Categories
|
December 17, 2007Management Council Minutes - September 19, 2007Facilitators: D.J. Hoek, Suzette Radford Attendees: Jim Aagaard, Stu Baker, John Blosser, Frank Cervone, Beth Clausen, Russ Clement, Charlotte Cubbage, Peter Devlin, David Easterbrook, Jeffrey Garrett, Catherine Grove, Alex Herrera, D.J. Hoek, Scott Krafft, Harriet Lightman, Katie Melody, Bob Michaelson, Laurel Minott, Sarah Pritchard, Patrick Quinn, Suzette Radford, Clare Roccaforte, Roxanne Sellberg, Denise Shorey, Andrea Stamm, Claire Stewart Guest: Paul Burley Introductions and Announcements and Acknowledgements: Jeff Garrett: We welcome two new staff members: East Asian Studies Librarian Qunying Li begins September 17 and the Special Libraries Division Assistant Kimberly Specht begins September 26. Li's office is Room 2626 in the 2East collection management suite--Shelli Elstein's old office. Her phone number is 1-3953 and her e-mail address is qunying-li@northwestern.edu. Li already has a MeetingMaker account and knows how to use it, so don't hesitate to invite her to a visit to get to know you and your staff. In addition, the selector list has been distributed with additional information to come. *Jeff’s complete remarks may be viewed in Appendix 1 of this document.*The full list may be viewed in Appendix 2 of this document. Katie Melody: Credit Card Handling Policy Review. The University requires that University Departments that accept credit cards as payment for goods or services annually review their acceptance policies as part of an industry compliance validation process. I will forward to Management Council members the email sent to me by the Bursar’s Office that details how credit card numbers must be safeguarded by staff. There are very specific procedures laid out in the email. If after reading the email you have any questions about a procedure, please do not hesitate to contact me. Denise Shorey: Monday we offered Grad Student tours through The Graduate School. Over 120 students came. Thanks to Jeannette Moss for coordinating and to Harriet Lightman, Scott Garton, Kevin Leonard, Jami Xu, and Virginia Kerr for giving tours. Peter Devlin: All Librarian absence reports for August are due to Peter on Monday. Non-librarianexempt staff no longer submit paper forms, using only the online form. Roxanne: Welcome Paul Burley in for Roberto Sarmiento. David Easterbrook: Three announcements: First, Patricia Ogedengbe, Librarian of Africana, has been named a Fulbright Scholar for 2007–2008. The focus of Patricia’s work is “Research on Public Awareness Materials of HIV/AIDS Campaigns in Nigeria.” Second, I am sorry to announce the resignation of John Kannenberg from Africana’s Library Assistant position. We in Africana would like in particular to gratefully acknowledge the manner in which he contributed his design skills to reshaping our website, promoting appreciation of our collections through exhibition and poster design and through the creation of our HIV/AIDS poster video. Finally, I would like to share the sense of gratitude to NUL I experienced while attending last month’s IFLA conference in Durban, South Africa. Their comments about our work here at NUL were most focused on the fact that we lend our materials through interlibrary loan to African institutions as well as to our work in sharing our resources over the years through cooperative microfilming projects and now with digital efforts. Kathleen Bethel and Frank Cervone also attended this year’s IFLA conference. We plan to sponsor a brown bag lunch for the library staff in October to share more with you about our experiences. Claire Stewart: An iPod-based tour of the library is complete and will be available for checkout from Circulation within the week. A team of staff from departments throughout the library did an excellent job putting together the tour, which will also be available for download from the library's web site. Those contributing to the creation of the tour: Eli Brooke, Jason Kruse, Tom O'Connell, Natalie Pelster, Suzette Radford, Caitlin Savage, Devin Savage, and Dan Zellner. Thanks also to Laurel Minott, for funding the equipment purchase, GovInfo for providing lamination, and Malina Belcheva-Handzhieva in Conservation, for preparing the wall map. Two video iPods will be available for checkout to Northwestern