October 15, 2012 Meeting of Administrative Council

1. rinciples for listings in user wayfinding tools  (Searing)
2. HathiTrust suit and its implications for us (Kaufman)
3. Card catalog update and follow-up to Oct 15 Libnews message (Teper)
4. Potential for GEO strike and possible impact on Library

 

Paula Kaufman, chair; Pat Allen, JoAnn Jacoby, Jenny Johnson, Mary Laskowski, Chris Quinn, Lisa Romero, Lynne Rudasill, Mary Schlembach, Sue Searing, Tom Teper, Sandy Wolf; Recording-Kim Matherly

1.                   Principles for listings in user wayfinding tools – Searing
See attached document.

Wayfinding tools should reflect the language of the users not the internal organization of the Library.
Building directories should be updated yearly. Paula suggested we think ahead about installing digital directories where patrons can put in what they want and get an answer.

Division coordinators should share the principles document with their divisions and see if there need to be any changes.

2.            Announcement
The LSD/PSED merger is going forward. The two groups are working on bylaws changes, etc. Faculty will have the opportunity to consider whatever the divisions recommend.

October 26 is the Morrill Act 150 Year celebration. Scott Schwartz will be playing an over the shoulder horn during the celebration and there will be several exhibits around campus.

3.            Potential for GEO strike and possible impact on the Library – Kelly, Woodard 
Beth and Cindy gave an update on negotiations with the unions. 3700 voted on October 9 to accept the contract. 698 voted on October 10 to accept their contract. There has been no agreement on salaries for LOAs, who are new to this union. A separate MOU will be written for this section.

The highlights for 3700 include a step in year one of contract; the difference between step and percentage in back pay; this year a 4% step, then steps are frozen with no step next year. There will be no step if the unions go into long negotiation in the next contract. Big advantage to the union is the steps in addition to campus wage program.

Library specialist (698) signed a similar contract that went along with the campus wage program. Senior Library Specialist were give a $400 wage increase, after four years. LOAs are in negotiation for 3% backpay. (since we don’t have agreement on this yet and I don’t think we’re going to, I don’t think we want to include this.) There was a lot of old language in side letters from previous contracts for both unions that was incorporated into the contract rather than simply agreeing to include old side letters. The new contract does not allow side letters. They were not granted shift differentials or additional sick days. (I don’t think we want to put in the stuff that they asked for and didn’t get, so I think we should delete this part.)

Negotiations will begin again next summer and it is expected that they will probably ask for some of the same things—shift differential for weekends, flex schedules, and more money. They have been granted a one-hour paid leave to go do union voting in the new contract. LOAs don’t have salary negotiated yet, but everything else has been agreed to.

We only have 3 GAs eligible for GEO, so even if they strike it won’t pose a huge impact for the Library. GAs do have 13 days sick leave that they can use if they do go on strike. You would use the same policies as you normally do for sick leave use. If the normal requirement is that the employee needs a doctor’s note to come back to work after three day’s absence, then supervisors cannot change that policy just because they think an employee is calling in sick in sympathy for the strike. There was some discussion of being proactive about finding out who would be impacted by a potential Champaign School teachers’ strike.

4.                   HathiTrust suit and its implications for us – Kaufman
There are some implications for us. There were several findings in the summary judgment; this never went to trial. 1) It did not deal with orphan works. Michigan withdrew its program for orphan works, so the judge would not rule on that point. 2) The Author’s Guild has no standing. There were some individual authors in the suit that could go forward. 3) Mass digitization is transformative so it falls under fair use. It is transformative because it can be searched and indexed and it doesn’t matter if it is millions of books or three books. It promotes the progress of science and useful arts. 4) Digitization is lawful and meets copyright requirements because it makes materials accessible to the print disabled, which is a requirement for libraries to do this. We need to think about what that means for us.This also gives us pause to think differently about what we do for our print disabled patrons; what must we do for them. It leaves open issues about whether we do some sort of digitization on demand for print disabled; looking at what goes on reserve that’s not electronic and make them available.

DRES has, in the past, taken materials and digitized them for the disabled, which raises service and resource issues for us. The National Federation for the Blind was not a co-defendant with the HathiTrust and the other universities that were sued, but they filed an Amicus brief and are looking at the summary judgment very carefully and closely. UIUC will be looking at this closely. We may have patrons coming to us to have things digitized immediately. Do we have a stronger obligation to our constituency, or for the public at large? We need to think about getting that material into the HathiTrust. This is another confirmation of Libraries’ rights and obligations to use fair use. Basically this says that the provisions of Section 8 of the copyright law do not negate the fair use that’s given to us in Section 107.

There is another set of issues emerging that relates to MOOCS. There is a campus committee that is looking at our Coursera arrangements; libraries will have enormous difficulty supporting MOOC courses. Licensed content that we already license cannot be extended to hundreds of thousands of potential users without new contracts. UPENN is doing copyright clearances for the MOOC courses. They couldn’t get permissions from many places and some publishers charge $670 for each image ($35,000 for the course).

The online education summit on campus on November 1 will focus on MOOCS and Coursera. Sue will forward information about the summit so someone can go.

Paula will talk more about this at the next Faculty meeting.

5.                   Card catalog update and follow-up to Oct 15 Libnews message – Teper

Paula sent the message out to the Deans.

 

The plan is the same that was outlined at the faculty meeting September 19.

• Move the Serial Record to Room 200
• Move the Thesis File to Room 200
• Move the Shelf List to the Sub-basement of the Stacks
• Discard the General Catalog – a record that is out of date, missing hundreds of-thousands of cards, etc.

 

In order to accomplish this task, the University Library will do the following:

• Recycle the cards from the General Catalog
• Move the empty card catalog furniture of similar styles into Room 200 (for aesthetics) and the sub-basement (for storage efficiency)
• Relocate the cards as necessary to fill the empty cabinets
• Surplus the remaining empty cabinets.