University Library Council
Meeting Minutes
Friday, March 3, 2006
2:00-3:30 p.m.
Present: Klumpp (chair), Baughman, Burright, Cavaliero, Dix, DeWitt, Lapin, Francescato, Newhagen, Peres, Ruschoff
Absent: Greer, Shih
Meeting with Council: Charles Lowry, Dean of Libraries
Guests: Senior VP Academic Affairs and Provost William Destler, Jennifer Hanna, Susanna Van Sant, Desider Vikor, Tanner Wray
Meeting called to order at 2:05.
Topic: Minutes of January 27, 2006
Minutes approved without amendment.
Topic: Library Resources for New Programs (William Destler)
Provost Destler charged the council to report to him on procedures and process for evaluating the library needs of new programs. Destler said that with continual changes in curriculum, the creation of new programs, new directions for colleges and departments, there is a constant need for new library resources. The view of the colleges and departments is that the libraries are a campus-funded service, so there is no need to include library costs in the budget for new programs. Meanwhile, the Libraries don’t have a budget item of resources for new curriculum projects. The Council’s charge is to come up with an efficient mechanism to consider and allocate resources for new programs, avoiding confrontation and tensions between the library and the departments.
Destler also said he has been working to include the library serials budget when factoring in annual inflation costs, which had not been done previously.
Lowry said that OCLC has a new tool allowing sophisticated analysis and comparison with similar institutions, so that could be used to get a picture of what other universities do.
DeWitt remarked that some needs could be addressed with “one-time” dollars, to significantly increase a collection, for example. Programs such as the new Farsi language program might need a base budget increase for library staff to handle the collection. It is up to campus administration to decide when that kind of investment is appropriate. It is not appropriate for the deans to produce funds or the library to absorb the costs.
Lowry said that when new programs were proposed, attention to available or needed library resources should be an automatic part of the discussion. Several other members agreed that the amount of new resources needed would depend on the type of new program proposed – a new Ph.D. program would need more research resources than a new master’s degree, for example.
Klumpp distributed copies of procedures and a timeline for responding to the Provost’s charge: gathering some preliminary data (Peres and Lowry) in March, discussing it in April, and presenting a report to the Provost in May.
Topic: Chair’s Report
1) Changing the date of the May 12 meeting to May 5 was considered but could not be decided. Klumpp will follow up via e-mail.
2) Follow up on Senate consideration of open access.
Klumpp has worked with Newhagen on the topic and has come to a tentative strategy to support Senate appointment of a task force to describe the changes taking place in the dissemination of scholarly output, and to capture the diversity of changes taking place in different disciplines across campus. The task force would charge committees on which these changes have an impact to report the changes to the Senate. Klumpp is drafting a proposal for a task force.
Topic: Comments, Questions, Problems or Kudos
Klumpp said such items frequently arise informally at Council meetings and he wanted to create a formal agenda topic for them for now and future meetings. No item was raised for this meeting.
Topic: Liaison Project
The results of interviews with Library Liaisons (LLs) and Departmental Liaisons (DLs) were shared. Several issues emerged:
1) Expectations. The areas in which liaisons are expected to perform are:
- Reference
- Instruction
- Collections
- Communication
2) Expectation #4, Communication, was receiving less attention. DeWitt and Klumpp both found LLs spend a lot of time on fulfilling specific requests rather than performing less precisely defined expectations. Klumpp noted that nobody admitted to doing well at communication. Francescato disagreed; his interviewees indicated satisfaction at the level of communication. Several people found that LLs often bypass the DLs and go straight to the faculty. This was less true of very large departments or where one LL had responsibility for several departments and liaised with the DLs. The Libraries’ assumption is that LLs are familiar with and interested in new developments in the libraries and communicate them regularly to their departments, but there are no articulated instructions on communication.
3) DLs. DLs seldom seemed to know what was expected of them. Newhagen said that if a unit head tells a DL that the function is a formality and has no effect on the DL’s academic career, there is no incentive for the DL to invest energy in the job. In general, DLs feel lost, with no idea of what to do beyond responding to questions, passing through requests and responding to their LL. The library seems not to have made any attempt to train DLs.
Next Steps. After considering various possibilities, the Council decided to proceed with preparing a report to the library of the highlights of the survey, including a request for feedback from the library. Klumpp will prepare a draft report to circulate. Council members were asked to bring additional items for the report to the March meeting.
Meeting adjourned 3:45 p.m.
