Faculty Library Committee Meeting Minutes 10-19-06
Members present: B. Acker, B. Brown, J. Burroughs, S. Mills, S. Richter, T.
Sobieszczyk, P. Williams, A. Ware
Ex-Officio present: Dean Allen
Members absent/excused: K. Frantzreb
The meeting was called to order at 8:10 AM by Chair Ware.
The 9/21/06 minutes were amended and approved.
Communications:
a) Dean Allen provided several updates from the library.
Personnel issues:
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Two faculty librarians have resigned—Colleen Major and Sebastian Derry
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Librarian Erling Oelz will be retiring and plans are underway for a party.
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A classified staff person has been hired for circulation and the copy center
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An adjunct faculty pool is being established to relieve tenure faculty of
evening, weekend, and holiday hours
Activities:
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The Library participated in the Festival of the Book and raised $500 for the
event with the help of the Friends of the Library.
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The Library participated in the Day of Dialogue. It hosted a panel discussion
with four diverse student library enthusiasts.
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The Library will provide tours of archives during Family Weekend.
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Dean Allen is busy working on getting fundraising going again. The library
currently has a temporary fund raiser, but will work on getting a permanent
position.
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The donors’ news letter will be resurrected and Dean Allen would like the
Faculty Library Committee’s help in naming it. It will go to all donors not just
Friends of the Library.
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The website is being redesigned.
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The second Libqual survey will begin next week. Kate Zoellner and Sue
Samson will conduct a content analysis that will be shared with the
committee.
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Several library faculty attended a seminar on visioning the future of university
libraries and how students gather information. The guest speaker was the
OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) Vice President. The OCLC is an
international utility that helps libraries connect with other libraries. The
faculty library could share some of the highlights from the seminar. One
interesting phenomena is that a high number of students are turning to their
parents about how to find information.
When questioned how she envisioned the committee being of service, Dean Allen
responded with the following areas for support.
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Identify the intersection between faculty and students so the library can
support them.
Evaluate the building for effective use. She has not seen students working
together in study rooms and is curious about this.
Inform the library of the academic research taking place.
Increase interaction between the library faculty and the faculty.
Plan events such as the Author’s Reception. The event is combined with the
recognition of patents at other universities.
Align library services and collection with the academic growth and University
strategic planning.
Move the university into the next level of technology – creation of digital
collections and scholarly communication
Progress from technological literacy to better use of technology, including
search and management tools –knowing what to do with technical information
once it’s found.
Develop Native American cultural histories in collaboration with Tribal
Colleges.
Improve staff efficiency – should the collections budget increase there is a
shortage of staff to process.
Discuss project planning and management
She was asked how the library will cover the workload in relation to the
upcoming vacancies. Part of the work will spread to other library faculty and the
adjunct faculty pool with help with reference desk coverage. It is always a
hardship when faculty leave. It takes time to fill the positions and recruiting and
hiring is done year around.
b)
The committee was provided with the agenda for the department library
representative meeting. The meeting will take place from 12:10-1:00 on 10/19/06
and lunch will be provided. There will be an overview of the acquisition budget
and collection development by Barry Brown and Dean Allen will provide the
Library’s Strategic Vision. New this year will be the chair of the Faculty Library
Committee introducing the representatives to the committee. There will also be
time for the representatives to break out in groups with their liaison librarians for
discussion and questions.
Unfinished Business:
a) Chair Ware has not had the opportunity to work on procedures. Camie worked on a
reference document originally designed for the chair’s binder. This will be
disseminated to members for comments.
b) Chair Ware gave a committee report at the October 12th Faculty Senate meeting.
New Business:
a) Barry Brown provided a handout on the allocation budget. The library now has
better parity with larger universities in terms of access to journals and other
electronic resources.
Electronic books can be acquired through the approval plan. Most of the electronic
books have been purchased in clumps through the Net Library Consortia
opportunity. A study at Stanford University found that the average availability of
electronic material was 17% and some of the sciences had a 50% availability rate.
The library will look into the availability of digitized music scores.
Money has been moved from the library allocation into the new core approval plan.
The plan involves setting profiles for orders. Departments will be asked to evaluate
the value of the core plan. It was noted that the approval plan does not work in
Modern and Classical Languages and Literature. There are supplemental funds to
cover items not captured by the core approval plan. The library’s goal is to meet
the needs of all departments. Library Liaisons will still be taking book orders.
Orders should take place year round not just on the biannual deadline dates.
The committee will be informed about how the money moves and the allocation
formula at a separate meeting.
The dean is holding $49,000 in reserve to see where funds are needed.
Members inquired about how to get new journals. The best way is to cancel an
existing journal or a similarly priced continuing resource. The department
representative should seek assistance from their library liaison. Another option is
to acquire new monies or gift funds / endowments. It is important that the library
liaisons are aware of department’s priorities / wish lists.
Financially, the library is not in bad shape. However there are areas of concern.
There is no budget for student assistance and extended hours funding is still
pending from the administration. There is no line item for student employees.
Salary lines are constrained and there is no provision for specialists or contract
personnel. Dean Allen is looking at priorities in hiring and salary savings. There
are a lot of personnel issues and shifts are likely to occur to cover services.
The Executive Officers will begin a process to realign budgets with priorities. Each
areas operational plan is due in January and budgets could change.
This is a legislative year and the library is hoping for a 7% increase to keep up with
inflation. This is difficult to predict, especially considering the governors proposal
of 50 million to cap tuition. In the past collection inflation has been considered
separately.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 AM.