November 20, 2013 Meeting of Library Faculty Meeting

Call to Order

Standing Items:

• Adoption of the Agenda – John Wilkin
• Approval of Minutes – John Wilkin
• Introductions  – John Wilkin
• Report of the University Librarian (15 min – John Wilkin)
• Executive Committee Report (15 min – Bill Mischo)

 

Discussion Topic (20 min):

• University Library Strategic Plan Metrics (goals, initiatives and metrics) submitted to the Division of Management – Sue Searing

 

Lightning Round (5 minutes)

• Directions and Efforts in Online Accessibility–Eric Kurt

 

New Business

 

Announcements

 

Adjournment

Call to Order

Adoption of the Agenda

The agenda was adopted with no changes.

Approval of Minutes

A motion to approve the minutes was made by Qiang Jin and seconded by Tom Teper. All approved.

 

Introductions

No introductions were made.

Report of the University Librarian (John Wilkin)

Library Deduplication Process: John reported that Tom Teper is coordinating a systematic deduplication process for the Library, which will result in a higher profile going forward.  John briefed the Senate Committee on the Library and the Council of Deans about this process and emphasized that it is not a weeding effort but a deduplication effort and underscored our need to be careful and deliberate with the messaging for the process.

Open Access to Research Articles Act: There has been a university wide task force appointed by the Board of Trustees in response to the Open Access to Research Articles act.  It was brought to the trustees on the 9th and was approved.  John is chairing the task force. This law passed in November to require publicly funded Universities in the state to give attention to open access for research articles. It is not a requirement to engage in broad open access activities, but a house keeping policy, as well as an effort to bring awareness to and investigation of the various issues related to open access.  There will also be some nonvoting members from some of the publishing presses. This is not a task force to advocate for or against open access, but to comply with the requirements of the law.  The task force will try to get most of the work done by May 2014 and then return in August to wrap up.

Members of the Task Force are: 

John Wilkin (Chair); Mary Case, University Librarian (Chicago); Matt Ando Professor and Chair, Department of Mathematics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Urbana); Anna Lysakowski, Professor, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, College of  Medicine (Chicago); Danilo Erricolo, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering (Chicago); Jorge Villegas, Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, College of Business and Management (Springfield); Peter Schiffer, Professor, Department of Physics, College of Engineering; and Vice Chancellor for Research (Urbana); Mitra Dutta, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of  Engineering and Vice Chancellor for Research (Chicago); Lynn Pardie, Professor, Psychology, Department of Women and Gender Studies, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (Springfield); Willis Regier, Director, University of Illinois Press (University Administration); Scott Rice, University Legal Counsel and University Administration (Urbana); Richard Wheeler, Professor, Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Visiting Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs (University Administration).

Library UnRetreat in January: John reiterated the importance of everyone participating in the UnRetreat occurring January 7, 2014.  It will be a working session on a few topics.  He sent out an email to faculty and APs to solicit topics and issues. He will then work with the Library Executive Committee to prioritize and focus efforts.  He would like us to build on the strategic plan for things we can work on the next few years.

 

Google and UIUC Unique Items:  Google reanalyzed our catalog because there was a suggestion that there was a large collection of unique to Illinois materials that are in the public domain.  Google sent back a pick list of 440,000 items, which is remarkable. There will be some things that might be rejected, for example if they have already been digitized with Internet Archive etc.  John said there are a number of people involved in this project, including Mary Laskowski, who is taking the lead, Tom Teper, Michael Norman, Betsy Kruger, and Jennifer Teper. They will coordinate digitalization more broadly with this.

Upcoming Review of Positions:  John mentioned that this is an opportunity to be strategic about our hiring, to meet existing commitments, and to devote resources to new commitments.

Executive Committee Report (Bill Mischo)

Bill reported that the Executive Committee (EC) discussed the hiring plan.  Monies are coming from the academic pool.  There is a very ambitious and accelerated schedule to get the searches done.  He thanked all for agreeing to chair or be on a committee.  Beth Woodard and Nancy O’Brien are coordinating the searches and Beth keeps people apprised of the status of searches and provides reports.

• Tim Cole suggested we be aggressive with recruiting. Bill agreed and encouraged us to send a note to the chair of a search committee if there is someone we would like them to personally invite to apply for the position. He stressed that recruiting is a year around activity, not just when there is a search and to always be looking for outstanding candidates who might fit in and to send a note to EC any time so they are aware of the individual, even if the individual is a library school student.
• If a candidate has questions or wants to discuss the search or situation, John Wilkin or the Associate University Librarians will talk with a candidate.

Bill mentioned that the closing date for new faculty and AP requests was a week ago and EC will look at them next Monday.  Tim Cole said we have more requests than we have funding (about 17, according to Kim Matherly).

Bill also encouraged people to send in topics or issues (things on people’s mind) for the “unretreat”.  Even if they aren’t discussed at the “unretreat”, they could be topics to address in the course of the year.

Discussion Topic: University Library Strategic Plan Metrics (goals, initiatives and metrics) submitted to the Division of Management – Sue Searing

John Wilkin introduced the topic, mentioning that the Library had received a request to update the Library’s strategic metrics on the Division of Management Information (DMI) profile.  Because there was a short turnaround time he asked Sue Searing to coordinate a process to do this as quickly as possible working with the existing metrics. Jen Yu greatly assisted in the effort.

