University Librarian's Cabinet: Minutes of the October 19, 2004 Meeting

Present:: Agnew, Boyle, Fultz, Gaunt, Mullins, Puniello, Sewell, Tehrani
Videoconferenced:: Golden (from Camden)
Absent:: Zapcic
Guest:: Ann Montanaro, Ron Jantz and Kalaivani Ananthan

University Librarian's Report - Gaunt

Due to Zapcic's absence, the Fundraising/Development agenda item will be tabled until the next Cabinet meeting.

Academic Excellence Proposals are due to Furmanski on November 15. Proposals due to Gaunt on November 9 for review.

Milton Leontiades, Dean of the Camden School of business is retiring

President McCormick sent e-mail "Update on Student Services Initiative" and is setting up a student services Web site listing improvements (http://www.president.rutgers.edu/studentservices1004.shtml); updates on the student services initiative will also be placed on the Web page (http://www.president.rutgers.edu/studentserv.shtml).

The Assessment Committee is holding brown bag lunches on all campuses to validate the excellence indicator measures.

Gaunt distributed to Cabinet handouts from the ARL Membership Meeting and the ARL/CNI Forum on E-Research and Cyberinfrastructure attended October 12-15. The ARL Strategic Planning and Governance Task Force Reports were discussed at the membership meeting; Gaunt shared the Strategic Planning Report with Cabinet through e-mail. ARL will focus in areas that are unique to it as an organization; should not be looking at overlapping redundancies; the strategic direction should be in line with things it can do in the copyright and access arena, information policies, open access, and teaching and learning. Looking to change the scholarly communication environment, affect legislative policy favorable to higher education; new roles in the teaching and learning process – what roles should libraries play. Where do we put diversity, preservation, collections and access; all of those can support various aspects – the question is the degree of support. May want to use ARL strategic plan format for RUL's strategic plan.

Diana Oblinger, Vice President of EDUCAUSE, gave the ARL keynote address on "Library Roles in the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative." Her slides are on the ARL Web site http://www.arl.org/arl/proceedings/145/oblinger.html. She discussed how information technology has changed the way learners have changed – the net generation doesn't seem to ask for as much technology in the classroom as one would expect; the older adult asked for technology in the classroom; the younger are more interested in developing community in groups. The Web is their information environment – not the library. The library needs to think about how it is presented on the Web. Preference is for images and not text. The library needs to be a social academic experience and is the intellectual marketplace of the university.

The ARL/CNI Forum on E-Research and Cyberinfrastructure was an elective conference. Gaunt, Agnew and Chuck Hedrick attended. Speakers were Dan Atkins, Chair of the NSF Blue Ribbon Panel that recommended major NSF investments in cyberinfrastructure to support e-science; George Djorgovski, Professor of Astronomy, Caltech, illustrated the potential of cyberinfrastructure by describing the work underway via the National Virtual Observatory with his report "Virtual Observatory, Cyber-Science and the Rebirth of the Libraries." He discussed how much data they are actually getting, the decisions on what to keep; data curation – one place couldn't do it all; need a variety of places with appropriate middle ware. In discussions following the presentations, attendees discussed where the libraries and the offices of information technology could collaborate – funding the project but not the life cycle. The libraries will provide leadership in repositories and curation; may want to get some key faculty here who would support the initiative

Gaunt sent to Cabinet a draft charge to the strategic planning steering committee and the call for nominations; would like to send to rul_everyone by the end of the week. Follow-up piece is listing the committees that we already have within the library structure and what we want their role to be and how their input will be heard.

Review of ACRL Marketing Symposium - Boyle/Gaunt

Boyle and Gaunt attended the ACRL "Strategic Marketing for Academic and Research Libraries" preconference at ALA Midwinter 2004 based around the larger ACRL initiative having to do with marketing libraries, and facilitated by Ken Marks, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Attendees received a packet of materials and a participant manual, train the trainer facilitator guide, and PowerPoint slides for train the trainer workshops. Vib Bowman has been trained for this. Cabinet should review sample pages from the participant manual to get an overview. Process is very good for a medium sized library that hasn't gone through the planning process. An example is "The Cram Room," UNLV Libraries' extended study space. The Marketing Planning Process is focused on the customers and their needs and takes four major steps – customer and market research, strategic library plan, promotional campaign, and delivering products/services. Brought to Cabinet's attention the AIDA Language of the Messages (awareness, interest, desire, and action) – or categorizing the language of your message to make sure your message is simple and raises attention. The Status Inventory sheet lists all the things you would want to do; the customer needs worksheet would be valuable if you hadn't done any research, but we have information that identifies that for us. The Products/Services and Benefits Map is useful in establishing priorities. The Messages Identification Worksheet helps to identify the platform, priorities and the AIDA stage of each message. The Vehicle Identification Worksheet helps to identify the vehicles that already exist and add any new vehicles that might be useful, as well as the AIDA code. It is all pulled together in a Campaign Design Worksheet. The Cost Analysis Worksheet details a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C, based on whether you get all the resources you need. Assessing Campaign Success is the final worksheet. At next Cabinet meeting will discuss implementation of communications audit; discussed with consultants who felt this was not the approach for where we are now. Should go through the thought process. Might be useful for research guides and course management; might be beneficial to be talking to professors when they are developing their courses. Would be good to look at studies on undergraduate behavior. For our strategic planning, need to think about how we relate our resources to the course. We have different marketing audiences; for us the real issue is priority.

