September 3, 2015 Meeting of Area Studies

Agenda not yet available.

IAS Staff Meeting

September 3, 2015

Present: Jan Adamczyk, Atoma Batoma, Kit Condill, Lisa Renee Kemplin, Joe Lenkart, Laila Hussein Moustafa, Lynne Rudasill, Antonio Sotomayor, Mara Thacker, and Steve Witt

Announcements & Accolades:

1. Lynne expressed her gratitude to those who helped at the Study Abroad Fair on the quad. Steve expressed his gratitude to Lynne and Laila for sharing information with IAS about this event. 

2. Mara expressed her gratitude to Atoma for hosting the IAS potluck in his home. Atoma also thanked everyone for coming. 

4. Mara expressed her gratitude to all who contributed to the current comic exhibit in the north/south corridor of the Main Library.
5. Possible days for upcoming potluck in IAS were discussed. Thursday seems like a likely day of the week. Look to further notice of an October potluck.
6. There will be pictures of all students and academic hourlies working in IAS posted in Rm 325.
7. ABSESS, which used to be located on the 4^th floor of the Main Library, will become a part of IAS. There has been a desk set aside in RM 329. This will allow the potential of collaboration with Slavic Services. Please welcome Irene Kolchinsky.
8. Katrina has begun a feature on our Facebook page entitled Bookmark Brigade. She would like to feature staff with their reads. These postings would be spread throughout the semester. She has volunteered herself to be the first entry.

Discussion:

1. We have two GA’s this year, Robert Sarwark and Katrina Spencer. Katrina will be designated as the outreach and engagement representative and Robert will be designated for user services, website maintenance, and statistics. Two other projects they will be leading are Glocal Notes and all desk staff meetings. They will be contributing to the training of desk staff. If you have any other projects, please notify Steve. You can also email the GA for help  with a copy to Steve.

2. Due to the 5% reduction in our budget, the hourly students and employees will work 10 hours a week. This includes the hours on desk.

3. The total funds for buying trips this year are $15,000. Applications from those never utilizing these funds will be considered first. These are a first come first served basis. There is a working group that reviews the applications. Mara offered to advise anyone who may be thinking about applying with the process. After the trip, the recipients turn in a report to Steve. We need to make sure that we capture how these trips impact our work.

4. For the next few staff meetings, the topic of goal setting for IAS for 2015-16 will take place. Some ideas discussed today include maintaining the buying trips, collaborating with the Mortensen Center on programs, continuing  iTEC efforts, International Reference, Comic collection to promote and brand our role in collection, capitalizing on the bigger conversations on campus on international engagement, Brazilian comics and Latin America sports collection and programming, summer lab programs, organizing scholar programs using topics of scholarly communications, copyright, publishing in journals, analyzing data and citations. These ideas were summed up in three areas: collection, campus engagement, and summer research labs.

Reports: 

1. The annual report was submitted and a copy was sent before this meeting. The numbers of reference have gone down significantly with some areas not reporting. These statistics are often used for the funding decisions of the library. Make sure that you are recording your work. Steve may also speak to individual areas that were lacking in data.

3. iTEC met yesterday and discussed submitting a budget of $1,500 to help sustain the programming efforts. The first Chai Wai is Wednesday, September 30 from 3-4:40. The title is Around the World in 2D, Comics, Graphics, and Cartooning. Antonio is going to be trained on editing the Glocal Map. Lynne shared the printed map that was used at the Study Abroad Fair. This map is in the supply closet for future functions. 
4. Joe shared some points on International Reference. The statistics show that the reference numbers are much lower than previous years. Our collective strengths include in depth contact, email reference, and in person contacts. An upcoming conference, Global Connections October 9-19, 2016 would bring the decision makers from libraries and organizations to our campus to collaborate on resources. There would be an application process with the first conference starting small with 10 attendees. Applicants would be responsible for their travel costs as well as $3,000 fee. Lynne reminded that they would want to send this information to IFLA. Other places that would receive the information would include state departments and possibly Hathi Trust.