Tuesday, February 15, 2005, 1:00-3:00 p.m.
College Library Conference Room

1. Call to order

The meeting was called to order at 1:06 p.m.

2. Agenda review and announcements

Janet welcomed LAUC PresidentTerry Huwe.

3. Secretary's report

   -Review and approval of January 11, 2005 Executive Board minutes

The January 11th meeting minutes were approved as amended. 

4. Chair's report

   -Appreciation to Vice Chair

Janet thanked Debe Costa for chairing the last Executive Board meeting as well as the Peer Review Task Force while Janet was away.

   -Peer Review Task Force update

Debe reported that the Task Force has been discussing the issue of getting outside people onto ad hoc committees for appointments and whether this could be a possibility here at UCLA. One question is whether there would need to be face to face meetings to review the documents or if this could be done remotely. Regardless of logistical questions, it was agreed that, when necessary, people with specialized knowledge should be pulled into the process for the sake of fairness. The Task Force also discussed the process for reviewing appointments. In the past, the practice has been for the ad hoc committees to look at rank and step. However, sometime over the years, this need to look at the step has been dropped from the documentation.

   -UCLA COL Jan. 25th, 2005 meeting and the plans for he March 8^th meeting

Janet distributed the UCLA COL’s response to the report on “Systemwide Strategic Directions for Libraries and Scholarly Information at the University of California.” The COL highlighted the need to pay attention to the needs of the print collection not just digital collections, as well as concerns about adequate funding for Regional Library Facilities, and whether UC initiatives for a shared digital archive are the best use of scarce resources.

Additionally, the COL is interested in looking at recall and blocking policies for the faculty. Now that these features are available through Voyager, their use should be considered and advance advertising should be done with the faculty.

Gary Strong presented the committee with a report on the UCLA Libraries’ capital space needs. While there has been no major expansion in 30 years, the collections and the numbers of students and faculty have all grown. He stressed that the numbers show that people are still using the libraries. He would like to have a new science and engineering library, as well as the new performing arts library, and an addition to YRL. The possibility of off-site technical and support services is also under consideration. Planning for the third phase of the SRLF is underway.

5. Vice-chair’s  report

   -Update on 2005 Peer Review Committee activities

There will be a training session on February 23^rd. Peer review starts on March 4^th.

   -LAUC Statewide Conference Call

As Terry Huwe was in attendance, he reported on the conference call. He reported that he’ll be attending the council of ULs and then the statewide UCOL meeting. The members of the senate showed interest in the information literacy initiative last year, so he can report back on this year’s related activities. They also discussed the APM and the issue of modifying it to reflect librarians’ involvement in teaching. The library science ejournal initiative is underway. He also noted that the strategic directions document was very much about libraries and not about librarians. It’s people here who do the work and we need to bring the information professional back into the picture.

Terry mentioned that Esther Grassian has the latest opinion piece on the LAUC website. Kerry Lucas will be next with a piece on the teaching responsibilities of librarians.

6. Committee reports

   -Committee on Library Plans and Policies

Nothing to report. 

   -Committee on Professional Governance

Barbara Rudich reported that there were no comments or corrections for the committee after the last LAUC-LA meeting on the by-laws changes. They worked with Jan Goldsmith to prepare the ballot. A message will be sent out to LAUCtalk asking people to inform Jan Goldsmith if they didn’t receive a ballot and she will send them one. If the by-laws changes pass, the committee will send them to LAUC Statewide for approval and we can begin implementing them right away.

   -Committee on Research and Professional Development

Jenny Lentz reported for Laura Cadra. The committee received one local application for the statewide grant. It was reviewed, suggestions were made to the applicant, and it has been submitted. The committee will meet again in a few weeks to review all applications.

7. Old Business

   -Special election for LAUC-LA By-law revisions

Janet reminded everyone of the March 1^st deadline for sending back the completed ballots.

8. New Business

   -Nominations Committee

Janet Carter reported for Rita Costello. Much depends on the outcome of the special election. If the changes pass, then this will affect the work that needs to be done by the nominating committee. The discussions included whether to have a special election for the CAPA chair and chair-elect or have the board appoint the first chair. It was agreed that our elections should match the June 8^th date of the statewide elections. Barbara Rudich suggested that we might want to investigate the possibility of email elections in the future.

9. Discussion with Terry Huwe

Terry noted that the Statewide Executive Board is very interested in the activities of LAUC-LA and is following the peer review discussion closely. He also noted that he sees two things happening across the campuses. Despite diminished resources we are still hiring a new generation of librarians. There are also many new ULs in the system. Our careers will be enormously affected by this and we should be thinking strategically about where we want to go. He mentioned the Librarians@Irvine website as an example of an interesting public relations initiative. He’s also very excited by the possibilities offered by publishing on the web. Overall, we need to make ourselves better known and better heard campus-wide.

Ruby Bell-Gam noted that she would like to see the issue of responding to initiative addressed by LAUC. She sees a pattern of projects being developed and then being handed over to someone else. She feels that it is demoralizing that the organization does not seem to value initiative.

Terry also requested that something on the election results be written up for distribution to the statewide membership.

10. New Business continued

   -LAUC Committee on Professional Governance charge

Louise Ratliff reported that the divisional committees have been charged to carry-out an information-gathering exercise on the formal and informal relationships between LAUC members and the Academic Senate. Debe has already emailed Gary about this fact-finding initiative. Here at UCLA the chair of LAUC is an ex-officio member of the COL but does not attend the entire meeting.

   -LAUC-LA web page

David Cappoli  reported that he has identified two librarians who have agreed to assume shared responsibility for the web page. It was agreed that the position would be a two year, renewable commitment. Donna Gulnac and Dominique Turnbow will take on the position from David in the fall.

   -Proposal for a LAUC-LA program on the Distinguished Librarian

Esther Grassian had suggested to Janet that it might be helpful to have a program that gave tips on how to pull together a packet for Distinguished Librarian status. Lise Snyder suggested that she would like to have a program with Gary and the AULs on their views of what merits the step. This topic will be discussed at the next meeting and referred to the Committee on Programs.

   -Other

Janet noted that there was a program done by last year’s Librarian of the Year recipient and it would be great to have one done by this year’s award winner. Janet will speak with Jenifer Abramson to see if LHR is working on something.

11. Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 3:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Orchid Mazurkiewicz
LAUC-LA Secretary