community members, and an audio-only MP3 player will be available for checkout by anyone, including the general public. Harriet Lightman: The 6th annual Electronic Resources Forum will take place on Monday, September 24. Events begin at 8:30, and continue until 6 in the evening. Venues are the Ver Steeg Faculty Lounge, the Forum Room, the Video Theater, the 2 East Staff Training Lab, the 2 East Reference Classroom, the two computer labs on the lower level (rooms B182 and B183), and the 3rd floor lobby of Deering (the area in front of Special Collections). For ERF participants, access to the 3rd floor of Deering will be through the Deering building only -- the architecture reading room will be closed. The library is closed to the public at 5 PM on Sept. 24. However, ERF participants who have left the building and wish to return for the reception may do so. Security will have a list of participants. Please contact Harriet or Jeeyuhn Kang with questions and comments. Sarah Pritchard: Many thanks to all library staff who helped with the extended visit from the librarians and archivists of the Field Museum, on Tuesday, September 18. Tours and demos were conducted by numerous individuals from Digital Media, IT, Special Collections, Archives, Reference, SEL, Africana, Tech Services and other areas. We anticipate more collaborations with the Field in the future, both through the library and of course through the assortment of their scientists and curators who serve as adjunct NUL faculty (mostly in the anthropology and earth sciences departments). Also, NUL's participation in the Chicago Festival of Maps was highlighted in an article in the Chicago Tribune, Tuesday Sept. 18. Clare Roccaforte and Beth Clausen attended the press briefing which featured remarks by Mayor Daley. For more about the Festival, see www.festivalofmaps.org. Clare Roccaforte: The plasma screen is up and running in the main corridor across from the Circulation desk. Current slides include a welcome for new students and parents; a welcome for ERF participants; a listing of seminar rooms; highlights from the collection; new student tour times; and the closing time of the library. Currently Julie Patton is maintaining the content; this will likely change in the future as we establish further protocol. Feedback is welcome. Laurel Minott: Shared new publications: Resource guide, Bookmark, and the Bookmark quick-start guide. If your area needs more copies, please see Sherie Stein.
Administrative Committee Report (Roxanne Sellberg) Laurel Minott began with remarks on the Public Services division: The Public Services Division is committed to intellectual freedom, excellent service and access to information. The Public Services Divisions’ energies are now primarily focused on three goals in the Library’s Strategic Plan: advancing student learning, supporting faculty research and teaching and sustaining world class resources of long-term cultural importance Some reorganization took place in the Division late last year while the library was in the early stages of the strategic planning process. The Interlibrary Loan Department and the Reserve/ Core Collection units became part of a new department, Resource Sharing and Reserve Collections (RSRC) reporting to Beth Clausen. The Reserve and Interlibrary Loan Departments share many characteristics and cross-training and education has begun in Core/Reserve and ILL. The staff in RSRC is now becoming familiar with the range of activities the Department currently provides. In the future, it will look at the operations, workflow, and problems in this new configuration. RSRC is now positioned to think about new types of services that can be offered to faculty and students. She then proceeded to discuss Divisional Goals Advance student learning The first step in achieving this goal is the development of a robust and coordinated library-wide information literacy program which emphasizes outreach, promotion and greater visibility. While the home of this initiative is the Reference Department,the creation of an Instruction and Outreach Services Committee will insure that it is a library-wide effort. NU was fortunate to have a team accepted into the dual-track Illinois Immersion Program. Natalie Pelster was in the Program Track and Jeannette Moss was in the Teacher Track.
