Library Managers, November 21, 2007
9:30 a.m., Davis
Present: Allan Bell, Eric Boyd, Betty Graf, Jennifer Haas, Mark Haslett (Chair), Michele Laing, Sharon Lamont, Alex McCulloch, Susan Mavor, Richard Pinnell, Susan Routliffe, Mary Stanley, Linda Teather, Debbie Tytko, Annette Dandyk (Recorder)
Regrets: Shabiran Rahman
- Chair’s Remarks
- Recognition and Commendation
Anniversaries:
November 4 - Derek Scoular, Circulation Services, 5 years
November 8 - Anne Unger, LAU, 25 years
Seven library staff and two library teams received special recognition awards.
- Updates
Travel:
Sharon and Susan R- LibQual and the AUL Directors meeting, Ottawa, October.
Allan – ODESI, Ottawa, October.
Jennifer – NISO, Texas, November.
Allan - ExLibris ARL directors meeting, Cambridge MA, November.
Sandra Keys will attend DINO, Toronto, December.
Mark - OCUL Directors meeting, London, November.
Susan R attended a pre-directors meeting about Scholars Portal as an archive on Mark’s behalf.
Mark has travelled to Chicago twice for ARL Executive Director search committee meetings and will go to Washington in December.
He will attend the CARL Directors’ study tour in UK at the end of November.
Mark spoke at Senate on November 19 focusing on the Library as a key part of UW’s research structure - celebrating collaboration and leadership.
UW report card – President Johnston looks at the reputational ratings - UW always does well. This year McLean’s gathered their data from various sources.
An all staff meeting will be scheduled in the new year.
Susan R gave a brief report on work being done campus wide to establish an educational facility in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Library has been asked to provide some feedback. The first thing UW will need to do is fulfill the licensure requirements; if that is successful the next step will be accreditation for the programs to be offered. Ten standards of performance must be met to obtain the license. One of the standards pertains to the Library and other information resources. Susan has done a quick preliminary review of library policies, procedures and regulations to identify we might be able to use as is and what might have to be created specifically for a library in Abu Dhabi.
- Around the Table Updates
Linda – the CARL stats are almost ready for submission. She hopes to have a draft out to Managers for review by end of day today. The TUG Stats and Reports group has been working with the TUG Cognos team to develop refresher courses on mandatory best practices. They will be offered at Waterloo in January. At least one major user from each department should attend.
Jennifer – an analysis has been done on the laptop comments cards – there were no surprises. Davis ISR has been recording the questions asked at the Information Desk into an Access database. It is hoped an assessment will provide detailed information about what is being asked at the Desk. The database walks people through a series of questions; the result is that staff now record the data consistently. ISR is interviewing for two UW work placement students in the winter term. Interviews for the Optometry Librarian vacancy are scheduled for next week.
Debbie – a number of LAU staff are working as often as possible on getting ERM data into SFX in preparation for the Verde system; 85-90 % has been completed. Verde training begins next work.
Alex – this past summer the Alumni Office arranged for the Watcard Office to issue Watcards to new alumni. This change had a minor, negative impact on the library’s interface to Quest, however the library was able to tweak the interface so that now, for alumni who get a Watcard, TRELLIS will be automatically updated with the alumni information. Work on a weeding project and on a project to transfer 38,000 items to the Annex is going well.
Michele – expects that the vacant Library Clerk position will be filled by the end of the week. Amy Townsend has accepted another position; Michele anticipates posting that vacancy before Christmas or early in January.
Allan – the prototype day held at WLU for the upgrade was productive. The upgrade will go as scheduled in December. Allan will make a proposal to TUG Exec soon for a Primo implementation group, and as well, he has been asked to make a recommendation on how to update the governance structure for TUG.
Betty – Cataloguing staff have finished cataloguing the EBBO collection except for one area. A new shipment of records has been received, so work will begin soon on another project. Four staff are working on withdrawals; approximately 5,000 of 30,000 items identified by liaison librarians have already been withdrawn.
Richard – with Systems help, all data from several storage devices has successfully been transferred to another one. The new device has a much higher storage capacity. GIS day, a joint venture by UML and Environmental Studies, was successful. Eva Dodsworth has started work on scanning early air photos dating back to 1930. They will be ‘georeferenced’ and ‘stitched’ together.
