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Morphology. 1. Biol. The branch of biology that deals with the form of living organisms and their parts, and the relationships between their structures.[Source: OED]
This year, LAUC is taking a good look at our form, our structures, and the relationships between them. President Huwe launched this process last year through charges to several of our committees.
The Committee on Committees, Rules and Jurisdiction (CCRJ) was charged to propose a new set of bylaws for LAUC that would both better reflect LAUC's roles and enable LAUC to act more expeditiously as our libraries move faster. In September 2005, the Committee delivered a set of proposed new bylaws that, if approved, would reflect that LAUC’s role can and should extend beyond an advisory function. The proposed document also attempts to clarify the relationship between the various bodies within LAUC - the membership as a whole, the Executive Board, and the representative body known as the Assembly. Finally, the committee proposes that those areas of our current bylaws which are more procedural and those more subject to change based on changing institutional priorities be moved out of the Bylaws document and into a set of Standing Rules. These would be easier for LAUC to change and would not require UCOP to sign off.
Last year, President Huwe charged the Committee on Library Plans and Policies (LPP) to prepare a white paper on an alternative committee to LPP which would be made up of LAUC's representatives to the various - and proliferating - UC-wide advisory committees. This report lays the foundation for a nimbler approach to committees, but also presents some challenges to this approach and the need to balance dynamism and responsiveness with ensuring that all voices are heard from.
What's being proposed this year isn't a simple revision - there are proposals in these documents that change representation, roles of officers, and the nature of our committee structure. My hope for our first round of discussion of these documents as a group is
that we can identify those areas on which CCRJ has achieved their goals and on which we can agree, and also identify those areas which may need a little more clarification or which, possibly, simply go a bit too far.
The word "morph" is also a late 20th century verb referring to something changing shape through a series of stepwise transformations - often used with computer graphics or animation.
Last year, the Electronic Journal Task Force was charged to investigate the feasibility of a LAUC-managed open access electronic journal in library science. Following widespread discussion, the conclusion was that a journal was not a good fit for LAUC's resources. However, the task force did conclude that LAUC members do contribute to the professional literature via our publications, presentations and posters. Both LAUC and the profession could benefit from alternative ways of promoting wider access to that content. A proposal for a journal morphs into an idea for a repository.
LAUC’s divisions and committees have been using the Web for over a decade now to share documents, post minutes of meetings and other reports. LAUC's own Web presence has been through several iterations, and currently the "central" LAUC content is well represented through our site. Yet every year as committee chairs and officers change, there's a juggling of who will maintain this or that mailing list, who will host works-in-progress, where can I put this report, what if there's no "techy" person on our group. At my own division, the LAUC-SD website has hopped from server to server, as the responsibility for maintaining the site moved from person to person. The Research and Professional Development committee last year solicited - and received - reports from grant recipients but other than the committee's Web site, has no real place to put these where they will receive attention from outside of LAUC. As chair of R&PD last year, I had the pleasure to read many of these reports and I know that many outside our own institution would find them worthwhile. Challenges in managing the work of committees with changing membership morphs into the need for better tools to manage the business of LAUC.
Finally, our budget reflects greater travel expense faced by LAUC as the number of groups on which LAUC has a representative has increased. A simple fiscal reality morphs into the need for us to look for alternative ways to conduct business when a face-to-face meeting isn't needed.
These all point to a need for LAUC to consider some better tools - easier ways to arrange conference calls and mailing lists, persistent and accessible storage for our publications, robust and reliable ways to share documents and archive them for the future, preserve the intellectual capital generated by LAUC in all its constituent parts.
"Enabling technologies" is an umbrella term that I will use for an initiative this year to work on solutions to these challenges. We are certainly not alone in this pursuit – the Library Technology Advisory Group (LTAG) has been working with web conferencing technologies to facilitate its own work, and the Academic Senate has a burgeoning document repository for its constituent bodies. This iniative will begin at the Assembly with some focused discussion designed to identify particular sore spots and priorities. Following this, you will be seeing a call for interest in a new AdHoc group to work on finding viable solutions.
As we pursue strategies for managing our own documents better, the same activities are taking place on a much broader level, and we do need to keep an outward focus even as we work on our own internal structures. The UC Libraries and University as a whole are seeing the preservation and stewardship of our intellectual assets a priority. Vice-President Snyder and I had the opportunity to meet with the University Librarians’ group recently and the concept of “digital stewardship” is among the issues on which the Uls will focus attention and planning. Librarians have roles to play in this activity – from working alongside technologists and administrators in planning and building repositories and metadata schemes to bibliographers and outreach librarians helping faculty negotiate their archiving options to reference and instruction librarians helping users find material in the ever widening world of institutional repositories. To that end, we are planning to sponsor a professional development program at the LAUC Spring Assembly on June 1 st at UCLA on this topic. I know that many LAUC members have interest and expertise in this area and I will soon be seeking volunteers to form a small planning group to work on this program.
First I would like to thank Terry Huwe for setting in motion an ambitious agenda for LAUC. Thanks are also due to our Executive Board members who have shown flexibility and dedication to getting the work done, especially with respect to the bylaws. It’s highly detailed and not everyone’s favorite activity but I think the Board recognizes how valuable the proposals could be. I would also like to thank the many individuals who have responded to the calls for service as LAUC representatives, members and chairs of standing committees and local executive boards and committees. LAUC works because of all of you. Over the past year I have had the privilege to review the candidates who have volunteered for service as LAUC representatives and I have been impressed by the quantity and quality of the responses.
I hope you will find that this report outlines some valuable activities for LAUC to engage in this year, but the role of the officers and Executive Board is fundamentally to serve LAUC members and translate issues from the membership into actions or messages back to our libraries and administrations. If there is any issue on which you feel LAUC should be taking action, please do not hesitate to contact me or your divisional chair to bring that issue forward.
Jennifer Reiswig
LAUC President 2005-06
Electronic Services Librarian
Biomedical Library
University of California San Diego
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