Selection is still important but the use of approval plans and bundling of resources into pages has had an impact on the amount of time required for collection development. The business of the Public Services Division is delivering services on the frontline. It’s very appropriate that the new Academic Liaison Services department that has been designed to meet faculty needs make its home in Public Services. ALS will provide collection development, fund management, instruction, outreach and reference assistance. It will be comprised of two people from what was formerly Collection Development, the East Asian Studies librarian, the African-American Studies librarian and, when the position is filled, the Scholarly Communications librarian. In addition, there will be four coordinator positions: the first is Science with Bob Michaelson. The 3 coordinator positions to be filled are Humanities Coordinator, Social Sciences Coordinator and Area and Interdisciplinary Studies Coordinator. Note that the ALS department head will also assume one of the coordinator roles in either the Humanities, the Social Sciences or Area and Interdisciplinary Studies. Subject specialists will be grouped under one of these coordinators. What’s really important about this new department is what it will provide to faculty and graduate students – one stop shopping. Faculty don’t have to know anything about the organization of the library, they just need to know the name of their liaison. That one person will be able to provide information and assistance whether it is a matter of a reserve list, buying a book, providing classroom instruction or checking library holdings. The thinking behind ALS is that an alignment of collection development, instruction and liaison activities will encourage closer ties to the faculty. Both ALS and RSRC will have important collaborations with the Digital Collections Department. As you know, interviews have been scheduled for the ALS head. The library will be assuming a more active role in campus discussions of scholarly communication. We’re currently undertaking a search for a Scholarly Communications librarianC creating an operational program plan to outline the education advocacy and outreach activities that the Library must undertake to engage faculty in fruitful discussions of scholarly communication. It’s our job to develop faculty and administration awareness of copyright rights, open access initiatives and issues related to acquiring and preserving the digital record. As reorganization in the Public Services Division progresses, the issues below will require a great deal of discussion (some of it library-wide) and a lot of planning. The Division will: • Continue to exam how services need to be adapted and in some cases changed radically in order to best meet patron expectations and needs. In addition, we are looking differently at the Schaffner Library in terms of how we want to provide services in Chicago and what type of staffing can offer appropriate support for adult learners. Frank Cervone shared the progress of the IT Division: The IT division is different from other divisions in the Library. The biggest issue for IT during the re-org was how best to organize services and the people who deliver those services within the context of what we do here. In re-thinking the IT division, we eliminated the concept of departments. Instead, there are 4 functional areas (essentially teams): Related to this, then, is how we do management within the division. Stu will be managing day-to-day support for the areas. Additionally we will have 2 coordinators who will serve as interface for constituents for outside the library: Jim Aagaard will be the coordinator for networking. Bob Trautvetter will coordinate desktop support, also working closely with Academic Technologies. At a conceptual level, we need to determine how all the levels of all the components fit together and we need to figure out what is most important to do next. Laurel Minott asked where the IT department is with the conversion. Frank replied that most responsibilities have been taken over, but they are still working on new job descriptions and hiring new staff. Overall, they are well in to the switch. Roxanne Sellberg asked if the teams will have leaders and who will we call for help. Frank responded that for desktop and lab support, we should still call the virtual help desk. The rest will depend on the question. Sarah Pritchard wrapped up by emphasizing that the new organization divides responsibilities across the divisions. She emphasized the need to differentiate between the general collections and special collections. She noted that a great deal of our work in general collections has been divided between subject areas and managing of packaging and pricing, etc. so the resulting new department for academic liaison services really is focused on services. It is now much broader than being a selector. We are now able to be better aligned with academic programs on campus.The new Academic Liaison Services is key to this and viewing collection work as a service.In addition, concepts in reference and public services emphasize that in some situations place is more important than subject resulting in Schaffner becoming a downtown library rather than just a continuing education library; the same with SEL potentially becoming a “North Campus Library.” Finally, we