Meeting Minutes, April 28, 2003
Present: Patsy Inouye (Chair), Terri Malmgren, Annie Lin, Karleen Darr, Rebecca Davis, Gail Nichols, Karen Andrews, Sandra Vella, Diana King (Recorder)
1. Meeting called to order by P. Inouye, 9:05.
2. Approval of Minutes: Approval of the Jan. 13, 2003 minutes was
deferred until completion, since Secretary D. King had to leave early that day
and notes for item #7 (CPG charge and report) were taken by others.
Corrections/additions can be sent by e-mail or at next meeting.
3. Committee Reports
Research Committee: R. Davis reported on the LAUC Statewide
committee. Only three proposals were
submitted this year, and a final decision on them will be forthcoming. Locally, the LAUC committee is still planning
an author’s event.
Elections Committee: A. Lin noted that it is primarily a local practice
to designate the UCD Research Committee chair as the appointment to the
statewide committee. She suggested a change to the by-laws to make this
designation automatic in order to prevent future confusion. The committee will
have a meeting on this following Friday to consider volunteers for committees.
Chair Inouye will forward changes to the statewide election calendar to the
Executive Board, since these changes will mean a postponement of the LAUC-D
elections as well to June.
Professional Issues / PRDRC: K.
Andrews stated that the Professional Issues Comm. has seen little recent
activity, but that the Peer Review Documents Revision Committee has been meeting.
The PRDRC has been going through instructions for the Review Board in order to
simplify the procedure component. The represented and non-represented segments
will be combined into one document, and the committee will be creating a short
checklist of things to do for review initiators.
The PRDRC will also be looking at existing local position papers regarding
several issues, including distinguished status. The UCD local language uses the term “distinguished” in the APM,
unlike statewide documents; when the APM changes, annotations will be added and
made into a new C-9.
Review Board: K. Darr stated that work on reviews was completed in
March, and that this took a longer amount of time than usual because of the
number of people up for review and the number of accelerations.
Additional Items: P. Inouye reported that S. Vella
will now be supervising the Information Desk and no longer acting as the point
person for Academic Personnel. Leslie Young and George Bynon now act as the
communication liaisons between Administration and LAUC.
4. Election Committee
Issues were covered in committee reports.
5. New Business
a. Faculty Status
In a local e-mail straw poll sent out by P. Inouye, respondents voted
for/against the idea of pursuing faculty status for UC librarians. 33 responded, with 12 voting “yes” and 21
voting “no”; this means that about 2/3 of those responding voted against
pursuing faculty status.
K. Andrews noted that it would be interesting to know what elements of faculty
status the “yes” respondents considered most desirable, and whether or not
those elements could be achieved in other ways. The committee gave various
answers to the desirability of faculty status, including participation in
Senate committees, increase in salaries, and influence on curriculum, though
the imperative to publish at the same level was considered a hindrance for many
librarians. At the Federation level, it was also noted that librarians aren’t
currently eligible for P.I. status, which makes some forms of research particularly
difficult to pursue; P.I. status would also make librarians eligible for
Emeritus status. While Emeritus status can be and has been achieved by a few
librarians at highest rank, this extra step has often been perceived by many
potential candidates as unavailable to them.
b. Limitations on Professional Activities because of Library Technology
Configurations
P. Inouye: Because of the way our ColdFusion server is configured, library
staff cannot get into several important staff functions from home, including
conference room assignments and forms for professional activities. D. King also
noted that the ability to access the S:/ drive and Geckomail from Reference
desk computers would be preferable because documents from both can be useful in
reference transactions. However, since reference computers are on the same LAN
as public terminals, Geckomail will probably continue to be blocked in the
future. One suggestion for professional activities forms would be to put
publicly accessible copies up on the LAUC page; but, these would need to be
kept up to date with any changes on the administration site.
Another technology problem is related to trial software, since librarians
cannot use this on their own machines without permission. There is now a test machine in Systems, but
it is very slow. HSL does have a test machine for the library, but PSE
librarians have had more difficulty obtaining access and would like to test
software on their own machines. J. Tanno suggested inviting a representative
from Systems to discuss these issues.
c. Recruitment Advisory Committees and LAUC
P. Inouye stated that at other UC campuses, the LAUC Executive Board talks to
each potential librarian job candidate for ˝ hour. At UCD, G. Bynon usually
gives a brief overview of LAUC and department heads may also mention the
organization to the candidate.
Question: should LAUC as an organization, or in the form of a small
group of individuals, meet with candidates separately from Administration? Some Executive Board members expressed concern
that the talk would turn into yet another interview for the candidate, or that
there simply wouldn’t be enough time carved out for a meeting with LAUC.
Various members’ full schedules also make convening the entire Board difficult
for every candidate. G. Nichols suggested one LAUC member on every RAC be given
the responsibility to serve as a LAUC representative for the candidate to
answer any questions. P. Inouye also suggested inserting a short informal
introduction to LAUC in between meetings on the interview day, either by a
member of the RAC or another LAUC member. D. King stated that other LAUC web
sites include a short “introduction to LAUC” page that explains what the
organization does and how it is structured. Once could be constructed for LAUC-D
and printed out for the candidate’s packet of materials. Members with
suggestions for what should be presented on the website can e-mail D. King.
6. Other Items
The Board discussed potential questions for the upcoming Statewide LAUC panel
with UC ULs. These concerned the impact of the state budget crisis, an update
on the UC archive for Elsevier journals, the impact on collections by national
labs, and the extent to which RLF resources should be cataloged with an
attachment to one campus (i.e. to what extent are these “CDL Resources” as
opposed to Berkeley or UCLA resources).
Meeting adjourned: 11:00 a.m.