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Library Managers

University of Waterloo
Library Managers, March 16, 2011
10:00 a.m., DC 1568

Present: Betty Graf, Jennifer Haas, Michele Laing, Sharon Lamont, Susan Mavor, Alex McCulloch, Carl Nagel, Richard Pinnell, Susan Routliffe (Chair), Debbie Tytko, Annette Dandyk (Recorder)

Regrets: Annie Bélanger, Eric Boyd, Mark Haslett, Mary Stanley

1. Chair’s Remarks
• Recognition and Commendation
March Anniversary
March 13 - Tim Ireland, Porter ISR, 5 years

2. Business Arising from February 16
#2 Restructuring Plans: Susan R gave a brief update about upcoming changes in Acquisitions and Cataloguing. Plans have been finalized and will become effective May 1.

#8 Group Facilitation Skills Workshop: four Library staff will attend.

3. Bad Weather/Emergency Leave
There was discussion about days when the university does not officially close. It has been the Library’s practice to allow staff members to use a vacation day, make up the time, or work from home if their jobs allow for it, on those occasions when they do not want to come to work because of bad weather.

Sharon recently became aware that the Weather/Emergency Closing Guidelines http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infosec/guidelines/stormclosing.htm state: Staff and faculty who live some distance from the campus can be particularly affected. Department heads are entitled to allow individual staff members to take time off without pay, or time to be made up through overtime or vacation time or emergency leave, or paid time off, at their discretion.

The Library has not been offering the last two as options. Managers discussed the use of emergency leave or paid time off. They were generally not supportive of paid time off, but there was some interest in allowing emergency days with specific criteria.

Sharon and Susan will talk further with Mark about the possibility of using emergency leave under these circumstances.

Action: Sharon, Susan

4. Requesting Health and Safety Assessments
For many years, if Library staff wanted an ergonomic assessment of their workstation, typically their Managers contacted Facilities who then called to set up an appointment.

Managers agreed that in future:
• Department Heads will contact Kate Windsor to request an assessment, and cc the staff member.
• Kate will contact the staff member directly to set up the meeting.
• Kate will identify what the problem is with the workstation.
• Kate or the department head will contact Facilities or Systems to order equipment, furnishings, keyboards etc.

5. Senate Presentation – Find the Bright Spots
Mark’s presentation to Senate is scheduled for April 18. He will use the theme of finding the bright spots (from the book Switch, How to change things when change is hard).

6. Next meeting – April 20?
The April 6 Library Managers meeting will be cancelled to allow people to attend the Staff conference.

7. Around the Table Updates
Betty
The Voyager system upgrade three weeks ago did not go well. We were unable to import and edit records with 5 or more subject headings. This was not discovered during testing since we were not testing on our own data but on the vendor's database in Chicago. Ex Libris issued a patch to the Voyager software last week and most of the problems have been fixed. Ex Libris asked us to be a beta test site for the next version which will include changes stemming from the Voyager Global Data Change Advisory Group. We have agreed to test the version but on our own data which will enable us to test the software as we would be using it and hopefully avoid issues such as those encountered with this upgrade. Charles Woods is partitioning the servers in order to create space for the test version. Most of the prototyping team will participate in the test, scheduled for April and May.

Richard
Richard gave a brief update about the map library move:
• Richard, Susan and Mark are working on preliminary plans.
• A set of working assumptions have been developed.
• Mark recently met with Mark Seasons, Dean of Environment.
• CTE can move into EV1 3rd floor, when Planning moves to EV3, July/August 2011 at latest.
• The map collection and staff will remain in their existing space until approximately May 2012.
• Planning with respect to space needs and how best to integrate map library staff and collections into Porter will continue.
• Richard will continue to weed/reduce paper holdings, and identify key holdings for Porter. Lesser used items may be located elsewhere.
• The Library will consider whether and how staff will keep a physical presence somewhere in ENV.
• Richard and Kathy Szigeti are currently working on weeding the geological maps collection previously housed in Davis.

Alex
Last year Reserves staff started reporting to Wish. When Jamie Reilly returns from pregnancy leave, several staff from Resource Sharing who had been reporting to Wish will begin reporting to her.

Michele
The School of Architecture recently finished an accreditation process. While it won’t likely be included in the consultant’s report, Michele learned that Architecture students want the library to remain open later in the evening, mainly because of their heavy workloads and the amount of time spent on studio work during the day. Also, it was recommended that integrating some of the courses with the Musagetes Library collections should be pursued.

Debbie
It’s getting close to fiscal year end and Acquisitions staff are busy paying invoices. Debbie is setting the budgets for next year.

Acquisitions also encountered a problem with the new Voyager upgrade – the system has lost the ability to split payment across two funds. Debbie has found a work-around for the time being.

Jennifer
CRKN reps were here on Monday and held focus groups with engineering faculty about online content. They are doing this at a number of institutions across the country, and uWaterloo was chosen to represent engineering. A report will be released at the end of April. Canada seems to be farther ahead than many with respect to access to online content for researchers.

Carl
Wireless upgrades at both libraries have been completed. Any complaints about dead areas should be forwarded to Carl.

The deployment of new staff workstations is going slower than had been hoped, largely due to the difficulty of coordinating schedules and installation times. Exchange Calendar training will be arranged once most of the heavy calendar users have been upgraded.

The new projector and 10 foot screen for Davis are expected to arrive today.

The campus may implement a new service – Virtual Private Network to replace Remote Desktop. It’s in the works but is not expected to happen soon.

Next meeting: April 20


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

 

 


 


 


 


 


 




 




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September 17, 2011