November 14, 2012 Meeting of Library Faculty Meeting

Call to Order

 

Standing Items:

Adoption of the Agenda – Paula Kaufman

 

Approval of Minutes– Paula Kaufman

 

Introductions – Paula Kaufman

 

Report of the University Librarian – Paula Kaufman (15 minutes)

 

Executive Committee Discussion Items – Chris Prom (10 minutes)

 

Discussion Topics

• Library’s eResearch Task Force. Recommendations For Eresearch Activities and Training in The Library (20 minutes–Beth Sandore)

Lightning Round (5 minutes each)

• Monthly Music Guides: Connecting our Collections to Krannert Center Events –  Kirstin Dougan
• New Cataloging Rules: Resource Description and Access (RDA) – Michael Norman

New Business

 

Announcements

 

Adjournment

Call to Order

 

Standing Items:

• Adoption of the Agenda – Paula Kaufman.

• Approval of Minutes – Paula Kaufman.  Minutes were approved with a motion by Kirstin Dougan and seconded by Barbara Ford.
• Introductions Lori Mestre introduced Eric Kurt, the new Media Commons Coordinator. He began at the UGL in August. He has a B.S. and an M.S. in computer graphics and previously was the Academic Director of Media Arts at the Art Institute of Indianapolis.

 

Report of the University Librarian Paula Kaufman

• Paula attended the Dean’s meeting lunch the previous day, where the three dean searches were discussed.  The Engineering Dean search is being chaired by Gene Robinson, and is the only search that has a search firm.  The Library search is chaired by Deba Dutta.  The search committee composition was previously sent out.  The Provost’s office is responsible for arranging the first meeting of every search. It’s in the process of arranging that meeting right now for the Library search. The Veterinary Medicine search is being chaired by Tanya Gallagher.  The provost office will be arranging the first meeting as soon as their committee is formed.
• There is an effort by President Easter, led by Bill Adams, who has been brought back from retirement, to look at UA functions. There will be a campus announcement sometime soon that the reporting relationship of the campus CIOs will change back to reporting entirely to their campuses instead of a dual-report to Executive CIO Michael Hites and their campus. Michael Hites’s new title may be senior Associate Vice President for AITS and University system CIO.  It was also reported that a similar evaluation is being done of now-centralized HR activities.
• There were also a couple of important meetings on campus.  Paula encouraged everyone to look at the videos that are available from the Campus Summit on MOOCS, which is available on the web (http://oce.illinois.edu/Programs/SummitOnOnlineEducation2012/livestream). There has also been a series of talks given by university presidents or former university presidents from around the world. There were some very insightful, as well as depressing talks about the future of Higher Education.  Paula emphasized how important it is for us to understand what’s going on in Higher Education today and the changes we can anticipate coming in the next ten to twenty years. She stated that the disruption caused by MOOCS will be profound and we need to understand that and what our role will be on campus or whatever campus may be.
• Paula also encouraged everyone to look at Chancellor Wise’s blog, especially the current one on diversity (http://illinois.edu/blog/view/1109).

 

Executive Committee Discussion Items – Chris Prom

Chris Prom said there was only one executive meeting since the last faculty meeting.  He reviewed some of the highlights, including updates about the current searches, discussions about more useful reviews of the Associate University Librarians, and for a hiring plan for positions proposed for the University Library. The issue of colloquium funding will be on the upcoming agenda.

 

Discussion Topic. Library’s EResearch Task Force: Recommendations for Eresearch Activities and Training in the Library– Beth Sandore and Sarah Shreeves

 

Paula Kaufman did a brief introduction to the topic.  She emphasized how managing research data will be critical to our future success and reminded everyone to read the briefing document that was sent.  The briefing document, PowerPoint, and charge of the task force is available at: http://www.library.illinois.edu/committee/eresearch_task_force/eresearch_task_force_charge.html

 

Beth Sandore and Sarah Shreeves provided an overview of the work of the Library eResearch Task Force, which includes nine colleagues. It was charged in April by the University Librarian after a recommendation that Beth, Sarah and Howard Guenther (Associate Vice Chancellor for Research) made from the ARL eScience Institute, in which over 80 institutions participated.  The response among North American universities to the call for participation in the ARL eScience Institute was overwhelming.  There is currently a lot of attention being focused on this topic. The Library’s eResearch Task Force is developing a set of recommendations for the ways in which the Library can support researchers who need to work with digital data in support of their research.  As part of its environmental scan, the Task Force is reaching out to other units on campus and to other institutions who are developing similar programs and services.  The report will be drafted and sent to the Executive Committee at the end of December. There may be small group discussions that occur before then.

