LAUC President's Report - LAUC President - LAUC

LAUC President's Report
Fall 2002

Dear LAUC Members,

I am happy to submit an update to you on LAUC activities and projects. This report continues and builds upon the 2001/2002 President's Report submitted by Debbie Murphy last Spring Please let me know if you have any questions about this report, either in person at the Fall Assembly (UCSF, December 6th), or by email at estherg@library.ucla.edu.

In the Spring 2002 report, Debbie Murphy talked about continuing efforts to increase communication with the University Librarians (ULs). I am happy to report that the relationship between LAUC and the ULs is definitely on the upswing, and hopefully, will result in much improved communication. Following are updates on issues of mutual interest to LAUC and the ULs, including a summary of the UL meeting which Linda Kennedy (LAUC Vice-President) and I were invited to attend.

Information Literacy Update
There was some misunderstanding between LAUC and the ULs over the LAUC Information Literacy (IL) resolutions passed at the 2002 Spring Assembly, but they've been cleared up. Just as a reminder, in keeping with the first resolution, LAUC has established an IL Task Force with a 1-year term and a limited 3-part charge. In keeping with the second resolution, I sent a letter to UC Provost Judson King, asking him to establish a joint UL, faculty, LAUC committee to look into establishing an IL educational policy for the UCs. He responded with interest, but said it was a bit premature and strongly suggested consultation with faculty and the ULs.

Since then, I have been working on getting a faculty member to join the LAUC IL Task Force. I have contacted and gotten positive messages from Professor Grosovsky, Chair of the statewide Academic Senate's University Committee on Educational Policy (UCEP), regarding their interest in the topic of IL. He is planning to put IL on the agenda for one of their meetings, and has tentatively invited me to attend that meeting. I have already sent him background information on the history of IL Instruction at the UCs, and IL initiatives at the CSUs and community colleges.

Also, the ULs have established an all-campus IL group under their Heads of Public Service (HOPS) committee, which I understand has already begun work. This is very good news, and even better, the charges for these two IL groups are complementary, so there is really no conflict. I also suggested to Professor Grosovsky that the Chair of the IL all-campus group be invited to the UCEP meeting as well, since the all-campus group will be permanent, while the LAUC group just has a 1-year term. When the LAUC Task Force's term is up, it will pass its work along to the HOPS all-campus IL group to continue. I will report on additional developments regarding IL as they occur.

10/28/02 Meeting with ULs
Linda Kennedy, LAUC Vice-President, and I were invited to attend this UL meeting. I had emailed a summary of LAUC issues and plans for the coming year to the ULs in advance of the meeting. Plans were simply tentative plans for the Fall and Spring Assemblies. Issues were drawn directly from LAUC Committee charges.

I also mentioned at the beginning of the meeting that I had asked all LAUC Committee Representatives to take a more activist role on committees, and do more than take notes. Specifically, I have asked them to:

Identify issues of importance to LAUC members
Bring those issues up at committee meetings
Bring the issues back to LAUC Executive Board for discussion
Bring feedback back to the committees

The first topic raised by the ULs was the charge to the Library Plans and Policies Committee (LPP) regarding liaising with HOPs in investigating the measurement and use of library usage stats. Apparently HOPS has not been charged with investigating this issue, as we had thought, but there was a lot of interest in the new reference statistics breakdown being utilized at UCLA.

So, I described the greatly increased amount of time now necessary to answer reference questions, and I mentioned that this may be partly a result of successful instruction (to those who make it into the library and venture to ask questions at a reference desk), and partly because of the vast numbers and diversity of electronic information resources and tools now widely available. I suggested that this might be one reason for the decline in in-person reference statistics. I also told the ULs that, personally, I think the new breakdown of reference statistics will do a better job of reflecting this increase in time required to answer reference questions, than the old method of simply marking a tickmark for each reference question, regardless of its complexity. I also suggested that they ask ARL to take another look at how ARL categorizes reference statistics.

The next topic of discussion was the Committee on Professional Governance's (CPG) report and recommendations regarding the survey on the designation of Distinguished in the Librarian series. The ULs were concerned that they may be presented with recommendations in the form of resolutions without having had a chance to discuss this report and its recommendations with LAUC beforehand. They gave some examples of items from the CPG Report that they would like to discuss with LAUC, like:

Throughout the report, it seemed to them that the phrase "significant achievement" was used interchangeably with "capstone achievement." They felt that these two phrases were quite distinct and should be treated as such.
They mentioned that they had purposely wanted additional promotion steps above the Distinguished step, for high performing individuals, so that they would be encouraged to keep performing at high levels.

