University Librarian's Cabinet: Minutes of the October 5, 2004 Meeting

Present:: Agnew, Fultz, Gaunt, Golden, Mullins, Puniello, Sewell, Zapcic
Absent:: Boyle, Tehrani
Guest:: Nancy Hendrickson

University Librarian's Report - Gaunt

Deans Council Announcements:
- Jonathan Alger from the University of Michigan has been appointed Vice President and General Counsel. His particular expertise is in copyright, intellectual property and affirmative action. He argued Michigan's affirmative action case before the Supreme Court.
- Corrine Webb will be leaving the university and a search for her replacement will take place shortly. The position's responsibility will be expanded to enrollment management.
- The New Brunswick Teaching Excellence Center will be renamed to the Center for the Advancement of Teaching to better reflect the scope of activities.
- The new AAUP contract was reviewed to call attention to changes in the contract. While the salary cycle of merit awards will take place twice in the year, only one FASIP round will occur with the results applying across the year. Units will be notified of allocations this week. Several committees of the university and AAUP will be set up to both review matters that were not completed in the contract and to do advance work for the next contract. These include: grievance procedures, parking, FASIP procedures, and distance ed/computing/winter session/retirement incentives.
- The notification on the academic excellence awards procedures for this year has been sent out. While there is no restriction on the amounts of the awards, the preference is for a smaller number of larger awards so that a real impact can be made. The purpose is to advance the university in areas of strategic direction.
Everyone was encouraged to attend the New Brunswick Faculty Council Undergraduate Teaching Program on Wednesday to hear an update from the Qualls committee on undergraduate education. Undergraduate education is a major theme in New Brunswick and will be carried over to the other campuses in ways that are appropriate to them.
Gaunt noted that the Center for the Critical Analysis for Contemporary Culture distributed an announcement of their program for the year on intellectual property issues and the call for activities on this broad topic. This program was noted in the University-wide advisory Committee meeting and a suggestion was made that the Libraries may want to propose something related to open access.
Cabinet members were reminded to submit their list of committee/groups under their purview that meet on a regular basis so that we can examine redundancies.

Academic Excellence Awards - Gaunt

Gaunt asked Cabinet to consider what the Libraries may wish to apply for in this program. Two ideas arose: focusing on one of the excellence center, transportation, the Libraries may want to model how the repository structure might be used to maintain data related to transportation. Agnew and Sewell will work with librarians in this multi-disciplinary area to identify teaching faculty partners. We may also wish to revise and update last year's proposal on the jazz photograph collection to create an image database for the repository. Mullins will work on this with Agnew and others. Cabinet members were encouraged to eek additional ideas from their unit faculty and staff. All proposals need to be sent to Gaunt using the forms designated by November 8. The dean must rank all unit proposals and forward them to Furmanski.

Budget Overview - Gaunt/Hendrickson

Hendrickson and Gaunt reviewed the salary savings projections for the year after input from Cabinet on changes, reviewed the below the line funds in system-wide, central administration, and all units, and the central and unit development funds (restricted and non-restricted) to determine flexibility. Major purchases that need to be made that could not be covered by the units were also considered. This will be a tight year and several items remain unknown: new development funds, the financial impact of the state's knowledge initiative, and other potential state funding. It was decided that 50% of the projection for salary savings in the units could be used now; 10% would be returned to Furmanski as university policy, and the remaining 40% would be released some time in January as we assess budget impacts. No special allocations to the units would be made to cover additional expenses that could not be covered by their existing funds until January.

Faculty lines were also reviewed and three were released for recruitment: instructional technology/informatics position in New Brunswick, Non-Roman Catalog position in TAS, and reference librarian at Dana. There is a possibility for another faculty position to be released in New Brunswick at a later data. Depending on the number of reclassifications and hires above salary in lines (requiring salary dollars to cover), additional positions may be released later in the year. Cabinet was asked to submit their requests to re-class positions (that they are holding) to gauge the amount of funding required. If funds are not available, staff will not be permitted to work out of their classification. A separate discussion will take place on the need for staff lines that do not currently exist in some units.

