LAUC-B Executive Committee Meeting Minutes
June 18, 2020, 2:00-3:30 pm.
Present: Naomi Shiraishi, Joe Cera, Jim Church, Ramona Collins, Susan McElrath, Jianye He, Stacy Reardon, Jane Rosario
Guests: M. Hamed, S. Kealey, C. Lee, I. Wang
I. Announcements
- Elections: a few problems, but will send the correct ballot to everyone next week
- Recent past practice has been that the Staff Development Committee rep has served on RPD committee, but may not be a formal requirement. May be enough to keep in touch.
II. Continuing Business
- 2021 LAUC-B Conference (guests: S. Kealey & C. Lee)
- Proposal to plan the conference to be a virtual conference given concerns with pandemic, environmental disasters, and possible budget cuts. A virtual conference would also be more accessible. ExComm agreed.
- Format flexibility: moving to a multi-day format, trying out other strategies to reduce Zoom fatigue and accommodate any time zone differences
- Committee eligibility: may be only LAUC-B members, but Naomi will consult the by-laws. ExComm was open to reconsidering the issue.
III. New Business
- Effects bargaining and MOU (guest: I. Wang)
- 2 brief sessions of effects bargaining with UCOP, with an intention to get a side letter. This has stalled because the University's position is that they do not have any obligation to bargain over. Topics: technical and material support to work from home; implications for review; expectations about productivity. Informally, there was some assurance that productivity will not be held to the standard of the existing working-from-home boilerplate agreement.
- No update on approaching the librarian unit about salary freezes, layoffs, furloughs.
- The union will be having a brown bag on June 24th at noon to share more details.
- SALALM resolution (guest: M. Hamed)
- Concern with the effects of digital-first initiatives in libraries and how this may affect diversity in collections as well ability to meet researcher needs.
- Diversity committee discussed some of these issues with Jeff during the office hours. Jeff mentioned that until now, there was no long-term plans to make changes in our policies
- Proposal to come up with a UC Berkeley version of this resolution or some kind of endorsement. Can LAUC-B play a role in this?
- Suggestion to have a panel discussion on print-focused collections that might lead to some kind of statement to reflect our position. Mohamed will work with Ramona and Susan about taking the idea forward.
IV. Reports
a. Treasurer (J. He)
- Budget is strong right now even though we received less than we requested for this fiscal year. The final budget balance is $61,250.24. The savings are mostly from last year’s carry-forward, as well as careful spending. In addition, we did not have an in-person Spring Assembly. Travel was limited by Covid 19.
- The concern is that next year's budget request may be underfunded.
b. Monthly UL meeting (N. Shiraishi)
- Met with UL on June 1
- Agreed to speak at the assembly, depending on time availability.
- Can the library receive data from the campus morale survey? (We have since received the results)
- Access to office: talk to supervisor. Various members of the administration as well as UCPD and others need to clear permissions.
- Affiliated libraries: unable to speak for their different plans.
c. LIBR meeting (R. Collins)
- Met on June 4
- Jeff went over the re-opening plans and guiding principles
- Update on book due dates and extensions, paging books, curbside delivery, HathiTrust
- Budget: expecting to hear a budget number soon, hiring freeze in place, workforce will shrink hopefully through attrition, may be additional costs with reopening.
- Question about communications plan; faculty feel unsure what is happening.
- Reservation system for a seat in the library
- Questions about opening Bancroft
d. LAUC statewide conference call (N. Shiraishi)
- The Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion made a proposal for LAUC to endorse the BCALA (Black Caucus of the American Library Association) statement condemning increased violence and racism towards Black Americans and People of Colour.
- CPG is working on COVID-19 impact on review. There are 3 points: economic impact, work from home conditions, cancellation of conferences and workshops and how that would affect peer reviews.
- LAUC election: Still no candidate for Vice President elect; EB voted to suspend the standing rule restricting candidates to open up UCLA and UCSD. The election is postponed to September.
- Date for the conference will be sometime in July. Probably will be a 2-day assembly