 

The Task Force prepared a background document and a brief presentation, but its primary goal in the November 14 faculty meeting was to hear the perspectives of the Library faculty on how they believe eResearch programs and services could best be organized, staffed and provided by the Library. Beth summarized the charge, the existing programs and recommendations (including how eResearch data services can be supported). She also discussed the training and retraining that will be needed to get people up to speed.  The Campus Data Stewardship Committee, chaired by Paula Kaufman, is working concurrently on a proposal to the Vice Chancellor for Research to develop a campus-wide research data management service.  The Library, the OVCR, CITES, NCSA, GSLIS, and the Graduate College are represented on this committee.  Beth is leading the campus proposal preparation effort.  Working with her from the Library are Sarah Shreeves, Bill Mischo, and Tom Habing.  They are working with personnel from several campus units.  The proposal for a campus Research Data Service will figure prominently in the Library’s eResearch Task Force report, because both the Library and the campus researchers need the key technical and personnel infrastructure that will be provided by such a service, including research data storage, curation and management, support for data and metadata consultation, data preservation services, and data access, discovery, and publication services.

 

Beth reviewed the definition of eResearch, which is broad and was based on the Associate of Research Libraries’ definition.  eResearch uses digital technologies, is collaborative, is computing and data intensive, and is interdisciplinary.  She and Sarah also described and summarized some of the Gap areas that the eResearch Task Force has identified that the Library needs to support in order to provide effective eResearch programs and services:

 

• Gap area 1. How can the Library Organize and Increase Personnel Support?
  • The support network is still sparse, not enough to handle needs
  • There is currently a decentralized structure.  We need a more centralized structure
• Gap area 2. Public- facing Services, Communication, and Instruction
  • There are already workshops and sessions, but they are not consistent or coordinated.  How do researchers know who to talk to?  That part is missing. We also need to communicate what we are doing.
• Gap area 3  Research Data Management and Curation
  • IDEALS is limited for the number and types of data sets it can take. We can’t offer management of data sets. We need to work closely with CITES, and others.
  • The library can help with metadata and preservation.  It can also offer archival assistance, documentation, and contextual information for data sets.
  • Data discovery services can also be a role the Library provides, such as creating an Easy Search type search of data sets.

 

Questions:

Barbara Ford asked about other good models and how other libraries have organized their eResearch efforts.  Beth explained that there are several good models and that we are not on the leading edge, but will continue to add and support the work. She mentioned a couple of institutions:

• University of California San Diego, with their Office of Research and their Super Computing.
• Columbia University Library has an aggressive program with subject specialist involvement
• Purdue also has a concerted focus of services and subject liaisons. It is organized to be a public-facing piece and had done significant organizational revamping. They are working with their campus Computing and Office of Research to build the infrastructure.

 

When asked what the next step is, Beth responded that everyone outside the Library feels the Library should wrestle with the research data management and curation services, but this must be done in close collaboration with campus IT and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, as well as the Colleges, research centers, and institutes.  Paula Kaufman mentioned that we have the people and trusted, subject librarians.   She said that we may not be able to manage the large data sets, but we can make it public-facing. She cautioned that if we don’t do it, it may not happen and that we need to consider recommendations and move quickly.

 

Beth Sheehan suggested that subject specialists need to be cognizant of efforts and possibilities, since they could work as bridges with the researcher and Scholarly Commons to help train, collaborate and create a network. She proposed having designated liaisons for each division or unit who could work with others. Paula Kaufman reiterated that we might miss opportunities if we don’t work with our faculty colleagues; that there are opportunities for us to do collaborative research and to be co-PIs doing collaborative research.  She hopes the subject liaisons will be more than pass-throughs and that we will want to be ready to take opportunities to grow our own research and to partner with others in ways that we can’t do now. Sarah Shreeves mentioned that the task force is discussing how to bring together a combination of functional experts and subject specialists.

