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Indiana University
Minutes for March 5, 2010 Meeting

Attendees:
Members: Elizabeth Johnson, Marion Frank-Wilson, Jennifer Laherty, Brenda Johnson, Sherri Michaels, Jennifer Hehman, Eric Snajdr, Jaena Hollingsworth, Beth Whipple, Sue London, Gail McKay, Rhonda Armstrong, Sue McFadden, Lora Baldwin

Guest: Amy Cope

1. Introductions, Welcome to the Dean

2. IULFC Committees and Charges, Liaison Reports

We welcomed the Dean to the IULFC by introducing ourselves, presenting a packet about each committee make-up and charges, and then the committee liaisons presented a summary of each of the committees and what they are working on this year.

  • Faculty Standards Committee

    The committee has had one meeting to discuss the handbook, coordinate the Faculty Activity Report (FAR report), and discuss the new "Principles for Promotion and Tenure Procedures on Campuses of Indiana University". The handbook will be discussed later on the agenda. IULFC is relying on BLFC committee to act as subcommittee regarding FAR report and then get feedback from the regional campuses. The Bloomington campus librarians will be expected to use FAR for 2010 activities. Faculty Standards Committee representatives have been providing input into the P&T principles document. They are gathering input from various campuses as to how they are doing in regards to the charges.

  • Librarians' Day

    Planning is underway for this year's Librarian's Day. The date is set for June 18 at IUPUI.

  • Mentor Program

    This mentor committee is up and running again since last year. They have identified 25 untenured librarians without mentors and will be sending a survey to those librarians shortly to match them with current librarians willing to be a mentor. The committee may survey all IUL librarians next year to keep an up to date list of those who are willing to be a mentor, as well as those seeking a mentor.

  • Promotion and Tenure

    The committee met in September to discuss 2 tenure cases, 3 mid-tenure reviews, and one early mid-tenure review. The committee will meet with BLFC's Faculty Standards committee to do a presentation here in Bloomington. They would like to have a committee meeting at Librarians Day.

  • Research Committee

    The committee met February 18th, to discuss putting on a program at librarian's day, perhaps an author's reception to acknowledge those librarians who have published. The committee is interested in encouraging IUscholarWorks deposit and revitalizing the website.

  • Sabbatical Leave Committee

    There have been no requests for sabbaticals that have come to the committee this year. The Bloomington members of this committee make up the Research Leaves and Support Grant Committee, and they have been reviewing requests throughout the year.

  • White Award Committee

    The deadline for this award application is next Friday (March 12th). No word on how many applicants, although there are some.

3. IULFC Ad-Hoc Committee on Documentation

The committee was charged to examine all of the IULFC documentation on the website and intranet and to recommend a way to organize these documents so that they are findable and useful. The committee met and recommends using the public IULFC website and not the Intranet unless needed for privacy reasons. There should be a rigorous attempt to put all the info out there. What we would not do is put this also on the intranet so as to not duplicate effort. The committee recommends using the intranet for working files for the council or committees, but the finished file would go on the internet. There should be cross-linking so that the intranet links to the internet site. Jennifer Chaffin is offering to manage the intranet links. The IULFC secretary will be responsible for making sure final documents are on the web site, and revise the secretary's manual to reflect this charge. IULFC should work with archives to get IULFC materials archived. Someone suggested an archival record of the website be kept as a snapshot every year. Pick one day a year to make the official copy. The committee recommends a group be convened to make the website more functional.

IULFC voted to accept the committee report. The vote was unanimous. The committee was then charged to be the group to make recommendations on website updates and also to work with Archives.

4. IULFC Handbook Updates, discussion

The IULFC handbook that is online is dated 2005. Before Shawny left, she went through the handbook and made some suggested changes. The suggested changes were updates in reference to personnel title changes, and changes to reflect current practice. Sherri sent these changes out to the IULFC as an update. There was then some confusion and discussion as to whether these changes were ever actually approved. There was also the issue that some things were deleted from the handbook and not just changed. At that point, Sherri met with Amy Cope to discuss the IULFC handbook and recording of changes. Sherri looked at the minutes from the IULFC from the last five years (since the last handbook is dated) to see what changes had actually been approved. The information is not always complete. For example a Mentor committee was approved in 2006, yet is represented in the 2005 handbook. No other information is recorded other than the committee was approved. There were also some missing minutes (going back ten years), so Sherri contacted all of the former IULFC secretaries to see if anyone had the missing minutes. We suggested having an ad-hoc committee examine all of the issues of what has been actually approved for the handbook, how changes get made, etc. The ad-hoc committee will be made up of Sherri Michaels, Elizabeth Johnson, and Jennifer Hehman.

5. Report from the Dean

Dean Johnson thanked everyone for giving her such a warm welcome on her first week. She took a few moments to introduce herself. Dean Johnson came from UC-Santa Barbara, where she served as University Librarian, the University of Michigan, where she served as co-interim University Librarian and Associate University Librarian for Public Services, and Rutgers University. Her early career background was primarily in public services, reference, document delivery, and systems office (mainly more from a service perspective -help desk). On Monday, Dean Johnson presented the Libraries' budget request at the budget conference with the Provost and other faculty and administrators. Beyond presenting the budget request, she viewed this as an opportunity to raise awareness about the libraries – accomplishments, goals, and future plans. . We won't know outcome regarding our budget for a while. Planning for next CHL meeting is underway, agenda is being formed. Possibilities include Kuali Ole, Symphony conversion, Big Digital Machine, Risk Management inventory evaluation form, HathiTrust, collaborative collection development, Boopsie, Worldcat Local system wide, mobile apps. One question about the agenda was - Does the Risk Management request come from change in insurance carrier? Not sure, but we need to fill out for each campus and not prepared to do this. Another Question was - Tell us what kinds of Librarian groups that you've worked with before that would be similar to ours? UC system has large statewide and University of California-wide groups, so there are lots of committees there even though they don't have faculty status. Librarians go through a peer review system, not unlike here. They are represented system-wide by a union. Michigan and UC have faculty governance structure, librarians are involved in many committees even though they do not have faculty status. At Rutgers the librarians had faculty status, so was very similar to IU. There were multiple campuses at Rutgers in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden. Librarians at the University of Michigan have academic status, similar to research scientists, and have most of the same rights and privileges as teaching faculty, including serving on and holding leadership positions in faculty governance. They also have a peer review process for promotion and appointment actions. . UFC council and BFC chair is Erika Dowell, librarian at the Lilly Library. Dean Johnson will meet with her soon.

6. New Business

A question that came up - Is there a budget for committees such as the Research Committee? Not really one established. Librarian's Day submits a budget request to Library Administration about Librarian's Day, but that is the only committee that traditionally has a budget. If the Research Committee has something in a mind, they can send a proposal to IULFC for a budget and it can get passed on appropriately from there. Someone asked about funding from InULA. InULA does have a procedure for groups coming to them for funding or sponsorship. If the Research Committee is interested, they could contact the current InULA board for details.