University Librarian's Cabinet: Minutes of the January 30, 2007 Meeting

Present:

Agnew, Boyle, Fultz, Gaunt, Golden(videoconferenced), Puniello, Sloan, Tehrani, Joseph, Mullins, Sewell, Zapcic

University Librarian's Report – Gaunt

• Gaunt welcomed Jane Sloan, Faculty Coordinator, who was unable to attend the last Cabinet meeting at which both Faculty Coordinator and Deputy Faculty Coordinator officially joined Cabinet. Gaunt commented that the faculty leadership on Cabinet should help ensure that both the faculty and administrative goals are aligned appropriately.
• Camden provost Roger Dennis will leave Rutgers at the end of the spring semester to become the founding dean of the Drexel Law School; his leadership on the campus and at the university will be sorely missed; he was an excellent supporter of the Libraries.
• Eileen Stec has agreed to assume additional responsibilities as Rutgers University Libraries Coordinator of Services for Users with Disabilities. As coordinator she is the point person for the Americans with Disabilities Act issues for the Libraries. Gaunt commended Stec for accepting this responsibility; a formal announcement will go out to RUL_Everyone.
• Some administrators from Rutgers have testified before the state legislature on the merger of the research universities. Golden commented that he had heard Provost Diner's comments on the web and among the many aspects of a merger that he addressed, he noted that a strong and system-wide library and IT system would benefit collaboration. Proceedings from the Legislative Task Force on Higher Education and the Economy are found at http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/media/archive_audio2.asp?KEY=LTHE&SESSION=2006
• Gaunt noted and circulated a VALE last copy policy that is going to be discussed at an upcoming Executive Committee meeting that Gaunt is unable to attend. She asked Sewell to discuss it with the Collection Development Council and provide input to Judy Cohn, chair of the Vale Executive Committee. She also noted that one of the items from the recent Director's retreat for future collaboration was the exploration of a joint ILS for academic libraries. Ann Montanaro is representing Rutgers on the working group. They plan to explore current open source systems. There was some discussion of whether a complete open source ILS could or should be developed for NJ, the needs of the research libraries being sophisticated for the several modules needed. It might be better to explore a front end to our catalogs. Agnew agreed to keep Cabinet posted of any developments.
• RLG will be hosting a meeting at the New York Public Library on March 15-16 on "Discovery to Delivery in New Contexts." It should be an excellent meeting and Rutgers should be represented. To ensure broad participation from the membership, there may be a limitation on the number of individuals from a single institution that can attend.

Strategic Plan Implementation Update - Boyle/Joseph

Joseph and Boyle spoke about the Planning Committee's discussion on how to gather input for the implementation of the strategic plan. As we know, each year an agenda will be developed that depends on setting priorities that will be based in part on funding available. Boyle and Joseph shared a grid that listed all the goals and objectives of the plan. The grid will be sent to all the groups that prepared reports that were used to develop the strategic plan. Not everything that these groups suggested was included in the strategic plan. Now each group will be asked to review the plan and to designate on the grid where they see a primary role and a secondary role for their committee or group. This will help them to align their work according to our plan. It will also provide guidance to Cabinet on what groups will be taking a lead to develop parts of the plan. It might also help in the reorganization discussions to know where the work of several groups overlap, or where there is a void. Boyle and Joseph noted that this will be the first go round on completing the grid, based on the groups who initially prepared strategic plan reports. When this information comes back and is collated, other groups may be asked to contribute as well. This exercise should also help direct the work of our committees and other groups, as the plan is not "in addition to" our work, but it will become our work.