Mary – the Library’s update report will be distributed soon; the focus of this issue is on research. The Library is now on Facebook, which recently opened up to organizations. It contains basic information for the time being; it is another step in communicating with users. Nancy Collins will monitor the site closely. Mary will ask her to give an update at a future meeting.
An informal brown bag session on Facebook was suggested.
Action: Mary
Jennifer – reported on a recent Faculty of Engineering meeting. Three phases are planned for the engineering construction project: 1) a new building on parking lot B; 2) an addition to DTW engineering building; 3) a second building on parking lot B. The target date for completion of the first phase is April 2009. If all goes ahead with the Abu Dabi initiative 22 new staff will be hired and funding of $20M is expected. This would result in construction of a new Chemical Engineering building; the DTW addition would not be done in that case.
Mark – there was discussion at the recent Board of Governors meeting about the need for more informal space on campus. It will be an agenda item for the next meeting of the campus building committee. Sharon and Mark are drafting a memo for the provost and associate provost about library space needs.
- Business Arising from October 17
#5 Smoking – it’s a UW policy and Managers are responsible for being aware of policies and using appropriate management judgement in how to apply the policy. If someone looks like they are smoking too close to the door, managers should use appropriate managerial discretion/judgement. The spirit of the policy is to create a good working environment.
#6 Articles for news @ your library – Mary still requires articles for the New Year.
#2 Business Arising, Civil workplace – customization of the program is done and passwords are being assigned. Managers can expect to receive email from Catherine Fry in the next couple of weeks with the passwords that will allow them to begin work on the sessions. A completion date of January 31 was proposed. Sharon will contact Matt Erickson to ask if it is web based.
Action: Sharon
- Staff Training and Professional Development 2006-2007
Distributed for information. The Library spent $47,608 on staff training and development in 2006-2007. The report includes all travel and staff development expenses incurred except those of LibExec.
Sharon noted that as a member of the campus staff training and development committee she is aware that many areas on campus have no funds for staff training and are completely reliant on the OHD and IST courses. OHD is developing new programs to help fill this need.
- Davis Reno Plans
The Kresge challenge was successful and $300,000 of funds raised have been earmarked for Davis for an instructional space. Terms of reference are being developed for the group that will plan this space.
Sharon and Allan will be the co-administrative contacts for the project. Managers were asked to review the draft terms of reference and send comments to Sharon by the end of the week. The Davis reno team was also asked to give some thought to what the conference room could be used for. There is no timeline on the project at this point.
- Porter Reno
Alex will give regular updates at future managers meetings.
- The Porter reno team has worked through the fall, primarily on details. The overall plan hasn’t changed significantly. Timelines were established at a recent meeting with the project managers from The Walter Fedy Partnership (TWF).
- TWFP will provide a schematic on December 12. The Reno team will have a few weeks to review it and change some of the details. It is anticipated that this work will be wrapped up by end of January.
Next phase: detailed drawings will go out for tender. Construction is slated to begin on Monday, April 28. Everything on the 2nd floor will need to be removed – staff, reference collection, most of Browsers, graphics outlet, and furnishings. Ideally, as much as possible should be removed before April 28. A meeting for Managers or a delegate who will be affected will be scheduled in the near future to determine what services need to be maintained, what can be moved to Davis etc. A communications plan is in the works. There will be a public website about the project, as well as a Facebook site. A public forum is also being considered.
- Library Case – next steps
The Kresge challenge has raised the profile of the Library and we want to build on that success. This is one of the things the Kresge Foundation was looking for.
The Library will consider some of the things that can be done, make cases for additional funding and seek out leveraging opportunities. Mary and Mark are scheduled to meet with President Johnston on December 19 and plan to highlight what we’ve done, where we are, and where we’re going.
One issue that came out of the meetings with Tracey Bailey is that space is clearly an area that we will want to pursue. Others include the student experience, and e-initiatives.
Mark proposed that in preparation for the December 19 meeting three small groups should be formed to discuss these three areas. Each group would consist of two members from the managers group and one or two other staff. Mary will meet with each group. Groups should plan to have their results completed by December 10.
Next meeting: December 5, Porter
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January 2, 2008
