University Librarian's Cabinet: Minutes of the May 17, 2005 Meeting

Present:

Boyle, Gaunt, Millerand, Mullins, Puniello, Fetzer, Sewell, Zapcic

Videoconferencing:

Golden (mid-meeting)

Absent:

Agnew, Fultz

Guests:

Charles Hedrick, Tom Grzelak, Gayle Stein, Bob Gerdes, Office of Instructional and Research Technology (OIRT); Lavinia Boxill, Rutgers University Foundation

University Librarian's Report - Gaunt

• The Libraries have access to the LibQual+ survey data and Susan Beck has coded the comments received. She shared a draft of that information with Gaunt and Golden. After they are reviewed they will be made more broadly available. The complete data analysis will come from ARL shortly and we will be able to compare ourselves with other institutions that took part in the survey this year.
• The Mentoring workshop will take place all day on June 7. Cabinet will participate in the morning session with the tenured librarians on defining mentoring, best practices, and issues and challenges, and in the afternoon session on planning a program for RUL. VP Furmanski and the PRC are concerned that junior faculty are appropriately mentored, so it is important for us to be able to articulate how that is accomplished in the Libraries.
• The Planning and Coordinating Committee in reviewing the extent of committees in the Libraries and the workload implications, will be asking Cabinet to implement a process whereby those committees for which Cabinet members have oversight will ensure that self-assessments are done. A sample survey instrument will be shared. Cabinet recognizes that some committees have charges that are open, which means that Cabinet members expect to continue to assign work to those groups, even if they have completed their current assignment or a particular year's goals.
• The University expects to celebrate its 50th anniversary as the state university of New Jersey throughout 2006. In addition, The Alexander Library will be 50 years old, SCILS will have been accredited for 50 years, and RUL will have been a member of ARL for 50 years. Jeanne has asked Kim Manning-Lewis that the Libraries be included on whatever university committee is established to celebrate the anniversary, and that we begin thinking about what we may want to do in the Libraries.
• Gaunt shared the results of her discussions with staff that were conducted over the last few weeks on the topic of staff engagement in library decision-making. She asked for responses on next steps, so that the results may be shared more broadly within RUL. The findings will also be discussed at the Planning and Coordinating meeting, especially as they relate to faculty/staff culture. Many of the findings related to communication, feedback, meetings, listservs, etc. can be addressed fairly quickly, and the staff comments and suggestions were good to hear. The culture issues will require more attention and discussion, and it was hoped that the Planning and Coordinating Committee would provide advice on how to address them.

OIRT Discussion

• Chuck Hedrick and the staff members of the Office of Instructional and Research (OIRT) within OIT discussed with Cabinet their mission and plans on how to support research and instructional computing. They envision their role as a coordinating body rather than a new service provider and intend to work with other groups and organizations at the university, such as the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, the Learning Resource Centers, the Math/Science Resource Center, and the Libraries. The goal of the discussion was to establish working relationships in a few areas that have been identified as priorities. Chuck noted that while their main role is a coordinating group, they would, by default, provide some services. He discussed one of them-the implementation of Sakai-that may be used by the university as a new course management system. Similar to Fedora, it is a collaboratively built, open source, system focused on the higher education environment. The Libraries will be engaged in the planning and implementation of Sakai, and a small working group from the Libraries has been identified. Jeanne Boyle is coordinating that work, and the group may change or expand depending on how much is possible to implement initially. We hope that course reserves, research guides, SearchPath modules, and other library resources will be easily accessible through Sakai.
• Chuck also spoke about the research faculty interest in video-from videoconferencing, to preserving video created at Rutgers, to acquiring and providing access to purchased video. There are many interests and many levels of challenges. He is putting a small group together to try to outline the issues, and to work towards identifying locations for video access. Bob has established a media working group and a subset of this group may become the liaison with OIRT. Gaunt mentioned that VALE has been approached by a committee of NJEDge to consider collaborative purchasing of media for NJ institutions, but the coordination of this may be challenging because media is not always handled through libraries at each institution. OIRT and the Libraries will monitor the progress of discussions.
• The last area discussed was data curation. Tom Grzelak is OIRT's main research computing staff person. He noted that he has spent the first several months in his position meeting with faculty and asking about their concerns and needs for research computing support. Data did come up, but not as much of a priority right now as video. So, we have time to plan collaboratively how we might approach the need for support.

Development Planning

• Lavinia Boxill, Rutgers Foundation, discussed the recent capital campaign and what the university learned about its fund raising infrastructure. The past campaign exceeded its goal, but peer institutions that Rutgers wishes to compare itself with have done much larger campaigns-such as one billion. I order for Rutgers to embark on such a campaign, the Foundation staff will need to be expanded and a plan for how each unit is to be engaged will need to be developed. A new realignment of high prospect donors across the individual units is being discussed, so that the university is able to reach and cultivate as many individuals as possible. Lavinia lauded the Libraries' planning strategically for the next campaign and considering how it is organized to support a larger campaign goal. She noted that the president has already signaled a number of major themes, such as scholarships, fellowships, building the endowment, and the College Avenue greenway as important initiatives. Martz and Lundy, a development-consulting group, has already completed a study of the university's readiness for a major campaign and compared Rutgers with its aspirant peers. The results of that benchmarking survey will be shared over the summer and into the fall with deans and others. A search for a new President of the Foundation should be reaching completion shortly, which will have a positive impact on how quickly the Foundation can begin its work.

Announcements

Boyle

• Boyle announced that department liaisons will soon receive notepads advertising the Searchpath tutorial for distribution to department chairs in their respective areas.