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Minutes:
September 15, 2004
All-Libraries Meeting
Center for British and Irish Studies
1. Helene McHendry, Chair of the Library Advisory Board, called the meeting to order. She thanked the Library Advisory Board, the Social Functions Committee, the PR and Cultural Activities Committee, and the staff of the Norlin Underground for their help in organizing the All Staff Meeting, and turned the meeting over to Dean Jim Williams.
2. Dean Williams explained that Council had recently discussed the need for the Libraries to more actively celebrate its milestones, rather than letting them pass by unrecognized. Out of this discussion came the idea to give each staff member a mug with the Libraries’ new logo, as well as a beverage card for the Norlin Underground.
Dean Williams announced that the All Staff Meeting would officially kick off “The Year of the Libraries.” In an effort to promote the Libraries across campus, the Campus Relations office will highlight each of the Libraries’ departments and branches on the Libraries’ Web site and announce this to the campus. Departments and branches may also have group photographs taken at the sundial, and posters will be made and distributed to each member. Departments may also schedule internal tours.
Dean Williams then read the Libraries’ vision statement in the Strategic Plan as a way to introduce the following milestones achieved by the Libraries over the past five years:
$100,000 anonymous gift to theMath/Physics Library; book sales through B-Logistics totaling approximately $3,000;new digital initiatives lab;
integration of the ITS videos into the Media Library in collaboration with Public Services, Cataloging, Media, and ITS;
two successful digitization grants for the Music and Earth Sciences libraries;
relationship established with the College of Arts & Sciences resulting in a $10,000 grant to all new faculty for building library collections in their disciplines;
Pat Morris has received a Big 12 Fellowship and in November will travel to the University of Texas at Austin to study and teach in the library school. She will also construct a survey tool for evaluating library environments;
addition of the CJK normalization function in Chinook;
completion of 83% of the inventory for the Engineering Library;
establishment of the Assessment Committee, chaired by Nancy Carter;
bibliographic control of electronic resources and materials in Special Collections (nearly 22,000 new catalog records for SpC);
reorganizations in Public Services of Collection Development, Gifts, Circulation, and Interlibrary Loan;
Pat Morris’ assessment of the condition of the collections, and the NEH grant proposal to replace windows in Norlin as a preservation effort;
Charlene Kellsey’s assessment of storage space needs;
new logo;
new Web site;
self-circulation machines in Norlin and Business, and the Business Library’s 3M inventory project;
writing of an 04/05 Communications and Outreach plan;
addition of the 3-millionth title to the collection;
BCR project, organized by Meri Willet, Judy Neve, and Janet Swan Hill, resulting in 786,590 titles being inventoried thus far;
Preservation Department’s emergency plan and quick reference guide;
Recruitment Task Force establishing relationship with the Graduate Teaching Program resulting in at least two “Provost Fellowships” being awarded to graduate students working as interns in the Libraries’.
3. Pat Morris introduced the new emergency plan and quick reference guide.
She thanked the committee members for all of their work. Pat introduced the
new emergency grab buckets that will be strategically placed throughout the
Libraries (16 in total). She also showed an example of the quick reference
guide that will be given to each staff member and placed near every telephone.
More information from Preservation on the plan, the guide and training will
be forthcoming.
4. Questions submitted by staff:
Q: What is the status of the budget (campus and
Libraries)?A: Dean Williams stated that the census on this year’s enrollment is still underway. Once that is completed, and the budget for the campus has been finalized, the Libraries will receive its allocation. Dean Williams mentioned that at the Deans’ retreat on Sept. 14/04 the CFO mentioned that this year’s budget will be balanced by drawing from the campus’ financial reserves. In the meantime, we need to be guarded about our budgets for this year and next, and Cabinet asks the staff to think about ways for the Libraries to generate its own revenues.
Q: What are the plans for filling vacant staff positions? How soon might positions be filled? If only some will be filled, how will they be prioritized?
A: Dean Williams stated that once the budget is in, Cabinet will prioritize the filling of vacant positions and decide on timelines. He mentioned that Technical Services currently has
the most number of faculty and staff vacancies.Q: What if any library collections will be going to the Atlas building.
A: None. Atlas will not have a library.
Q: What does “Enterprise status” mean for the Libraries?
A: Approximately 7.5% of the university’s budget comes from the State; these are called general funds. Because the university funds the Libraries through these general funds (approximately 3.5% of the total 7.5%), enterprise status will not affect the Libraries a great deal in terms of the source of our funding. Dean Williams reiterated the need for the
Libraries to think more strategically about generating its own revenue.
5. Open question and comment period:
Q: What is the status of the student budget?
A: Dean Williams stated that we won’t know the student budget until we know about the overall budget. Until then, he advises that student supervisors continue to do what they have been doing, working under the premise that the student budget from the provost will likely be similar to last year’s.
Tim Byrne noted that Government Publications recently negotiated a deal to get paid by Lexis Nexis to catalog some of the their materials, and that GPO will likely be funding a librarian to work in public services at CU-B.
Dean Williams closed the meeting by encouraging all staff to get involved in the Year of the Libraries and thanked all committees responsible for organizing the All Staff Meeting.
