LAUC-B Executive Committee Meeting
Thursday, October 8, 2009
10:00 am - 12:00 pm
303 Doe Library
Present: J. Bolstad (Recorder), M. Burnette, C. Lee, S. Koskinen, R. Martinez, M. Phillips (Chair), S.
Tao, I. Wang.
Guests: B. Anton, B. Bohl, M.Cochran, R. Evans, M. Harmon, L. Jones, J. Schultz.
I. New business
A. Operational Excellence initiative (R. Evans)
- There was discussion about a consulting firm that has been hired by UCB to conduct a 6-month project
involving campus-wide interviews to determine what cuts can be made. Concerns were expressed about
how the libraries on campus could potentially be a target. It was determined that there is most likely no
need to worry for the time-being. However, M. Phillips and S. Koskinen will ask T. Leonard to keep
everybody informed about the process.
II. Announcements
- The Affiliated Libraries Assembly will be held on Oct 21 at Boalt Hall. R. Martinez will send out an
announcement to allusers.
- There are a few volunteers who have agreed to serve on the host committee for the LAUC Fall
Assembly. The conference planning committee will put out a second call for more volunteers.
- LAUC-B committee appointments were made, and recommendations for who should serve on CAPA
will be made soon.
- A tentative agreement for a furlough program is happening.
- Next Wednesday, the LAUC-B Committee on Research will hold a Townsend Fellowship brown bag.
Folks from the Townsend Center will be there. People are encouraged to attend and apply.
- Sometime in November there will be a brown bag on professional development funding.
- Librarian review letters should have been sent out already by LHRD.
- M. Phillips will send an e-mail to LAUC-B with a list of URLs to the calendar.
- There was a discussion about the statement of responsibility. One aspect that needs further
clarification is whether individuals or their supervisors should write the statement, or whether they should
write it together. In addition, it is unclear whether all librarians, only new librarians, or librarians who are
serving in new positions, need to write a statement. A suggestion was to gather examples from other
campuses and develop a general template. The next steps will be to talk to T. Leonard and the AFT.
ExComm will revisit this topic in the future.
III. Reports
A. Treasurer's Report (I. Wang)
- The current balance is $73,932.14.
B. Meeting with the University Librarian (M. Phillips, S. Koskinen)
- M. Phillips mentioned Daniel Greensteins Inside Higher Education article to T. Leonard.
- The AFT and Career Compass folks met and decided to close the Career Compass issue.
- T. Leonard said that the University Librarians were troubled by the fact that the union mentioned the
UCB Library could be construed as a single unit in terms of layoffs.
C. Committee on the Library, Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate (S. Koskinen)
- The Center for Higher Education received a Mellon award to review (study) the peer review system for
faculty.
- AFT has approved furloughs. CUE and AFSCME are still in negotiations.
- Regarding Moffitt Library and space issues, the Committee is interested in a library tour.
-The LBL contract is still in negotiation.
- The Academic Senate Committees are being reorganized. T. Leonard has recommended that they keep
the Library Committee, and the Committee itself has stated it would like to remain as a committee.
- C. Eckman gave a presentation on the Collaborative Collection Development Policy proposal.
D. LAUC Statewide Conference Call (M. Phillips)
- The Executive Committee board held a teleconference and agreed on June 3 as Election Day for LAUC,
which means that the LAUC assembly must be held by May 3. M. Phillips will make the Nominations
and Elections Committee aware of these dates. The University Librarians have offered to teleconference
the LAUC State-wide Fall Assembly. M. Phillips will ask L. Diamond for further information and to
perhaps appoint someone to look into teleconferencing technology.
IV. Continuing Business
A. Statewide Fall Assembly Planning (R. Martinez)
- R. Martinez will consult with L. Diamond about the budget.
B. LAUC-B Fall Assembly Planning (M. Phillips)
- The Morrison Library is available for the dates that are being considered.
V. New Business
A. LAUC-B Diversity Committee (B. Bohl)
- B. Bohl has agreed to stay on the committee for another year. New committee members have been
appointed.
- Last year, the committee agreed to continue the Library Staff Mentoring Program, as well as two other
programs. The SDC has held brown bag lunch events for staff who are currently in library school.
- B. Bohl is working on an announcement for both the Mentoring Program and the Job Shadowing
Program. ExComm recommended that it should be clearly indicated whether the program includes student
library employees. M. Phillips will work with B. Bohl in constructing the announcement and M. Phillips
will encourage people to volunteer to be mentors and/or participate in the programs. The timeframe for
the announcement will be in February.
B. LAUC-B Nominations and Elections Committee (M. Harmon, B. Anton, J. Schultz, M. Cochran)
1. Committee appointments
-The Committee described the nominations and elections process. The main difficulty was getting
people to participate due to the loss of staff and furloughs. Following up with personal
invitations/calls to potential nominees was helpful. For those who were contacted and not
interested in serving on certain committees, they had opportunities to find out about openings in
committees they might be more interested in.
-The bylaws for State versus local committees made it hard to balance the committees so that there
were members from the Affiliated Libraries, former Townsend fellows, and others. In addition,
the need for some committees to have different local and state-wide representatives made it
difficult to recruit enough volunteers.
- Next year, M. Phillips will send a message out to encourage people to volunteer to serve on
LAUC-B Committees around the time that the call goes out.
-One suggestion was that the presenters of the annual academic review workshop should mention
the importance of serving on these committees.
- The next Election Day is June 3, 2010. The slate needs to be put together by May 3.
-The Nominations and Elections Committee brought up whether LAUC-B needs to have as many
committees as it has, and suggested that it is perhaps possible to consolidate some of them so that
only some committees exist in certain years (as needed).
- ExComm offered future support, if needed, to the Committee.
2. Online elections
- The goal is to make online elections happen on June 3. The Nominations and Elections
Committee will look at surveymonkey and bspace as possible ways to do this. Someone with
technical expertise may be needed. The Committee will come back to ExComm to report its
findings by January 14.