Structure for the Strategic Plan - Gaunt

Gaunt reviewed the advice from the Planning and Coordinating Committee and asked for Cabinet input. There was consensus on the structure of a small steering committee and the use of subcommittees composed primarily of existing committees/groups, but expanded as needed. In some cases new groups may need to be formed where none exist on an important topic/area for the plan. The recommended characteristics of those who should be on the steering committee were agreed upon, but other substantive areas are also important, such as understanding the role and context of the library in the university; ability to relate to partnerships among the research institutions, such as UMDNJ, and NJIT, as well as internal units, such as OIT; knowledge of how information technology will transform and facilitate new roles for the library. The concept of asking for nominations to the steering committee was seen as a way to engage everyone in the process. A draft invitation to nominate with the characteristics of those who should be included on the steering committee will be prepared, as well as a draft charge. Lists of existing committees and their roles in relation to the steering committee and each other will also be shared. This will be completed in time for the State of the libraries program, which will focus on the strategic plan.

Fundraising/Development - Zapcic

Discussion tabled until next meeting.

Announcements

Sewell:

Ron Becker is writing an NEH grant for a sapphire fire suppression system as a way to address the code violations on the BB level in Special Collections; the NEH program could potentially fund the system as a part of preservation.

Puniello:

The Exhibition Women Rock the World opened on Monday, October 4, 2004, at Douglass Library, Mabel Smith Douglass Room. It portrays the trajectory of women's studies at Rutgers from 1969 to present. The opening included a poetry reading with Adrienne Rich. The exhibition will run through December 24, 2004.
The use of the Douglass Library has gone up since the renovations were completed.

Golden:

Vib Bowman edited the following book: The Plagiarism Plague: A Resource Guide and CD-ROM Tutorial for Educators and Librarians. New York: Neal-Shuman Publishers, 2004. There were chapters in this work written by John Gibson and Laura Spencer from the Paul Robeson Library and Eileen Stec and Mallika Henry from New Brunswick.

Agnew:

RUL will be represented at the NJEDge 2nd Annual Technology in Education Conference October 11-13, 2004. Agnew will do a poster session on MIC (the Moving Image Gateway project); Ron Jantz, Susan Kaplan and Ruth Bogan will present on the New Jersey Digital Highway - they will demo the website and discuss the technology behind it; Ruth Bogan and Kalaivani Ananthan will demo the workflow management system.
Agnew, Gaunt, and Chuck Hedrick will attend the ARL/CNI Forum on E-Research and Cyberinfrastructure on October 15, 2004 in Washington, DC.

Zapcic:

The Director of Development for Douglass College has taken a fundraising position at the University of Medicine and Dentistry New Jersey. She is the third senior fundraiser to leave Rutgers for UMDMJ since the end of the campaign. Amy Kirner, Senior Director of Development for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Newark, has accepted the position of Senior Director of Development for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, New Brunswick. Zapcic reported that it is very common for fundraisers to be recruited away after the completion of a successful campaign. We should expect to see more staff changes during the next year.
Zapcic will be meeting with Troy to put together a job description for a part-time development support position.
The benchmarking report on behalf of the Foundation has been completed. Preliminary results have been circulated to members of the Rutgers boards and the President. Fundraisers will receive a detailed report sometime during the fall. Results of this survey, and feedback from the boards and the President will help inform units in determining their own short- and long-term plans for fundraising.
The University's Constituency Research Report has been completed and results are being presented to faculty and staff on three campuses in discussions planned throughout the fall. A print version of the report will be available on the website sometime in mid or late October.

Gaunt:

Related to issues that came up in the Sheila Creth discussions and providing opportunities for promotion, we will not automatically allow internal promotions to the library associate 2 level and above without the position being posted.