Scholarly Communication Workshop Debriefing - Sewell

Sewell reported on the ARL scholarly communication workshop that he and Jim Niessen attended in December. The workshop was for teams from each institution that are interested in developing a scholarly communication plan for their university. The two-day workshop focused on the aspects of scholarly communication - what is it and what are the various parts, such as open access, repositories, copyright, author rights, publishing models, and business plans. Much of the program was focused on each team developing a draft plan for their institution and sharing things that were in place at their institution - what worked and what did not. Sewell and Niessen developed a draft plan and timetable that was shared with Cabinet. Sewell noted that the timetable was not operable, as we had not yet had a full discussion before implementation. Cabinet noted that the plan needed to be framed in the institutional culture of Rutgers. For example, are we likely to have vice presidents on a committee, should we have their representatives, or should we acknowledge that they do support these issues, and work with a teaching faculty/library faculty committee? The plan should also be developed in the context of our own strategic plan. That plan has several objectives that could help focus a scholarly communication plan and priorities. It was also noted that the liaisons would have an important role, as scholarly communication is very discipline dependent. It was decided that a forum for the library faculty to discuss developing a scholarly communication plan, and relating it to the development and deployment of the repository and overall planning would be useful. Gaunt noted that the repository could handle many current and future digital objects, but we must prioritize what the repository should contain, and the scholarly communication plan could assist in this regard.

Announcements

Zapcic

• The Foundation has a new head of research.
• Becker and Zapcic will travel to Washington, DC in March to visit the legislators; we have an earmark to support political papers; will work with Mullins to use the Jazz Institute to increase Rutgers visibility; will ask Mullins to prepare a DVD to bring with us.

Mullins

• Zapcic and Jacqueline Perkel-Joseph, Foundation Senior Assistant Director, met with Mullins, Dan Morgenstern, and Ed Berger in Newark; had a planning session on the capital campaign and steps that need to be taken.
• Reviewed the 20-member jazz advisory board from the perspective of potentiality of giving and participation in the capital campaign.

Joseph

• Joseph has a feature piece in the February/March 2007 issue of American Craft Magazine: "Guild of Book Workers 100th Anniversary Exhibition," looking to the past and the present, the guild celebrates the book arts in all their diversity. The exhibition was held at The Grolier Club in New York.

Sewell

• The Edward J. Bloustein Dictionary Collection exhibition opening reception will be held on Tuesday, February 6, beginning at 5:00 p.m., in the Scholarly Communication Center Lecture Hall. Professor Jack Lynch of the Rutgers-Newark English department will speak at the exhibition opening.

Agnew

• Agnew and Jantz attended the open repositories conference and a meeting of the Fedora Advisory Board; they picked up a lot of good pointers on open source software; presentations were high level to highly technical.

Puniello

• Puniello, Golden, Judy Gardner and Theo Haynes will attend the academic coordinating council meeting tomorrow to work on relationships with them.
• The College Art Association (CAA) Committee on Women in the Arts and the Women's Caucus for Art (WCA) will present a joint annual award to recognize women arts professionals who have made major contributions to the visual arts, art history, and arts administration, to Ferris Olin of the Rutgers University Libraries. She will receive the honor at a CAA-WCA awards ceremony at the New York Hilton on the evening of February 17. Olin is a former member of the Board of Directors of CAA and served as the organization's Vice-President for Committees.
• "Women Leaders from Rutgers University Collections" Exhibition at Douglass Library; photos, and documents from fifteen pioneering women will be on display in an exhibition at the Douglass Library starting January 30.
• Permission has been given for a student at Rutgers to build a rabbit burrow for 24 hours on a Kilmer Library shelf as part of a project.

Boyle

• The Middle States Update: Assessment Working Group met yesterday. The WG had its draft report greatly enlarged. Boyle submitted a report based on the earlier outline and is rewriting based on later WG discussions. We are also working on a consolidated report from the libraries. Sewell has been asked to work on collections, and Puniello is working on facilities. Gaunt developed the initial outline, Jeris Cassel wrote text for overall library contributions to undergraduate collections, and Boyle is consolidating.
• Boyle attended the geology open house and was inspired by the kinds of work Rutgers is doing. Staff is encouraged to support Rutgers seminars.