NJEDge.Net Update -Agnew

Agnew attended the NJEDge.Net Second Annual Conference, "Collaboration through Networking," October 11-13, 2004, and presented an ePoster on "Moving Image Collections; a Window to the World's Moving Images." The theme of the conference touched on both the use of the new statewide network as well as the more traditional notion of networking person to person. Agnew attended a session on students and online music – the basic consensus was "don't go there." They are very restrictive; they set up infrastructures that might violate privacy and confidentiality. Dispelled the myth that the recording group will look the other way; actually they are monitoring you very closely. Doesn't support the mission of the university.

Ruth Bogan and Ron Jantz did a brilliant presentation on the New Jersey Digital Highway; level of questions that emerged was very high. Ron did an excellent presentation on using Fedora to archive materials and trust them there for the duration. Ron was approached by UMDNJ, who said they purchased a commercial system and wondered if Fedora could run in the background. Agnew encouraged Ron to follow up with this. Would be a wonderful collaboration on another level. Would like to have a Fedora Users' Group Meeting next year.

Another interesting ePoster presentation by Rutgers professor Mitch Germansky – "Lecture 123: As Simple As 1-Record, 2-Playback, 3-Collaborate" – an elearning labor for core created lectures. Is being tested in a number of places outside Rutgers. Expects to make it a full course management system. Paradigm was very engaging. Showed how slides and drawings were keyed automatically – anything done manually is automatically synchronized to your voice.

Repository/Workflow Management System Overview & Demonstration -Agnew

Agnew, Ann Montanaro, Ron Jantz, and Kalaivani Ananthan gave a great overview and demonstration of the Repository/Workflow Management System. There has been a large team working on this, and it is a deep collaboration between the SCC and TAS. Agnew hopes to update Cabinet periodically on where we are with the repository. Right now we are anywhere between 80-90% ready to roll. The objective of the Digital Library Repository Initiative is to provide seamless, perpetual access to digital collections -- ours, and the resources of others, particularly the intellectual capital created by Rutgers University faculty. The system allows anyone to create simple metadata and upload digital objects metadata and objects from a Web browser to feed into the repository a recreated archival image with associated metadata that is stored in perpetuity. Low-resolution access copies are automatically created, so that people can search and display the resource on the Web. This is the creator interface. The current design is utilitarian; an extensive usability study will take place in the spring to determine the optimal design to support the Rutgers Community. Archival preservation is at the heart of the system. The repository uses the METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) protocol to document the technical specifications, descriptive information and complete provenance of each resource. Currently, the workflow management system is being tested on New Jersey cultural collections that are part of the New Jersey Digital Highway. Other test beds involving Rutgers collections are in development, particularly a subset of the Edison papers and multidisciplinary collections supporting transportation research. The intent of this presentation was to both inform Cabinet about the technology of the repository and its development progress and also to engage Cabinet in thinking about the role of the repository in the libraries' strategic plans for collection building and services to the Rutgers community. Cabinet endorses Rutgers holding a Fedora Users' Meeting to enable the emerging Fedora community to coalesce on standards and new developments and to support the Rutgers Fedora team in taking a leadership role in Fedora development.

Announcements

Puniello

Eileen Stec and Jana Varlejs were panel presenters of a case study at a Web seminar sponsored by ACRL and TLT Group (Teaching, Learning and Technology, a non-profit group) on "Effective Collaboration for Campus-wide Information Literacy: The Blended Librarian's Perspective on How to Make It Work," September 2004.
The Rutgers Parent, a Newsletter of Pride and Opportunity, did an article on "Innovative Renovations at Douglass Library."
Puniello and Tehrani are halfway through their visits to the undergraduate deans. Had an interesting meeting with the interim dean of Cook College, Keith Cooper. Has a course on perspectives in agriculture talking about collections and the educational process. Would be a good future collaborator. Puniello passed around the "Executive Dean's Report" that shows the different areas they do research at Cook.

Golden

Vibiana Bowman (Reference Librarian and Web Administrator) and John Gibson Information Technology Specialist of the Paul Robeson Library were presenters at the Ethics of Electronic Information in the 21st Century (EEI21) conference at the University of Memphis on October 16, 2004. EEI21 is an annual, juried symposium of international scholars. The panel presentation, "Post-Modern Intellectual Honesty: Plagiarism, Copyright Protection, and the Ownership of Information" was based on research done for the book, The Plagiarism Plague: A Handbook for Educators (edited by Vibiana Bowman, Neal-Schuman, 2004.)

Sewell

Ron Becker is the recipient of the New Jersey Historical Commission's Richard J. Hughes award for 2004. The presentation will take place at their annual conference on November 20. The award is the highest the Commission gives in recognition for outstanding contributions to the field of New Jersey history. The letter to Ron notes "your tireless work to make the wonderful and extensive holdings of Special Collections available to all New Jerseyans and for your many services to the history and archival communities."

Mullins