Minutes of Coordinating Committee Meeting for the Oct. 20, 1999 meeting

Present:

Gaunt, Wilson, Au, Becker, Consoli, Dess, Gardner, Haynes, Langschied, Li, P.Page, Tipton

Decisions

• Send revised draft of RUL mission statement to Cabinet for discussion and recommendations for gathering faculty and staff input. Synthesize feedback and revise draft to incorporate; bring to spring faculty meeting for final discussion and vote.
• Plan special discussion on the "virtual reference desk" for spring RUL faculty meeting.

1. Minutes of the Sept. 15 meeting were approved.
2. Old Business:
   1. Minor wording changes were made to the draft RUL mission statement that was developed by last year's committee. It is important to gather broad faculty/staff input before bringing this to the faculty for a vote. Gaunt will bring the revised draft (attached) to Cabinet for discussion. Since campus directors and AULs are on Cabinet, they can decide how best to solicit feedback from their librarians and staff. Coordinating Committee can then review and synthesize this feedback, revise accordingly, and put the final draft on the agenda for the spring faculty meeting.
   2. The next faculty meeting is 10/29 at KAL, with networking starting at 8:45. The agenda has been distributed by email. VP Caprio, or Rich Novak from his office, will be attending to lead discussion on distance education efforts at RU-specifically what's going on now, where things are going, and what are expectations for support. Other related issues include copyright for development of course content, winter session, and impact of these activities on RUL. Consoli noted that the NB Faculty Council discussed winter session at its last meeting, and Novak indicated that this was an experiment. They will be soliciting student feedback to see if it's successful. NB Libraries have decided not to extend library hours for this since classes do not end on New Brunswick campus till 10 p.m. Camden has extended evening hours from 5-7 pm for winter session.

3. New Business:
1. Committee Action Plans for this year:
   
   Planning Committee (Tipton, chair)-Will spend this year studying models for electronic publication at other universities and elsewhere (ex: Cal Tech, SPARC). Need to get the RU faculty involved in these discussions. Will probably schedule a program for the spring and will invite teaching faculty.
   
   Research Leave Review Committee (Haynes, chair)-Receiving applications on quarterly basis and distributing to committee members via fax. Most deliberations done via email but will probably need to meet after next deadline (Jan. 15), which will include FASP proposals as well as SRAs.
   
   Personnel Policy and Affirmative Action Committee (R.Gardner, chair)-Will be updating the "Guidelines for Activities and Documentation with Respect to Reappointment and Promotion of Library Faculty," which hasn't been revised since 1991. Need to include such things as electronic publishing and digital projects. Also will be looking at technology competencies for librarians-what should be minimum requirements and what/how included in job postings. Some library school teaching faculty have commented that there's not enough time in the MLS degree program to teach everything we might need. May invite someone from SCILS to talk about this at a spring program. Langschied noted that at last NBL faculty meeting the Technology Team brought up the idea of having an SRA specifially for getting training in some type of technology, which would be used in library or special projects. Hopefully we could find a pool of money to help defray costs of such training. Gaunt said this proposal should be coordinated with the Steering Committee on Training and Development chaired by L. Mullins; they will also be looking for money.
   
   Public Services Council (Li)-Focus this year will be on selection and acquisition of networked resources. She noted that many technical service personnel are still working largely in paper format and have little to do with these electronic resources. They need to be educated about how these are selected and used.
   
   Collection Development Council (Consoli)-Goals for this year will be in the next CDC minutes. Important issues to be examined include paper v. electronic formats, copyright issues (especially pertaining to ejournals), cataloging of collections for which we don't have individual access (e.g., microform sets), uniformity of approval plans. There is a new procedure for recommending networked resources-they must be requested through the appropriate subject representative on the CDC (Consoli-humanities, Vazquez-social sciences, Tallau-sciences). Next week there will be a workshop to learn the new electronic system dealing with budget allocations.
   
   Appointments & Promotions (Becker--for Weber, chair)-Currently reviewing four open positions; three are in NB (Environmental and Agricultural Sciences, Science and Digital Projects, and History/Political Science), plus one in Special Collections (Labor Archivist). Also coming up for review: one promotion with tenure, one promotion to Librarian I, one reappointment, and one promotion from Librarian IV to III. Will be participating in the upcoming workshop on promotion to Lib. I.
   
