Present:  S. Bartz, C. Caviness, K. Denda, M. Fetzer (recorder), R. Gardner, K. Hartman, T. Izbicki, T. Kuchi, J. Mardikian, K. Mulcahy, L. Mullen, D. Schulman, J. Ward, R. Womack (Chair), T. Yang

Guest:  R. Marker

The chair asked that we conclude discussion of RUcore by 3:00 p.m. and then move on to our other agenda items.  L. Mullen requested that, since the physical sciences librarian issue was addressed previously, we place that at the top of our discussion on open lines.  The agenda was adopted as distributed.

Minutes:  We will postpone approval of our September 14^th meeting minutes until we have had a chance to discuss how we wish to handle personnel issues in minutes.  The chair also welcomed two new librarians, Donna Schulman from the SMLR Library and Tao Yang, East Asian Librarian.

RUcore:  Rhonda Marker provided an extensive demonstration of RUcore.  Her new title is Repository Collection Manager, and she will solidify the work she and others have been doing the last couple of years.  The purpose of RUcore is to provide access to significant products of University research.  Various working groups (WG) exist to support the RUcore effort.  The User Services and Applications WG includes K. Hartman, T. Kuchi, R. Gardner and co-chairs L. Langschied and R. Marker.  There is also the Cyberinfrastructure Committee that includes the Software Architecture WG and a Metadata WG chaired by M.B. Weber that includes faculty from SCILS plus Gracemary Smulewitz.  The Web Services WG is chaired by A. Montanaro and R. Jantz, and includes C. Mills and S. McDonald.  At one point there was also an ad hoc Imaging Standards WG.  All people on these working groups have other responsibilities as well.

RUcore has been built on the same platform as the New Jersey Digital Highway (NJDH).  At the outset of NJDH, they tried to make sure they would not have to redo anything.  Although Rutgers University’s name was on the grant as PI, others are now getting more involved.  The basic materials forming RUcore currently are the electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) and faculty deposits.  Four people have contributed so far to faculty deposits.

RUcore is available at http://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu.  It has a prominent search box in which one may select All/Text/Images/Audio/Video.  Searches may be done by the metadata record and parts of the record.  The committee has tried to take into consideration what the actual user would expect in setting up the record. 

Graduate students may now look to RUcore to submit their dissertations.  Shaun Ellis has done a lot of work with the ETDs.  Beginning with degrees granted this semester, students must now submit their dissertations online; doing so aids the departments in tracking students’ progress also.  Initially, all but one graduate submitted their dissertations by pasting from Word, but that was problematic.  They are now being asked to create their own PDFs.  One question asked concerned patents.  A graduate school may ask RUcore to embargo dissertation for a period of time to accommodate patent applications.  The submission process has been made as simple as possible.  When someone submits a document, it does not go directly into RUcore but to the Workflow Management Team.  RUcore will be doing a soft rollout.  Other file types may be created in response to demand.

There is no expectation that subject liaisons will necessarily need to go out and sell RUcore, but each liaison should be comfortable enough with it to respond to faculty questions and to link faculty to appropriate RUcore staff.  When Rhonda receives questions directly, she tries to connect with the appropriate faculty liaison.  The User Services WG may also be able to answer some questions.

Anyone with a NetID account can contribute to RUcore; one does not need to be a faculty member.  Staff may also contribute.  Students may contribute, and, in fact, there is an interest in having papers from certain Honors programs in RUcore.  But student submissions will also to go the Workflow Management Team first.

Because of time constraints, Ryan will distribute other questions submitted regarding RUcore and the answers to them via email.

Priorities for Lines.   Dr. Furmanski’s plan for a Faculty Development Fund will set aside $12 million for faculty development over a four-year period.  To that end, Marianne has requested that the Libraries, especially Cabinet and the Planning and Coordinating Committee, make decisions on two issues.  One request is to submit a list of faculty positions in priority order for the units.  The other is to make recommendations on the use of non-tenure track faculty.

Two joint meetings of Planning and Coordinating Committee members and of the Exploratory Committee were held last week and the NBL Positions Priority Discussion Document developed as a result and distributed with our meeting agenda was discussed.  Positions in the pipeline include the business, instructional technology, physical sciences, and life sciences librarians.  NBL reaffirmed the need for these four positions.

Of the seven positions frozen within NBL, six positions were identified as high priority. There was some discussion regarding the hiring of additional subject specialists, but an opinion was ventured that particularly in the sciences, librarians may have an increased opportunity to attract money.  The six librarian positions given high priority were for:  undergraduate instruction/instruction coordinator, information literacy, science data curation, performing arts/multimedia, electronic resources, and a gifts/donation librarian. Some discussion ensued regarding the potential for units to share the latter two lines.  Today’s discussion should be considered our primary vetting of the topic since Marianne has asked for the information no later than November 15.  It is uncertain if we will have a chance to tweak our list later.

From the draft priority list submitted, the positions of science instruction, social sciences instruction, and humanities instruction librarians were assessed as medium priority, and of lesser priority were the cultural studies/humanities and the humanities digital librarian positions.

Non-Tenure Track Positions:  Due to the lateness of the hour and the dwindling number of attendees, it was decided that the Chair would email NBL faculty regarding their preferences on the use of non-tenure track positions.  Discussion covered the possibilities of retaining these as default positions and keeping them to a minimum.  It was made clear that our discussions did not impact those whom we currently have on non-tenure track lines.  Marianne has asked for feedback by November 9.

Travel Report:  There was no travel report.

NBLF Chair Report:  Ryan announced that, partly in preparation for recruiting new lines, Valeda and Lila will talk to us about diversity issues at a future meeting.

NBISG Report:  Tom Glynn reported that is unlikely that the time out period on our pcs will change until the computers are re-imaged around January.  The initiation of the login procedure has, according to J. Shepard, resolved security problems at the Music Library.  Chat reference is on the agenda but needs to be looked at in regard to equity of workload issues, a topic that might form a discussion for another NBL meeting.

NBCG Report:  Since Kevin had to leave the meeting for reference desk duty, he waived giving an NBCG report.

The meeting adjourned at 4:20 p.m.