will be trying to put out another draft by end of month or early October, somewhat delayed but hopefully just in time for the Board of Governors meeting. Outside of the Fall Quarter library meeting which will be in mid-November, please let Sarah or AULs know if your departments would like additional info or a meeting to clarify the changes. Sarah also added that the budget process for FY09 has begun. The strategic plan fits into this budget and also into development work and the campus’ growth. Discussion of Library Users and Library Staff Working Together in the Same Spaces (Laurel Minott) - 20 minutes This discussion was triggered by a letter from an alum about talking in the Library: users can’t do their work because Library staff is too loud. It is a given that where there is a service desk, but also have had complaints about talking in the towers and in the reading rooms. While the issue in part becomes a conflict between our ability to do our work and for users to be able to do theirs, please take this opportunity to have a discussion with your units about paying attention to that voices may carry and being mindful that there are people studying around us. (Laurel clarified that the alum was aware of the need for staff to discuss matters, but felt that the conversation had gone on beyond what was “necessary” talk.) David Easterbrook mentioned that this something he has dealt with in Africana and he hoped that it would be shared with those departments who had received the complaints. Sarah Pritchard replied that the departments where these complaints happened have been informed. David added that he has let people know that there are other places where people can work that are quieter. Sarah Pritchard asked the MC to consider zoning quiet areas, adding that many users make default assumptions about the Library as a “quiet area”. Claire Stewart responded that zoning a great idea, but as we zone, we need to keep in mind the physical space and how many sound tunnels there are in the library. Bob Michaelson noted that the SEL staff lounge is a whisper tunnel to the public area. We would like to have areas where students have collaborative area and other areas where there is quiet. Russ Clement noted that Deering is an acoustically alive space. Facilities staff and people who visit are not always aware of their volume. Sarah Pritchard encouraged department heads and staff to address disruptive visitors. Laurel Minott noted that there are always complaints with the seminar rooms because people leaving are disruptive. She also added that Ver Steeg: doors need to be closed during events. In the short run, we need simply to remind our staff to be mindful of volume and where you are having conversations. Laurel proposed that Public Serivices tackle the towers and departments within Public Services and that other departments address their areas. This topic will be in the MC agenda next month to see what people have come up with.
There has been a flurry of activity among CIC members, mostly discussions on the shared digital repository and Google project Google project status: Google is just beginning analytical work, looking at collections and deciding where they want to focus their efforts. We still don’t really know what order the libraries will be done in. They have submitted forms for submitting metadata. We realized that we have to decide whether or not to include Pritzker and Galter. The United Library is legally not a part of the University and therefore is not obligated to participate. There have been many conference calls and planning, but not much made specific to individual libraries. Sarah is a little nervous about over-reliance on bibliographic records because they do not reveal all the connections and strengths within the collections. Shared Digital Repository status: This project has taken an interesting turn. The original plan was that we would have a repository with shared governance and funding based at Michigan. Now, because Michigan and Indiana have the massive hardware for shared storage, we are looking at a new approach that will offer a new joint entity (formed by Michigan and Indiana) that will build the actual architecture. Then the CIC will have a Memorandum of Understanding with the Michigan/Indiana group to put the CIC digital items on their architecture. In this model, in theory, if we have a disagreement, we can pick up our items and leave. Also, the depository would be opened up to other non-CIC university partners. This new proposal was difficult to discuss at first because it moved away from the idea of a unique CIC repository. But it was useful because we differentiated hardware/storage needs from sharing/interface needs. This approach gives us a lot more flexibility in the long run. A note on the United Library: The NU Library will be inviting Beth Sheppard to MC or the Assembly some time this fall. Please check out the newly revamped the United Library website. Sarah is involved with much Board of Governors work at the moment, including working on their annual letter. The board is very keen on supporting the library in the eyes of the University administration so that the library stays competitive, and their focus is primarily on collections. Questions: Beth Clausen asked about news on the new heads of Pritzker Library. Sarah replied that she interviewed two candidates and conferred with Dean