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Library Managers

University of Waterloo
Library Managers, May 8, 2013
10:00 a.m., DC 1568

Present: Annie Bélanger, Jane Britton, Pascal Calarco, Nancy Collins, Betty Graf, Jennifer Haas, Mark Haslett (Chair), Michele Laing, Sharon Lamont, Wish Leonard, Alex McCulloch, Annette Dandyk (Recorder)

Regrets: Carl Nagel

1. Chair’s Remarks
• Recognition and Commendation
May Anniversaries:
May 5 – Kathy MacDonald, Davis ISR, 5 years
May 5 – Sara Perkins, Musagetes Architecture Library, 5 years

Welcome to Jane, and welcome back Michele.

Staff appreciation: an all staff BBQ is scheduled for Wed. June 5, on the green between Modern Languages and Needles Hall. All permanent, contract, and casual staff are invited. In the event of rain the BBQ will be moved indoors to SCH. There will be no speeches or slide show this year.

• Updates
Mark will attend a variety of meetings during the month of May:
o ARL Directors’ meeting, Chapel Hill, May 1-3.
o OCUL Directors’ meeting, Sudbury, May 9-10.
o Exec Council retreat, Grand Bend, May 15-17. Agenda items include: bibliometrics, different kinds of entrepreneurship, enrollment management and how it is monitored, budget discussions, communications, advancement, and a variety of other topics.
o CARL Directors’ meeting, Winnipeg, May 27-29.

The President and Provost have scheduled two Town Hall meetings (May 8 and 9) to provide an opportunity to discuss the evolving campus strategic plan. https://uwaterloo.ca/strategic-plan/sites/ca.strategic-plan/files/uploads/files/Strategic%20Plan%20final%20draft_May%207%2C%202012%5B2%5D.pdf

Senate finance: The Provost, working with others, has prepared a draft budget for fiscal 2013/2014 that will be presented to a variety of groups: Senate Finance Committee, Board of Governors Finance Committee, Senate, and Board of Governors for final approval.

ARL Research Library Leadership Fellows (RLLF) program: an 18 month executive leadership program sponsored by ARL members. Waterloo and Guelph will be co-sponsors during the 2013-2015 program. Site visits here will take place in the February to May 2015 period. Pascal and Annie will participate in the program as Fellows.

2. Business Arising from April 4
#6 Around the Table Updates, TUG IR Print Monograph Management Project: over 2 million records were sent to Sustainable Collection Services (SCS) yesterday.

3. Accessibility Update
• Web Accessibility Training
o Two sessions for each of the required courses were delivered. Staff responded well to the courses.
o Annie will follow up to ensure that everyone who needs to be trained is.
o Coaching plans will be sent out later in May.
• Accessible Training Requirement
o The Information & Communications Standard refers to the need for this. COU has been working on an accessible tool kit. CTE has been working with AccessAbility Services on the Waterloo implementation.
• OCUL ACE Portal (Accessible texts repositories)
o The portal is up and we will be handing out access tokens to students for the summer term. Waterloo loaded almost 80 books, and it is hoped that we can to continue to load two a week.
• Accessibility Technical Co-op
o This term ISR Porter and Circulation are experimenting with ways to support the alternate format work by using half the time of a co-op student to handle the requests

Annie will send an update to staff.
Action: Annie

4. IST-DC HelpDesk
• The Pilot began January 2012.
• The ad hoc group met with people from IST and Housing to review the service. Numbers are up from the first year.
• IST is keen to make it a permanent ongoing service and Library Executive supports this.
• No concerns were raised about this becoming an ongoing service.
• Some issues: still some confusion between services offered by the Library’s daytime tech support, and the evening IST tech support. Cross training will be scheduled, and should help alleviate the confusion.
• There are also plans for improved signage.

5. Recruitment Updates
• We have received approval to fill two vacant positions:
o Head, Information Services and Resources, Porter – plan to post May 15
o Collections Maintenance Supervisor – currently in HR for review.

• Interviews for the Head, Special Collections and Archives have been completed.
• Applicants for the Head, Digital Initiative are being short listing. Interviews will likely be held the week of June 10.
• GIS Specialist – has been posted externally. Anticipate interviewing late May.
• Library Systems Administrator – has been posted externally. Interviews likely to occur late June.
• 16 month Evening/Weekend Supervisor (23 hr/wk) – has been posted on campus and externally.

• Three Temporary Reassignment opportunities are in process in HR:
o Library Office Assistant
o Special Collections Associate
o Strategist, Library Communications and Web Management.

6. Renovation Updates
We have a firm commitment from Plant Operations:
• 6th floor: refurbishment is anticipated to be completed by end of August.
• Davis conference room: anticipated to be completed by end of August. The project will include painting, new tables and chairs, a new podium, and blinds.

Flex lab: Plant Operations has given a proposed completion date of December 2013.

Patio: no further information on when this might happen.

7. Service Desk Models Update
• The pilot began in Davis on May 6.
• Cataloguing Associates and Circulation staff have been receiving training.
• When the Cataloguing Associates are not at the desk, Information Services librarians are on call.
• Feedback will be monitored, and changes made as necessary.
• Calls for volunteers have been made to populate the four sub groups. More volunteers are needed for two of the groups, so other options are being explored.
• The Service Quality Standards group is beginning to work on service desk standards, focussing on standards that will apply to the desks, chat, and email, and expects to have something ready in a few months.

8. Around the Table Updates
Nancy
The Library has a new ‘Connect With Your Library’ graphic to promote and give quick access to our social media http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/aboutus/social-networking.html.

A new Social Media Working group was recently formed. They:
• have finalized a draft charter which Nancy will take to WebOps;
• are creating guidelines and best practices;
• are putting together a governance document;
• will develop a content strategy that ties in with other departments, and special initiatives.

Wish
Fiscal close has come and gone.

Jane
Two permanent staff and several casual staff are covering the service hours in Special Collections. Reference/research service will not be offered while Jane is on vacation.

Alex
Relais is up and running. All is working well.

It is anticipated that the schedule for pay increases for Circulation and Geospatial Centre casual staff will be ready for July 1.

As part of Toyota’s Outreach program, some Circulation staff are receiving training on Kaizen Circle problem solving. If this goes well the thinking is that it could become a standard for the department, so that everyone would have a shared understanding of how to process ideas for improving services and creating efficiency. The pilot group begins May 10.

Next meeting: May 22


 


 


 


 
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May 28, 2013