 

Questions and comments about the gap areas included:  How do we develop the skills? How do we know what the skills we need are? We shouldn’t be figuring it out on our own—is there a partnership program? Which of the skills do we need everyone to have? We need to make it clear it is training for data management.  Sarah Shreeves responded that one of the responses to the gaps is to work out training.  There is already a day long workshop in February on this at the University of Chicago.  Others offered other venues for training such as: The University of Maryland, the University of Arizona, GSLIS (Carole Palmer) working with graduate and practicum students.

 

Other comments were: We also need to look at the future of collections. Should they stay here or go elsewhere? We need to look at changes in scholarly communication and research—many funders of research are international. Researchers have seen this change and are looking for answers too. We are in a good position because we have been involved.  We now need to be involved in knowledge creation from the cradle to grave.

 

In response to the question of whether the library might end up storing a lot of data where only those affiliated have access, rather than sharing, Sarah said that we would need to work very closely with campus to provide infrastructure. Some sets that might need data curation and storage can’t be released immediately.  There is also a growing need to cite data sets and publish them.  The library can do some work with a dark archive as well.  Beth Sandore reiterated that this is another reason why the library needs to work with CITES and the campus. The Library could not make the storage commitment on its own.  CITES, NCSA, and the Office of Research need to be involved.  A combined effort is needed.

 

Lightning Rounds

 

• Monthly Music Guides: Connecting our Collections to Krannert Center Events. Kirstin Dougan provided an overview of a series of guides developed at the Music and Performing Arts Library (MPAL).  Each month she creates a new Libguide for events happening at Krannert.  Every guide has a front page, with information about the guide and information about using the library. There are individual tabs for each event that month. Descriptions of the events are pulled from the Krannert Center website. Select MPAL holdings are highlighted, and broad searches from the library catalog are included to find books, scores, CDs, and DVDs, with cover images where available.  There is also a tab called “Attending a performance” which gives tips for how to act and enjoy the performance, as well as suggestions for background reading.  Krannert puts a link to this guide at the bottom of their weekly emails.  The Libguide is also pushed out through Twitter, occasional Inside Illinois ads, and with a QR code on posters at Krannert.  Here is a link to the December Libguide: http://uiuc.libguides.com/KCPADecember2012. All Krannert Guides can be found by searching UIUC’s Libguides for the tag “Krannert Center”. Kirstin said she is hoping to do something similar with the folks at Spurlock regarding their exhibits, working with other subject specialists as well.

• New Cataloging Rules: Resource Description and Access (RDA) Michael Norman provided a brief update on Resource Description and Access.  On March 13, 2013 the Library of Congress will replace the current standard with RDA.  He showed an example of a record. To see examples use Vufind and type in RDA.  Highlights of this new record are that:
  • There are no abbreviations since these records are online, rather than print, space is not an issue.
  • In Staff view GMD (General Material Designation) goes away.  The content type, media type and carrier field will now be in the 300 field (audio etc.) rather than in 200 fields.  It is possible to get more granular.
  • For more information go to the Content Access Management (CAM) page at: http://www.library.illinois.edu/cam/. Qiang Jin has done a lot of work on providing training.  Included are RDA training and tool kits. It is a good resource to view and learn about the fields.
  • Records are now appearing and you will see better options to use metadata and to be able to get more granular with searches.
  • In responses to questions, Michael mentioned that RDA works well with Vufind but not Voyager Classic catalog.  You can’t search for RDA in Classic Voyager, but you can see the fields in staff mode.  Primo also provides an opportunity to search and view.

 

New Business– none

 

Announcements

• Beth Sandore reminded everyone to fill out the customer service survey, which closes on November 21.
• Lisa Hinchliffe also asked for everyone to provide feedback on Primo, since they have not seen much searching done by individuals.
• Barbara Ford asked everyone to think about individuals we would like to solicit for the Dean of Library search and also what we would like to see in the search description.
• Beth Woodard asked if the rumors of a GEO strike were true.  Paula responded in the negative, but mentioned that the group is meeting again.  She also said that she had asked Division Coordinators to submit plans to cover service points in case there were a strike.

 

Adjourned –  4:15 p.m.