Sue provided a PowerPoint to highlight her points.  In 2003 campus units were asked to provide college unit plans, goals and metrics and 2013 targets.  The Division of Management Information (DMI) Strategic Profiles are at: http://www.dmi.illiois.edu along with the Campus strategic plan (http://strategicplan.illinois.edu).  Many of the anticipated targets for the ten year span are widely off.  This time around, campus units were asked to provide goals and metrics through 2016.  Within a few short weeks Sue Searing, Jen Yu, the Associate University Librarians, Greg Knott and the EC and AC representatives from Budget Group (Bill Mischo and Mary Schlembach) talked through the framework using the campus strategic goals and the Library’s FY12-FY14 strategic plan.  They took the Library goals and initiatives and put them under the campus strategic goals, also indicating some metrics for the goals.  Most of the initiatives and metrics in this plan are similar to the previous ones, but there are six metrics that are new: Percent of budget spent on electronic resources; number of student research journals published by the library; reservations of student collaborative spaces; count of books in Google Books and HathiTrust; curated exhibits across campus and partnerships; and number of last copy items added to the print repository from Illinois libraries. Sue mentioned that this effort was not to preclude a more inclusive and more thoughtful process that the Library can pursue, but was a mandate by campus.

Questions/Comments

• John Wagstaff wondered if for the Goal of “Make a Significant and Visible Societal Impact” there might be something more imaginative to add as an initiative than just “digitization” efforts, such as sponsoring research. Sue responded that they didn’t want to use this exercise to initiate programs that require additional resources and suggested that this would be good to discuss in public engagement discussions/retreats.  She also indicated that DMI advised them to give 2-4 initiatives per goal, and that we are limited in what we can measure, but it should not preclude creative endeavors.
  • Barbara Ford added two other ideas for societal impact that could be added: our information literacy efforts and how you talk about that related to educating citizens, and the activities of the Mortenson Center and the major impact of projects like that with the Gates Foundation. Sue asked if there was a way to measure the impact and to set a target for 2016.  She also mentioned that she and the Office of User Services have been discussing what we all want to track and measure.
  • Cindy Ingold mentioned that these metrics are all numbers, which don’t mean anything if you don’t have the people behind the scene. She added that maybe you can’t measure the impact of the work we’re doing, but there must be some way to document/measure this.  Sue offered that we might be able to provide these stories on our website.
  • Qiang Jin asked if the goals and initiatives of other research university libraries are being considered and how we might take ideas from how they are accomplishing and measuring their goals and initiatives.  She also asked how we might incorporate diversity efforts (like the goals of Inclusive Illinois) as we serve different types of people. Cindy Ingold suggested that as a good idea to put forward for the “unretreat”. Sue mentioned that there is tracking at the campus level of diversity and proportions of underrepresented employees in units.  John Wilkin added that the Library is well beyond the campus targets for percentage of underrepresented civil service staff, and we have targeted an increase in academic professional diversity for 2016 that is a bigger leap than what campus has targeted.
  • Bill Mischo affirmed that services are key, but the plan needed to provide goals that could be measured.  He mentioned that the Library will again do the LibQual survey. He said the 2008 results/comments are on the assessment web page (http://www.library.illinois.edu/assessment/).  At that time almost every 3rd person said we need more electronic backfiles, which we have since purchased. Yet, it would be difficult to put metrics for those, since now there are no more to purchase. We didn’t want to tie this campus plan to LibQual or another methodology we don’t have a commitment for every year.  We do want to track that longitudinally, though.

John summarized and also asked that everyone keep in mind some of the ideas that we could put forward for the “unretreat”.

Lightning Round – Directions and Efforts in Online Accessibility–Eric Kurt

Eric provided a brief overview of some of the recent and upcoming workshops being offered by the Media Commons.  The first workshop was one on making online resources, presentations and videos more accessible.  He emphasized that there are small things that we can each do that will provide a great impact in accessibility.  The Media Commons staff, DRES and CITES are working together to provide information on ways to make online materials more accessible, from basics such as use of color contrasts, and font sizes to the mandate by law to provide captioning for online media resources, as well as audio descriptions.  There will be additional workshops, training and information forthcoming on the Media Commons website [http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/mc/].  The next accessibility workshop will be a specific demo on captioning software and media captioning. Lily Sacharow, a graduate assistant at the Undergraduate Library, and one of the co-presenters for these workshops, also prepared a Libguide about Accessibility and Assistive Technology (http://uiuc.libguides.com/content.php?pid=375814).

Eric mentioned that there are many people and groups focusing on online accessibility now and they are working to connect the dots.  There was a question about a specific phone number for the media commons.  Because Eric and Jake are not often at their desk, the process is to email them, use the Media Commons email (mediacommons@illinois.edu) or call the UGL Circulation Desk and leave a message. Cindy Ingold also mentioned that the web page for Services for Users with Disabilities (http://www.library.illinois.edu/learn/users/usersdisabilities.html) will have an accessibility link in the footer soon. John Wilkin also mentioned the importance of UIUC as far as accommodations for disabilities.

New Business

None

Announcements

• Cindy Ingold thanked Dan Tracy for the Research Showcase yesterday and the team that put it together.
• Karen Hogenboom reminded everyone that the Research Data Services Interest group will meet tomorrow.  Tom Teper, Lynn Wiley and Karen will be discussing the topic of purchasing data.

Adjournment 4:03