VanZant, but has not heard anything further. New Business We are pleased to welcome Qunying Li to Northwestern as our new East Asian Studies Librarian. Li comes to us from Arizona State University, where she was the Chinese Studies Librarian since 2001 and South Asian Studies Librarian since 2005. Li has her library degree from the University of Alabama. Before coming to the United States, she received her M.A. in British and American Literature from the Beijing Foreign Studies University in 1994. Li also has a degree in education from Fuzhou Teachers College in China where she studied Chinese literature, philosophy, and political science. In addition to her duties as East Asian Studies Librarian, Li will be assuming selection and liaison responsibilities for the School of Education and Social Policy. She will be assigned to the new Academic Liaison Services Department as soon as this department has been constituted and a department head has been appointed. Li's office is Room 2626 in the 2East collection management suite--Shelli Elstein's old office. Her phone number is 1-3953 and her e-mail address is qunying-li@northwestern.edu. Li already has a MeetingMaker account and knows how to use it, so don't hesitate to invite her to a visit to get to know you and your staff! We are also pleased to announce that our search for an administrative assistant for the new Special Libraries Division has been concluded successfully. Kimberly Specht was offered and has accepted the position, and her first day will be September 26. Kim graduated from Northwestern with a degree in violin performance in June 2006. Over the past year, she has been studying arts management at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Germany, and working as an administrative assistant at the Carl Duisberg Center, also in Cologne. At Northwestern, she was Student Marketing Manager for Pick-Staiger Concert Hall--and worked in our own Music Library during the summer of 2006. Kim will be working for the foreseeable future in 2East, alongside Jeeyuhn Kang, reporting to the AUL for Special Libraries. Jeff wishes to express his sincere thanks to Charlotte Cubbage and Jeeyuhn Kang for conducting this search from beginning to end, even though the new position is assigned to an entirely different division. Finally, Jeff announced that a plan is now in place to cover all selection duties going into fall quarter. All assignments, old and new, have been circulated to selectors and will soon be posted to the online roster at www.library.northwestern.edu/collections/selectors.html. Assignments indicated as "acting" have been indicated as such on the mailing to the NUL Selectors List. They will remain in effect: a.) until a vacancy is filled; b.) subject to review at the end of fall quarter; or c.) subject to a more permanent solution still in process. "Acting" assignments may become permanent, but should not be assumed to be. Subject to every individual's review and possible last-minute correction, this plan goes into effect immediately. New selectors will be added to the NUL Selectors List for all relevant announcements. For new selectors, training, including information on budget and other matters, will be provided soon. The main thing right now is for all selectors to proactively inform their departments and programs of their liaison duties and availability to conduct tours and introductory classes, and to offer to be as helpful as possible for new students and faculty as the academic year begins. Please contact Jeff or Laurel with any questions concerning this list. Appendix 2: Current selector assignments distributed by Jeff Garrett on September 19, 2007 via email. Following about six weeks of discussions in Administrative Committee and with many of you (and your supervisors), we now have a plan in place to cover all selection duties going into fall quarter. Both old and new assignments--the latter indicated by an asterisk (*)--are listed below. Assignments indicated as "acting" will remain in effect: a.) until a vacancy is filled; b.) subject to review at the end of fall quarter; or c.) subject to a more permanent solution still in process. "Acting" assignments may become permanent, but should not be assumed to be. Subject to every individual's review and possible last-minute correction, this plan goes into effect immediately and will be posted to the Library's list of subject specialists linked to from the NUL home page. New selectors will be added to the NUL Selectors List for all relevant announcements. For new selectors, training, including information on budget and other matters, will be provided soon. The main thing right now is for all selectors to proactively inform their departments and programs of their liaison duties and availability to conduct tours and introductory classes, and to offer to be as helpful as possible for new students and faculty as the academic year begins. Please contact me or Laurel with any questions concerning this list: African-American Studies Kathleen Bethel First, I am very pleased to announce that Patricia Ogedengbe, Librarian of Africana, has been named a Fulbright Scholar for 2007-2008. The focus of Patricia’s work is “Research on Public Awareness Materials of HIV/AIDS Campaigns in Nigeria.” For a period of about six months beginning in late October, Patricia will be Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Library