May 13, 2020 Meeting of Life Sciences

Time and Location of Meeting

May 13, 202010:30 am - 12:00 pm Zoom

Agenda Details

Expected/Invited Attendees

Susan Braxton, Prairie Research Institute Librarian

Peg Burnette, Medical and Biomedicine Librarian; PSED Liaison

Erik Chapman, Staff Liaison

Erin Kerby, Veterinary Medicine Librarian

Lucy Moynihan, Staff Liaison

Ryan Rafferty, Regional Health Sciences Librarian, UIC LHS

Janis Shearer, Public Services & Engagement Librarian

Mara Thacker, Global Popular Culture Librarian; South Asian Studies Librarian; ASD Liaison

Kelli Trei, Biosciences Librarian

Sarah Williams, Head, Funk Library

Agenda

  1. Approval of April minutes (taken by Kelli)
  2. ALMA updates, concerns (all)
  3. Update on office building project (Sarah)
  4. Update on back to work plans (Sarah)
  5. Committee assignments and reports – AC, CDC, others
  6. Round Table
  7. Adjourn

Minutes Details

Attendees

Susan Braxton, Prairie Research Institute Librarian

Peg Burnette, Medical and Biomedicine Librarian; PSED Liaison

Erik Chapman, Staff Liaison

Erin Kerby, Veterinary Medicine Librarian

Lucy Moynihan, Staff Liaison

Janis Shearer, Public Services & Engagement Librarian

Kelli Trei, Biosciences Librarian

Sarah Williams, Head, Funk Library

Minutes

  1. Approval of April minutes (taken by Kelli)
    • Approved
  1. ALMA updates, concerns (all)
    • In the training/info sessions, there are many questions asked, but some do not have answers yet. Some Alma functionality will be more robust than Voyager.  Alma is somewhat easier to navigate than Voyager.
  1. Update on office building project (Sarah)
    • Office construction is still on hold.
  1. Update on back to work plans (Sarah)
    • Many things are still up in the air and subject to change at a moment’s notice, but the University Library is moving forward with plans as part of the campus planning for return to on-site work. No decisions have been made, but some recommendations relevant to LSD include:
      • Preference for consultations and instruction to continue online whenever possible. When consultations or instruction need to be in-person, these will be by appointment and guidelines for masks, social distancing, cleaning will be followed.
      • No study space to be available, due to numerous challenges, such as monitoring the number of people in an area and adherence to mask and social distancing guidelines, restricting access to the collection and other areas of library buildings, keeping study spaces clean, and recognizing the long amount of time patrons often spend in study areas. The risks seem to outweigh the benefit to the number of patrons we could accommodate in limited spaces.
      • Continued preference to pursue electronic access to the collection in every case possible. We can only continue to use the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) while access to our print collection is restricted.
    • Janis reported back on how the Zoom online study space went on Reading Day, in case libraries want to pursue something like this, in place of physical study space.
  1. Committee assignments and reports – AC, CDC, others
    • Wellness – The Library’s Staying Well at Home challenge is complete. The Library’s Wellness Committee’s site (https://guides.library.illinois.edu/c.php?g=885561) has many useful resources.  The Library’s mindfulness sessions are good, and they are recorded and available here – https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/channel/Training+for+Library+Employees/127798621
    • Administrative Council (AC) – Didn’t meet last month.
    • Reference Management Team – Hasn’t met recently.
    • Head, Scholarly Commons search committee – During the last search committee meeting, the committee discussed LSD’s concerns about the Scholarly Commons focus on social sciences and humanities. The initial position description was written by Heidi and approved by EC, but the search committee is welcome to revise the position description and resubmit it to EC.  Kelli will share LSD’s concerns with EC, while also acknowledging that the search committee is working on some revisions to the description.
    • Digital Strategies Liaison group – This group is advisory to Chris Prom and meets every other month. At the last meeting, a long list of updates was shared, including – Oak Street will have a new inventory system that come up around the same time as Alma, and a newspaper partnership is going forward with newspaper.com
    • Collection Development Committee (CDC) – As of the last CDC meeting (4/28), the Library is still assuming it will receive an inflation increase from campus for FY21, but the Library is also making plans, in case inflation increases from campus don’t come in FY22. If LSD members have feedback on the ProQuest Access & Build purchase options, they should respond to Sarah by Friday, May 22.  George and Stephanie hope to have Alma sessions for fund managers, but first, they need to learn more about this aspect of the system themselves.  Wendy is doing her best to order eBooks, but she has been swamped.
    • Assessment Committee – Many of the university accreditation meetings were online this Spring, but the committee will still need to make a visit to campus in the future. The preliminary report is that the university passed.
    • Pre-tenure Working Group – Still considering feedback from April faculty meeting
    • Outreach & Engagement Task Force – Meets every Monday. The task force is currently conducting a study to understand the outreach and engagement roles of librarians/libraries, and this input will be incorporated into a report to EC in July.
  1. Round Table
    • Lucy is meeting with Kendra, so she will share any news about the College of ACES’ plans for downstairs spaces.
    • Undergraduate Teaching and Learning search is continuing.
    • Kudoboard for eCards – We should consider whether it would be while having a subscription, since it has worked so well for us and since we might continue needing it for the foreseeable future. We would need to see if/how we could cover the subscription cost with endowment/gift funds.
    • Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin – This venerable journal is now fully operational, with all backfiles, in the Illinois Open Publishing Network – https://iopn.library.illinois.edu/journals/inhs
    • Susan is getting training to become a Data Curation Network data curator.
    • Mike Dickinson, Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Agriculture Librarian, starts on Monday, May 18.
    • Voyager/VuFind/SFX links in LibGuides – While GAs will contact the appropriate subject librarians about content/disciplinary questions, it would be useful to have a librarian mentor to be the contact person for any technical/procedural questions that GAs have. Susan and Kelli kindly agreed to serve as the mentors for this project.
    • Peg is getting lots of questions from the College of Medicine about online access to the collection/resources. She is also busy preparing for new class of students that starts in July.
    • ACDC – Congratulations to 3 students graduating: GAs – Emily and Courtney and SA – Kimberly. The team is thoughtfully wrapping up projects so they can be handed off to the new GAs who start in late summer and early fall.
    • Outreach & Engagement – Janis is working on a summary of LSD outreach and engagement activities this past academic year.
  1. Adjourn