Agenda
- Faculty Delivery Project update and action item (Jim Toplon)
- Kurzweil reader purchase
- Unique titles handling
- Announcements
- Central Director Search Committee
- Primo update
- Annual performance reviews
- Committee on Undergraduate Information Literacy
- CAC, Collections, Communications committees updates?
- Others
Minutes:
Present: Flo Wilson (chair), Martin Cerjan, John Haar (recorder), Bill Hook, Juanita Murray, Tracy Primich, Holling Smith-Borne, Sharon Weiner. Guest: Jim Toplon.
Flo distributed two updated lists. One reports the types of end-user training for software offered in each library. The other describes the disposition of “unique titles,” as defined by OCLC, in each library (more below). She also distributed an ARL brochure, “Know Your Copy Rights,” designed to guide faculty in matters such as fair use, linking, and performing works in classes. University attorney Kevin Davis is reviewing the brochure, and we will make decisions about how to promote it to faculty after he makes a recommendation.
- Faculty delivery project. Jim Toplon, chair of a project team designing our new service to deliver books in our collection to faculty offices, updated the Council on the group’s decisions. Though they have not completed their work, they have decided that:
- We will use ILLiad as the management system for the service. The team saw no viable alternative because WorkFlows is not designed to manage document delivery, and using ILLiad offers the advantage of merging ILL and document delivery into a single service in users’ perspectives.
- We will accommodate campus libraries’ varying desired degrees of involvement in the service. Libraries can choose to have their own staff deliver materials.
- We will create an online form for faculty to submit delivery requests, but we will accept requests sent in a variety of forms (lists, email, etc.). If faculty send lists to libraries, the libraries can either key information into the online form (for ILLiad processing) or forward the lists to the delivery unit.
- We will make no distinction between delivering books in our own collection and books borrowed through ILL. If an item requested by faculty is not in our collection, the unit will place an ILL request and deliver the item.
- Kurzweil reader. John received a request from Opportunities Development that the library purchase a Kurzweil reader for visually impaired students. The reader is a software package that reads and speaks digitized text. The Council decided that John should arrange a demo for directors. We will invite the students requesting the package to see if it meets their needs.
- Unique titles. A few years ago OCLC researchers created a list of titles in the Vanderbilt collection that appeared to be unique among OCLC member libraries, meaning that ours is the only holding symbol on an OCLC record. After several iterations, we have a list of 9,000 “unique” titles. Central is the only library that has systematically transferred titles on the list to the Annex and designated them non-circulating. Other libraries examined the lists, but found that many of the titles were not really unique; their uniqueness was more a product of unique OCLC records than status as actual one-of-a-kind copies. Divinity discovered that several of their unique titles were moldy and could not be transferred to the Annex. After some discussion, the Council agreed that the libraries would send the unique titles in their collections to the Annex, even if they are not literally unique, unless they are moldy or still circulating regularly.
- Announcements.
- The vacancy announcement for Director of the Central Library will soon be posted at the Chronicle of Higher Education and other sites. A search committee has been formed, and review of applications will begin on March 30.
- It is time to prepare for annual performance reviews. There will be two significant changes in the process this year. Everyone will be assigned a performance rating, and evaluators will share this information with those they evaluate. In addition, chairs of system-wide committees and project teams will complete brief evaluations of each member of their groups and forward the evlautions to supervisors for inclusion in performance reviews. We will schedule a forum or meeting where staff can be informed of these changes in more detail before the review process begins. We must complete all evaluations by the end of April.