Science at Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. Her work to compile a comprehensive collection of public awareness materials in a variety of formats and research their effectiveness will result in both a deposit of such materials in the library at Bayero University as well as here in at Northwestern. While assisting Bayero University in developing its own collection of HIV/AIDS awareness materials, Patricia will contribute in a major way to the geographic expansion of Herkosvits Library holdings of such materials. Her project has clear links to other NU African HIV/AIDS initiatives including the Gates Foundation REACH award to the Program of African Studies which is also centered in Nigeria and to the many undergraduate curriculum and research initiatives on campus in this area with which she has worked closely in recent years. Second, I am sorry to announce the resignation of John Kannenberg from Africana’s Library Assistant position. John held two positions in Africana separated by two positions in Circulation during his work at Northwestern University Library. We in Africana would like in particular to gratefully acknowledge the manner in which he contributed his design skills to reshaping our website, promoting appreciation of our collections through exhibition and poster design and through the creation of our HIV/AIDS poster video. It was a pleasant surprise for me while in South Africa last month to receive positive comments about his work encountered by many on the web. During the first day John’s position was vacant last week, I was contacted by the Provost’s Office wondering who did those Africana posters--was if it was a library staff member whose skills might be borrowed? John begins his new position as web designer for Rotary International, next week. Third, I would like to share a sense of gratitude to Northwestern University Library I experienced while attending last month’s IFLA conference in Durban, South Africa. I was the recipient of the comments but they came because of the shared commitment on the part of our entire organization to making our Africana resources widely accessible to African users. This was the first time IFLA had met in Africa south of the Sahara since meeting in Nairobi in 1984. The conference had the largest number of African librarian delegates, about a thousand, that had ever before attended an IFLA conference. These librarians represented the breadth of library work in African institutions. Their comments about our work her at NUL were most focused on the fact that we lend our materials through interlibrary loan to African institutions as well as to our work in sharing our resources over the years through cooperative microfilming projects and now with digital efforts. Kathleen Bethel and Frank Cervone also attended this year’s IFLA conference. We plan to sponsor a brown bag lunch for the library staff in October to share more with you about our experiences. Tuesday, September 4 Peter Devlin participated in the first part of the meeting, when plans for interviewing internal candidates for the ALS and DC department head positions were discussed. Peter promised to write up an outline for discussion with all members of the two search committees. Several administrative travel requests were discussed and/or approved. Sarah reported on discussions with personnel from risk management, facilities, and university police about access to the Library dock during the next two years while Campus Drive is closed between the Library and the Allen Center parking lot. Our regular delivery visitors will be issued key cards allowing them to pass from the southern part of Campus Drive to the Library. Library personnel will have to facilitate access for trucks making non-routine deliveries. Receiving room staff will be able to raise the south Campus Drive gate by remote control; there will be a telephone near that gate. A few other selected library staff members will get key cards, so that they can raise the gate when the receiving room is not open, if necessary. Roxanne and Jeff shared their plans for redistributing collection management assignments as part of the reorganization. It was decided that the list of issues would be shared with MC, but that final decisions about a number of details would have to wait until after the ALS department head interviews. Frank gave an update on progress toward the delivery and set up of the plasma screen display system near the Main Library entrance. We are still on schedule to have it working by the beginning of Fall Quarter. He also reported that the IT equipment plan for FY08 would not be ready for a couple more months. Sarah announced that NUL would buy 15 copies of the new ARL commemorative book. Monday, September 10 John Blosser, Peter Devlin, and Andrea Stamm participated in the first part of the meeting, when plans for interviewing internal candidates for the ALS and DC department head positions were finalized. Peter stayed for a discussion of potential interim and long term selector assignments. A few issues related to those assignments were tabled, pending additional consultation, until the following meeting. Sarah reported on the recent CIC library directors meeting, the primary topic at which was proposals for a CIC shared digital repository. She will summarize the issues in her next UL report to Management Council. |
