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Library Managers

University of Waterloo
Library Managers, January 11, 2012
10:00 a.m., LIB 428

Present: Annie Bélanger, Pascal Calarco, Nancy Collins, Eva Dodsworth, Betty Graf, Jennifer Haas, Mark Haslett (Chair), Michele Laing, Sharon Lamont, Susan Mavor, Carl Nagel, Susan Routliffe, Debbie Tytko, Annette Dandyk (Recorder)

Regrets: Alex McCulloch

1. Chair’s Remarks
• Recognition and Commendation
Mark welcomed new members Nancy Collins and Eva Dodsworth.

• Updates
The university is now into its budget cycle. Mark met with Bruce Mitchell Associate Provost Resources and Geoff McBoyle, Vice-President Academic & Provost, before Christmas about the operating and acquisitions budgets, and has another meeting scheduled.

Mark will attend CARL Board, CRKN Board, and OCUL meetings in late January and early February. CRKN is coordinating a teleconference about “Big Deal” licenses.

Mark will send a note this week reminding staff to consider training or development opportunities for the upcoming year, and to discuss them with their managers during the review process.

Mark, Pascal, Sharon and Susan will attend the monthly campus “leadership forum” meeting on January 12. A key agenda item will be a performance management overview.

Nancy and Eva will participate in the pilot of a newly established program called “Leadership Foundations for Ongoing Development”. It begins January 26.

The President is working with an advisory group to review feedback from all of the 6th decade mid cycle review meetings, and is seeking additional stakeholder representatives. Mark was asked to appoint two people from the library, and Alison Hitchens and Sam Gibbon have kindly agreed to be our appointees.

2. Business Arising from December 7
There was no business arising.

3. Around the Table Updates
Sharon
Sharon will send a staffing update about the following positions:
• Secondment opportunity, Library Associate – Collection Management, Porter ISR was posted in last week’s Daily Bulletin. The internal secondment is expected to last for one year.
• Digital Special Collections Librarian will be posted next week.
• One year contract, 23 hour per week in Circulation Services to provide desk coverage will be posted soon.

Sharon recently sent a message to Managers about a donation request to reserve a seat in Porter or Davis as a prize in a silent auction, to raise funds for Pathways to Education. Sharon received several responses, all in support. She will respond to the student group that they will have access to room 512A for one week during the exam period. Out of that, came a suggestion that we allow students to use room 512A for group study during exam time. Managers agreed to try it as a pilot for this term. It will not be included on the group study room booking site. Systems will remove the computer from the room.

Carl
There was a brief discussion about furnishings for the 10th floor study rooms.

Jennifer
Jennifer provided an update on the e-science capstone event, which she will attend with Pascal, Kathy Szigeti and Ellsworth LeDrew (Geography & Environmental Management). They will be doing a SWOT analysis this afternoon, followed by a building blocks session. The group will then consider what the campus could do with e-science over the next 18 months. Some themes are already emerging regarding gaps and where the library could get involved.

Pascal
Graham Faulkner and Steve Weber started on January 9. Among their first projects will be enhancements to LibQuest and LibWork; a request tracker system in Systems; and creating an advisory group on technical projects within the Library. Pascal will provide an update in the next few weeks.

arXiv, the long standing physics pre-print initiative that started in the 1990’s began on the west coast but migrated to Cornell U a few years ago. Cornell has been trying to build up a foundation and governance model around it so that they don’t have to continue to pay to sustain it. Waterloo is the 5th highest user of arXiv in the world. Cornell has invited the top 50 users of arXiv to a meeting to discuss sustainability and to get financial contributions to sustain the platform. Pascal will represent Waterloo at the two day meeting at Columbia University. He will report back.

Eva
Eva is working with Annie and Carl on the UML transfer project. Jon Morgan has been invited to assist with determining how best to place the map collection within the designated space on the 3rd floor when UML moves to Porter. They have also been examining GIS services to determine if any changes are needed.

Eva passed around a copy of her new book Getting Started with GIS: a LITA guide.

Nancy
Responding to requests from students, the Outreach Committee has decided to reorder some of the buttons for the service desks. The committee will meet again to discuss next steps about the button campaign.

The Library update is expected to be ready by mid-February.

Ellen Réthoré, Associate VP Communications and Public Affairs shared a new organizational chart for Communication and Public Affairs (CPA). Managers should contact Nancy if they are interested in seeing the chart. CPA has also been working on an editorial calendar, to focus the university’s efforts in web features and media relations to concentrate on the university’s research priorities. The hope is to plan and cluster stories under monthly research themes to gain greater media attention. The editorial calendar is currently being planned alongside the launch for the university’s new homepage. Nancy is working with CPA to determine where the Library fits in. She will update Managers as she learns more.

Susan R
In Susan’s discussions with faculty members and students, she has been asked what would happen if they unintentionally or intentionally copy something they shouldn’t and the copyright holder comes after the University. We don’t know – it depends on the context. The Provost’s communication to the campus indicated that if there were violations the University could hold the individual responsible.

Some staff members are concerned about being directed by a faculty member to make copies that may infringe copyright. Some have gone to Staff Relations and the Staff Association, who escalated it to Bruce Mitchell, who turned to the Library. It is a legal issue, not a Library issue, but Mark and Susan will meet with Trevor Grove (President, Staff Association) and a member of the Secretariat to discuss the issue.

4. Authorization to be Absent from Campus
The Provost’s December 19 campus wide message announced that effective January 1, 2012, individuals absent from campus for three or more days for business would be required to complete an ‘Authorization to be Absent from Campus” form. http://provost.uwaterloo.ca/forms.html. Managers discussed briefly:
• Staff attending a conference on the weekend and who will be away for three or more days should complete the form.
• Staff who do not receive funding but receive time off work to attend should complete the form.
• Staff who chose to attend a conference on vacation time will not be required to complete the form.
• Supervisors should keep the form for one term.

5. Public Holidays
Sharon, Alex and Annette met with Freddie Swainston, Rochelle Davies and Holly Gill from HR to discuss compensating staff who work less than 35 hours per week for public holidays. The legislation has changed regarding how compensation should be calculated, and will have implications for a few staff. The Employment Standards formula must be used for staff in ongoing part-time positions or who are on temporary reduced workload: multiply # of hours in a normal work week x 4 weeks, divide by 20. The change will be implemented effective the Family Day public holiday in February. Annette will send a summary and the formula to the Managers group, and will have it mounted on the staff web.
Action: Annette

6. Library Review
Mark provided a brief update about LibExec’s post-retreat activities. They have spent much time digesting the results from the retreat discussions, and drafting a strategy for moving forward. The documentation from the retreat has been transcribed and will be made available to everyone who attended the retreat.

Next steps:
A self-study report is expected to be completed in April.
Schedule another all staff meeting.
Establish working groups.
Update Bruce Mitchell and Geoff McBoyle.
Discuss how to move forward at the next Managers meeting, including all Retreat participants if possible.
The final report is anticipated to be completed by August/September.

Next meeting: Jan 18


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

 

 


 


 


 


 


 




 




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February 13, 2012