LAUCB Executive Committee Meeting Minutes.
Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024
10am-11:30am.
Zoom.
 

Present: 

• Ex Comm: José Adrián Barragán-Álvarez; Jen Brown; Kristie Chamorro; Misha Coleman; Jackie Gosseler; Michael Sholinbeck; Jesse Silva; Christina Velazquez Fidler.
• Guests: Sam Teplitzky; Jeremy Ott; Kendra Levine; Tim Vollmer; Nicholas Dehler; David Eifler.
• Regrets: Cyrana Dowell.
   

Announcements

• Check-ins.
• José Adrián: 2 book fairs recently.

Reports

• Treasurer’s Report (Jackie)
  • Notes that LBS has been backed up due to 2nd quarter reports, so she has not received much new info this time.
     
• LEIC Report (Jackie)
  • Met Jan. 8 (but JG not present). Looking for new Chair and new sub-committee conveners. Participation in CIO search. 
  • Discussed budget proposal intake form and funding of conf attendance. (They get $25k/yr, plus rollover from last yr)
  • Discussed status of objectives, and strategic plan refresh. Next mtg 2/15/24.
• LIBR Meeting (Christina)
  • Met 2/1/24. Brief discussion of new UL and how searches are confidential; apparently at least 1 candidate did not want public pres. New UL not coming as faculty; how will that play out in Senate, but she will be a member of Senate because all deans are. 
  • Friend of the library push to faculty went out.
  • CAPRA had done a one-time call for $4million for library; no response form Admin yet. 
  • Next mtg: will discuss new chancellor. 
  • JMM spoke about Ctr for Connected Learning, as well as what has been cut due to budget constraints. Staffing will not be as originally planned. 
  • He said Cabinet finalized Strategic Plan; will be going out soon. 
  • Said it’s difficult to get candidates these days because of salaries and the length of time it takes to recruit.
     
• Affiliated Libraries (Kristie)
  • Some lessons learned from Winter Social. Went a little over budget. Spring might be easier in future: weather, easier to find location, more flexibility. This may be the plan for next year.
  • Possible future session will be tech tools lightning talks. Maybe this spring..? Will ponder this being an all-LAUCB or just an Affiliated session. 
  • Comment from Tim: Research Committee plans a new Librarians event in spring; let’s coordinate!
     
• Meeting with the UL (José Adrián)
  • Finalized meeting with Cabinet; will be on March 13, 2024. Pre-read will be Statement of Values. 
  • We will talk to Gigi Gillard About LAUCB involvement in transition. 
     
• LAUC Statewide (José Adrián)
  • JABA, CVF, and MS cannot attend. JABA and CVF will attend via Zoom; we get 3 total delegates, we need to register by 2/21. Funds are available for official delegates. Kristie will consider attending. 
  • Website: https://guides.library.ucla.edu/laucassembly2024. 
     

Continuing Business

• Proposed changes to the Distinguished Librarian Award (Jesse)
  • Proposal was to open the DLA to staff. 
  • Requires bylaws change; proposals are here (Christina and Jesse worked on the changes). Bylaws change requires vote by LAUC membership. 
  • Some discussion over wording changes and such.
  • A concern was raised that this might deprofessionalize librarians; most did not agree.
  • This can be brought up and discussed at spring assembly.
  • Next step: reach out to the Nominating and Elections Committee; this must be ready by Assembly.
  • Funding is in the FY25 budget (7/24-6/25). 
  • More discussion forthcoming.
     

New Business

• Professional development funding: Discussion of how the membership uses Professional Development Funds and what to do regarding the unclaimed funds at the end of the two-year cycle. 
  • Some issues arose due to new travel form. 
  • The current (nor the past) process does not take into account personal and other funds we use to pay for professional development that we are expected to do. 
  • Plus there is not a lot of transparency in tracking funds used / available, either individually or communally. Can this info be added to UCPATH?
  • What are we not able to do due to lack of funds? What would we like to do? 
  • Possibly re-run the survey this year. Seems to be agreement for this.
  • Idea to ask also about difficulty of needing to await reimbursement. 
  • Tim will loop in the other RPD Committee folks to start a plan. 
  • Jeremy will share detailed survey information, but here is some tidbits from the 2018 LAUC-B Prof. Dev. Committee survey:
    • 73% report spending more than three quarters of their PD funds each year. Reasons for not spending all funds included: the remainder of funds is not enough to do anything else; some spend all one year and then less another year; desired trainings/conferences too expensive; some do not attend conferences (at all or every year) for various reasons. Other PD funding sources (aside from annual LAUC / Library funds) respondents have used include grants (LAUC or external), AUL funds, and departmental funds. 93% of respondents have used personal funds for PD. 54% report spending more than $500 of their own funds on PD: 29% spend $501-1,000 annually, while 24% spend $1,001-4,000. 39% are discouraged from participating in PD by the reimbursement process.
  • We currently have no way to know how many librarians are members of what entities, and how much funding goes toward this.
  • Data on how much it costs to be a librarian/archivist/staff professional would be useful. Association membership is expensive! What actually *is* required? Assoc membership? Learning new skills? What does and should PD funding cover? Is this worthy of a future discussion?
  • Lack of travel or use of funds should not penalize our career growth. Maybe we need to add to dossier a note on how lack of funding affected our career path during the period under review.
  • Maybe RPD could put on an event on the whole process, including direct billing, in collaboration with LBS. JABA and TV will discuss. 
  • As an aside, UC AFT is proposing a significant PD funding increase; contract in negotiation now. 
• LAUCB / Ex Comm shared drive:
  • MS, JS, KC will talk offline and bring this up in March.