Agenda

Meet in Goldberg Conference Room

1. Announcements

2. Deadline for Travel Requests

3. External Communications

4. Job Descriptions (Flo)

5. Copier Task Force Final Report (Tracy)

6. Individual Meetings With Your Staff Outside the Annual Evaluation Process

7. Library Council Committee Review

Minutes

(Regrets: Marshall)

1. Announcements:

• Lisa distributed a document with information on reporting taxable gifts (gift cards, certificates, etc.) to remind and update Council on university policies. Anyone who plans to purchase gift cards or certificates of any cash value (for Student Appreciation Week, for example) will need to provide the recipient’s name and employee ID # on the university’s Taxable Fringe Benefits form. See Lisa’s handouts for further details.
• Beth announced that Chris Toft, Assoc. Vice Chancellor for Development and Alumni Relations, will reschedule the rest of his library tours at a later date, because the original date conflicted with the Katie Clark lecture. These tours will be approximately 30 minutes in length. In preparing for your meeting with Chris, consider the unique qualities of your library, the faculty/student interface and how your particular library complements users in your related school. This is an opportunity to put our libraries in a positive light. A suggestion was made to compile information about libraries’ online and electronic resources to share with him. These tours will be a good opportunity to lay the groundwork for our future collaboration with the Development & Alumni Relations division.
• A reminder about the Katie Clark lecture on Thursday, April 9 at 10:00 in Nursing Annex room 155. Dean Dowell wants to see a very high staff turnout at this event because she feels such talks will help frame our planning, and asked Council to encourage attendance among their staff. Celia will add this event to the University Calendar and open it to the campus community, and will also ask the Communications Committee for additional promotional ideas.
• LibQUAL+ responses have increased greatly in recent days, especially since the email reminder on Monday. Total responses are currently up to 1,738 (372 faculty, 644 grad students, 333 undergrads, 110 library staff, and 308 other staff). This is a remarkable increase but we still want to see these numbers rise, with a goal of 500 total faculty responses by the end of the survey on April 13th. For those who interact with faculty, please continue to encourage their participation. One more email reminder is planned for a date in the near future.
• Celia reminded the group of a book reading & signing this Friday at Peabody’s Fireside Reading Room at Noon. Conrad Lucas will discuss his humorous travel book, Europe Beyond Your Means.
• Staff Appreciation Day (National Library Workers Day) is April 14th. There will be a library observance of this day.

2. Deadline for Travel Requests: The deadline for submission of travel requests for your staff is April 8 (one week), covering travel planned or desired for July through December and for ALA Midwinter. These should include a few sentences of justification and an estimate of travel costs. Council members should also list their requests in priority order. Please send these to Dean Dowell and cc: Lisa. Council should also collect this same information for staff who plan to pay for travel and conferences out-of-pocket, as we need to begin keeping track of all staff travel.

3. External Communications: The Spring issue of the Acorn Chronicle will be coming out soon, and several people have been working with Dean Dowell recently on revisions and publication of the pending issue. The Acorn Chronicle has historically been distributed to a large and diverse audience: donors, faculty, library staff, and other campus individuals, and funds from Development have been covering the costs of publication and distribution. After the Spring issue, Dean Dowell plans to shift the focus of the Chronicle, gearing the publication more toward our off-campus and donor audience and making it a more lively and visual communication tool. As it becomes available in electronic format, this version could be shared with faculty, library staff and others on campus. She would like to consider a separate communication vehicle to reach faculty, focusing information more towards their specific interests and concerns. Dean Dowell asked Council to be considering these different communication vehicles, and additional ways to better publicize Library activities and events. She asked Council members to each bring to the next meeting some ideas for improving our visibility both on and off campus. Discussion on this topic will continue into the future.

4. Job Descriptions: With performance evaluations and updated job descriptions currently on everyone’s radar, Flo discussed examples of elements that should be considered for inclusion in position descriptions, specifically for Council members. Because a significant portion of Council members’ positions involves an active and collaborative participation in Library Council, members were asked to include text of this involvement in their position descriptions; Flo provided sample text to consider. Many other staff also contribute on a system-wide level, via committee membership and in other ways, and they should also consider including information about such participation in their updated descriptions.

5. Individual Meetings with Staff: Dean Dowell reported to Council that she has begun meeting with small groups of staff and is soon to begin meeting with small groups of librarians (separating these groups in this way to better address their separate concerns, and hoping for more honest and open comments or questions). Dean Dowell asked Council for feedback on their own meetings they have held with individuals from their staff. This type of communication, meeting individually with staff and learning of their goals and concerns, is important at all levels of supervision, and should be encouraged. Dean Dowell’s primary goal in gathering information from such meetings is to gain an understanding of overall trends among staff and to learn of ways to support staff members. Council members will complete these meetings with their staff over the summer.

6. Copier Task Force Report: Tracy submitted a revised final report from the Copier Task Force, having updated some of the information on costs from the previous report, as necessary. Council discussed the recommendations, supporting and approving the group’s report. Efforts will now be led by Bill Hook toward implementing these recommendations by the Fall semester (depending upon university approvals of the proposal) and will also develop system-wide signage and marketing information for display. Library Council thanks the team members’ involvement in this project, and Dean Dowell will send a note to each team member sharing the news of Council’s enthusiastic approval of their report.