Libraries, Media, and Computing committee (LMAC) minutes
April 11, 2001
In attendance: Keith Ward, Karen Goldstein, Eric Scharrer, Pepa Lago-Grana, Renee Houston, Marilyn
Mitchell, Shelley Owen, Mark Reinitz, Bill Barry, ex officio
1). Karen Goldstein reported on her recommendations regarding the strategic planning structure for technology issues at UPS, and presented an illustrative flow chart. Several different groups will interact for purposes of strategic planning. The specific role of lmac will be to provide input to the Technology Planning
Group to help develop policies, plans, and procedures for academic computing.
Several committee members pointed out that faculty receive a daunting amount of email concerning technology issues. Karen suggested that details of technology initiatives should be put on a website, and that brief emails should be sent to faculty when appropriate alerting them to changes and initiatives, and directing them to the website for details.
Karen also reported that advertisements have been placed in the Chronicle and on various relevant websites for the position of director of OIS.
2). Marilyn Mitchell reported on matters of current concern in the library. She brought up the need to attend to copyright issues. She pointed out that librarians don’t want to be “copyright police,” and she argued that the university should develop a clear and consistent policy regarding copyright issues. She expressed special concern about public showing of videos from the library collection, and about electronic reproduction
(e.g., of images on websites, and of electronic distribution of copyrighted materials). Karen proposed that the best way to deal with these issues was to bring them to the university cabinet, who could assign a group to write a policy for review. Marilyn pointed out that the current policy document, written by the university attorney, was overly restrictive. Karen reiterated that a group, rather than an attorney, should provide a policy statement.
Marilyn also mentioned that some faculty were upset that instructional materials that they had ordered through their library budgets were available to the entire faculty. Marilyn mentioned that the library policy was that any materials purchased using the library budget were shared resources available for multiple use.
3). It was decided that the assessment subcommittee should meet prior to the next lmac meeting to provide a set of recommendations about how to proceed with the ongoing technology assessment being carried out by the committee.
Respectfully submitted,
Mark Reinitz
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