New Brunswick Library Faculty Meeting - September 14, 2007

Present: Stephanie Bartz, Jeris Cassel, Caroline Caviness, Kayo Denda (recorder), Valeda Dent, Mary Fetzer, Rebecca Gardner, Tom Glynn, Sara Harrington, Karen Hartman, Tom Izbicki, Triveni Kuchi, Kevin Mulcahy, Jackie Mardikian, Laura Mullen, Ferris Olin, Pat Piermatti, Jim Niessen, John Shepard, Jane Sloan, Eileen Stec, Lourdes Vazquez, Ryan Womack, Myoung Wilson.

The meeting was called to order by NBLF chair Ryan Womack shortly after 9:30 a.m.

The agenda was adopted as submitted.

The minutes of the August 10, 2007 meeting were approved as submitted.

AUL Report. Valeda Dent has a scheduled meeting with Courtney McAnuff, Rutgers Associate VP for Enrollment Management, to discuss/identify possible library involvement regarding recruitment of minority students, specifically from the New Brunswick High School. Triveni mentioned that the report Student of Color Retention Report authored by the Subcommittee on Student Equity and Excellence of the Committee to Advance Common Purposes might provide Valeda with useful information. Triveni will send Valeda the report.

Valeda is in the process of organizing two presentations with invited speakers: (1) a talk on the future of reference with Joseph Janes, the founder of the Internet Public Library; and  (2) a presentation focused on instructional technology and design by librarians from other academic institutions.

Travel Policy.  Jane Sloan distributed 2 handouts: (1) Travel Budget Allocation, Expenditure, Process and Planning; and (2) Faculty Travel Policy which is the current policy, adopted at the RUL meeting on March 2, 2007. The analysis of the expenditure indicates that during 2006-2007, 22 out of 29 librarians utilized travel funds. The travel fund totaled approx. $24,000 ($11,700 from NBL, $12,400 from Central). At present, the administration of this fund has significant duplication of efforts as each unit administrative assistant keeps an account for their librarians and staff.

Jane and Marty will continue to monitor the travel fund by issuing a standard monthly report at NBLF meetings. Jane requested that each librarian submit to the Travel Committee the estimated travel expenditure for 2007-2008 with complete projected expenses. ALA is offering a special conference discount that RUL might be able to capitalize.

Issues raised:

Discussion of Open Lines. Since these discussions involved current RUL personnel, they are not fully recorded in the minutes. 

Jeris Cassel distributed the handout NBL Faculty Exploratory Discussion with three proposed positions:

The first proposal: “To merge the responsibilities of Social Sciences Data Librarian (search completed and unfilled) and Economics Librarian to create the position of Data and Economics Librarian in January 2008. In addition, NBL would hire a new Business Librarian.

The second proposal concerned the Instructional Technology Development Librarian (ITD and moving forward with the recruitment of (a) the previously agreed upon Information Literacy Librarian position and (b) the previously agreed upon priority of a Performance Arts Librarian.

The discussion on the third position Physical Sciences Librarian was postponed in the interest of time.

NBISG Report. Tom Glynn (chair, ISSG) reported that select public PCs at Alexander and Douglass have been authenticated requiring username/password to log in. Currently, these computers time out after 90 minutes of inaction. This situation enable community users to “piggy-back” on terminals that remain accessible because previous user inadvertently forgot to log out. Tom presented the proposal to change the time out span from 90 minutes to 15 minutes. The group voted to support his recommendation, and Tom will contact Ann Butman and Ann Montanaro to request this change. This implementation is anticipated to be in January, when Systems Dept. routinely re-image and service the public terminals.

Tom invited the NBLF to attend fall’07 ISSG meetings as they continue to be open meetings.

NBCG Report. Kevin will send via email an update of the collection matters. There is a scheduled NBCG meeting on Friday, September 21.

Announcements. Ryan reported from at the A.A U.P. meeting that faculty can only be excused from classroom teaching and committee service responsibilities during the extended family leave period.

Ferris distributed publicity material of forthcoming women and art programs sponsored by the Margery Somers Foster Center and Institute for Women and Art.

The meeting was adjourned at 12:07 PM.