about SURS changes that includes many useful links, including a link to sign up for an upcoming Webinar for more information.

Thanks to Debora!  We’d like to include a special thank-you to Debora for bringing breakfast goodies to LSSC this morning.  Thanks very much, Debora!