Linda Kennedy, the LAUC Vice-President, said at the meeting that it will take time for LAUC members to review the report and its recommendations, and that much discussion needs to take place at the local level first, and then at Assemblies. I agreed, and am glad the CPG Report is on the agenda for the Fall Assembly at UCSF. It may be on the Spring Assembly agenda at UCSD as well.

The ULs went on to talk about the third charge to CPG - to do a survey to see if there is any interest in investigating the issue of faculty status for librarians at the UCs. They suggested a straw vote, rather than a formal survey, and this is certainly a possibility. They also suggested that LAUC discuss the definition of faculty status before taking a straw vote or doing a survey.

The meeting ended well, and both Linda Kennedy and I felt very good about this first step toward improving communication between LAUC and the ULs. As a followup to this meeting, there have been a few changes to LAUC Committee charges. The Library Plans and Policies Committee (LPP) has been informed that HOPS is not looking into measurement and use of library usage statistics, so the need to liaise with HOPS on this issue has been removed from their charge. The Committee on Professional Governance's (CPG) first charge, to move forward with recommendations from the CPG report, has been put on hold until there has been sufficient discussion of the report at the local level and at Assemblies. CPG will move on to its second charge for now: "Investigate the issue of librarians at UC who are not in the librarian series (e.g., in programmer/analyst positions, or at the CDL, etc.), and any differences from those librarians who are in the librarian series, in terms of roles, duties, salaries, and other relevant points." The complete charge is available on the LAUC web site.

Now, for my general observations and what I see as next steps.

Throughout our time with them, the ULs expressed a strong desire to engage in a dialogue with LAUC re issues. They really appreciated the continuity offered by having the LAUC Vice-President attend UL meetings along with the LAUC President. One or two of the ULs also suggested the possibility of the ULs attending the Spring Assembly to discuss issues like those raised by the CPG survey report.

We discussed this at the November 1st Executive Board phone conference call and everyone thought it was a great idea. So, I sent a message to the ULs inviting all of them to attend the Spring Assembly. A question and answer period with them would be the program. If a majority of the ULs cannot make it for Spring 2003, I invited them to come to the Fall 2003 Assembly instead.

I am very hopeful that they will agree to this proposal, as they said they would like to see a different, more interactive process for engaging in discussions with LAUC prior to receiving end products in the form of recommendations. In fact, they repeated this so often throughout our meeting with them, that I went so far as to make three more suggestions:

that the ULs come to the LAUC Statewide Fall or Spring Assembly every year for a discussion
that they attend a LAUC Executive Board meeting each year
that they continue to invite the LAUC President and Vice/President to one or more UL meetings each year.

When I inquired about the status of these proposals, Gerry Munoff, convener of UL meetings, said that he forwarded my message to the ULs, and that they will be discussing them at their next meeting. He also indicated that a number of the ULs did not recall hearing the idea of a UL program at the Spring Assembly, but will discuss this at their meeting as a new idea. Linda Kennedy (LAUC Vice-President) agreed that though it was brought up, the ULs did not discuss it in any depth. So, it may be that I read more into this idea than was intended, but I am still very hopeful that the ULs will agree to it. I will let you all know of their response when I hear back from them.

LAUC's role in the larger administrative structure
I mentioned the increased activist role I have asked LAUC Representatives to take. I would like to see all of you take an activist role through LAUC as well. LAUC members--all of you-- have so much expertise and knowledge. Our role is to advise, and that is what we should be doing, not necessarily in an antagonistic or negative way, but in a supportive, constructive way. Of course we should also be pointing out danger spots, potential problem areas, and areas of concern from a larger professional perspective, in addition to our campus perspective

We may need to remind library administration of our role, of our concerns, of how we can offer advice, and in which areas. It is important to convey all of this to any new ULs and to other new members of the library administration at each campus, as well.

So, what do you need to do?

First, give your LAUC Representatives feedback when asked, so they are really speaking for you and not just trying to guess your views

Second, read documents and proposals when brought to your attention by LAUC, and respond by the due dates (sometimes quite short).

Finally, through LAUC, engage your library administration in positive discussions about how LAUC members can help the Library by offering advice and feedback on library-related plans and projects under consideration, and on improving existing projects and activities.

Remember, your opinion, your views are worth a lot.

Spring Assembly plans
The LAUC Spring Assembly is scheduled for UCSD on Friday, May 30th. We hope that the ULs' question and answer session will constitute the program, but we also have some other possible program ideas in case the ULs program does not work out for Spring Assembly. Highest on the list of possible topics for the Spring Assembly program is: Cooperative collecting and de-selecting at UC campus libraries.

LAUC President's Report Fall 2002

LAUC President's Report
Fall 2002