   Technical Services Council (Dess)-Goals are stated in August TSC minutes. Major focus is still recon, although there is no extra money for this. Decided to concentrate on small recon projects that require little money. Langschied noted that a priority has been set on government documents-specifically adding holdings information for Alex and LSM docs to existing records in IRIS. Systems has estimated about 2600 existing records, but this could be an underestimate.
2. Wilson sent out a call to RUL faculty for program ideas for upcoming faculty meetings. The only response came from Becker, who suggested doing something on preservation issues (he is on a university library-wide preservation task force). Wilson suggested doing a program on the virtual reference desk, which was enthusiastically endorsed by committee members. She will ask Natalie Borosovits if she would make a presentation on the RUL status of virtual reference service for the spring faculty meeting.
4. Report of the University Librarian:

   Gaunt attended the ARL and the SPARC users meeting. The meetings were held back-to-back with similar topics merging. Main themes were copyright issues and how to educate your community to the changing nature of scholarly communication. She distributed copies of several handouts: summary of what's happening at 10 universities, discussion by Richard Lucier from UC about scholar-led innovation, and excerpt from SPARC booklet on advocacy training. In Lucier's presentation on innovation, he stated that innovation must come from the faculty-it cannot be forced upon them. He identified four factors important to faculty to spur innovation: 1) guarantee of intellectual property, 2) guaranteed long-term access/preservation, 3) quality of information, and 4) removing financial and policy barriers. The SPARC session on how to be a good advocate was also very useful. Their booklet on advocacy should be helpful to the Planning Committee in their efforts to get RU faculty involved in their discussions. It might also be useful to bring in someone to do a session for RUL in this area.

   A letter will be going out soon to all RU faculty explaining what is happening with the additional budget money RUL has been awarded. It will be distributed first via email to RUL faculty. The letter will focus on the changing environment in the libraries and how we can no longer maintain the old status quo. We will be moving toward expedited and subsidized document delivery, and we will continue to decrease our print journal subscriptions while increasing electronic journal subscriptions.

   Gaunt gave a presentation on copyright and intellectual property to the Deans' Council. Dr. Seneca's office had originally planned to do a program on copyright this fall, but this has been postponed until probably spring.

   The State of the Libraries program will be held 11/9 a.m. at the Livingston Student Center. The theme will be the Digital Libraries Initiative. Tefko Saracevic will speak on advancing the digital library, MIG will give a brief report on what RUL is doing this year to move toward the digital library, L. Mullins will talk about training for the digital library, and J. DiMeo will discuss the fundraising campaign and how we will afford the digital library. All three campus libraries will be invited to exhibit on their efforts toward the digital library.

5. Announcements/Updates:

   Wilson is now receiving copies of documents from the personnel office, including committee appointment letters, candidates for post-tenure review, and position descriptions. What is her role as faculty coordinator with respect to these documents? Most recently she received the position description for the Associate University Librarian for Information Systems and Technology. Gaunt noted that library faculty guidelines include comment from the Faculty Coordinator and Planning Committee on open tenure-track positions. Wilson will review and comment.

   Au announced that Newark is preparing for the annual Book Arts Conference to be held next month. This has been held for the past five or six years and has always been well attended.

   Haynes said that weeding for gov docs at Camden is essentially done. There have been problems with the public PCs ever since the new memory was installed. Apparently some cheap memory was used that wasn't compatible with their machines, so new memory has now been ordered. On the renovation front, Camden has learned that they will not be able to spend any renovation money on the gym. Since the renovation of Robeson Library has been declared a priority, perhaps they will receive some additional funds?

   Dess has been asked by Dr. Fred Kauffman, chair of the NB Faculty Council Library Committee, to serve on that committee.

   Question from Au regarding the Re-invest in Rutgers program-will RUL get any money from this? Gaunt stated that the additional $150,000 RUL received for media is for smart classrooms, not for media equipment generally. RUL did put in a request through this program for subsidized computer purchases (public and staff), and we hope to hear soon.

   Question from Dess regarding funds for SPARC-where are they coming from at RUL? Gaunt stated that our dues are paid from non-state funds. Any SPARC journals that selectors want to buy should come from their usual funds.

   Note: There is a working phone jack in the Nicholas Rutgers Conference Room. If campus representatives or committee chairs from Newark and Dana cannot attend a Coordinating Committee meeting, they can give reports via phone. We hope to have teleconferencing ability in that room in the future.

6. Next meeting Nov. 17.

Respectfully submitted
Penny B. Page
Secretary