The University of Kansas Libraries

KU Libraries Support Staff

KULSS Executive Meeting
Thursday, January 13, 10:00-11:30
Anschutz 305

Present: Jill Becker (Chair), Meredith Huff (Vice-Chair), Kristin Zachrel (Secretary), Adam Reilly (Group 1), Julie Warrick (Group 2), Robert Szabo (Group 3)

Absent: None

Guests: Jessica Gish, Jon Allen, Kyle Sederstrom, Angie Rathmel (Co-Chair LOSDC)

Previous Meeting's Action Items

Workshop Planning:

• Terry Proctor & Kathleen Ames-Oliver are both willing to work with us to plan a session for the workshop. We will need to decide which topic we like better if we're doing a half-day long activity in the morning and short breakout sessions in the afternoon. We're leaning toward doing emotional intelligence because Terry's worked with us before and there are no materials costs. Kathleen's session has materials costs for the Meyers Briggs session, but Jill could schedule a meeting with her to find out if it could be modified. Let's wait until we get the survey back to determine which session to do.
  • Terry is available any of the days over spring break. We're not sure of Kathleen's availability.
• Let's aim for Wednesday, March 23rd for the event. Meredith will give Beth the details (anticipating the workshop will include potluck, catered lunch, ice cream social, and a drum circle (perhaps around the campanile)).
• Add descriptions of these sessions to the survey and phrase it to express what we're thinking of doing with them.
  • Kristin will send out the survey on January 18th. Jill will send the information for signing into Survey Monkey and let Mike know we're sending out this survey. Jeromy Horkman is good at using this survey tool so Kristin can ask him for help if needed.
  • The deadline for staff to return the surveys will be January 26th.
• Budget: Lorraine is out of town so Jill will wait to send the budget to her when she returns. She found the 2009 estimate and will basically send the same budget estimate. We saved a lot of money in 2009 by doing the potluck breakfast. It would be nice if we could do something similar but we need to ask ahead of time to see if the administration would be willing to do this again. Jill will bring this up at the next Dean's Council meeting on the 21st.
• History of the Jayhawk presentation is about 45 minutes long. Becky will probably be here over spring break and she's willing to give her talk. It could be done over lunch (though we had other ideas for lunch activities), or it could be done as a breakout session in the afternoon. Let's wait and see what the survey results tell us.
• We may need to start meeting more frequently starting in February to plan. We could schedule meetings on alternate Thursdays from 9:00-10:00 to only discuss the workshop and if we don't need to meet we can cancel them.

Other Business:

• Dean's 5 Year Review: Group reps sent out the email request for volunteers to serve on this committee. We need to submit the names that come to us to Erin Ellis by January 19th. The committee will have 5-9 people, no less than 50% faculty and the rest filled by staff and 1 student. If no one volunteers someone from KULSS Exec may need to serve.
  • Group reps should send out a reminder email on January 18th and also go around and talk to the members.
  • If we get any volunteers send their names to Jill. If no one volunteers then members of KULSS Exec will need to be put forward.
  • It would be great to have some people with more longevity that have been through several waves of administration step forward instead of some of us on the committee. When the reps speak to these people they should suggest they serve by saying they would be great on the committee because they have a lot of experience.
• Staff Leadership Summit: this session is free and available to anybody. It is on February 17th. Encourage everyone to sign up for it if their supervisor will let them attend.
• HREO reported that the tuition assistance program has been expanded to include KU thesis and dissertation hours on a limited basis.
  
  

Group Reports

Group 1 (Adam):

• Nothing much to report. It's been quiet. Several people are on vacation and at ALA. There haven't been any parties lately.
  
  

Group 2 (Julie):

• It's been quiet and cold. The stacks have been especially cold due to the motor in the air handler being out.
• There's been no updates on the status of the break room since Kent has been out.
  
  

Group 3 (Robert):

• Spencer: Mary Ann Baker reported that they had a 21 shot party with pseudo-bloody mary's for one of their student employees that turned 21. They made snow angels on the Spencer terrace and wrote 21 in the snow.
• Anschutz: The expansion of the cafe is 2/3rds complete. The vending machines are being moved upstairs. They are a week away from trippling the wireless access in the building. The computers are being re-imaged and Windows 7 is getting installed and there are some problems adapting to some of the changes. With the new wireless access users will have to configure their connection the first time they try to use the wireless, but staff have not yet received instructions on how to do this. Fortunately users will only have to perform this step once. Room 305 got a projector and room 421 will also get one soon.
  
  

Committee Reports

Support Staff Senate:

• Recent University Support Staff Senate meetings have centered on organizing for the Classified and Support Staff (from all the Regents universities) “Legislative Information Day”, the first of which will be on January 25th.  Staff from all the institutions come to inform legislators in Topeka about our needs, show our support for higher education and ask what we can do to assist the legislators.  Here are the main points that will be shared with legislators:

Classified and Support Staff Council
Position Paper for 2011-2012

• Continue to fund the market-based increases recommended by the Division of Personnel Services as proposed by the Hay Group Study and approved by the Kansas Legislature HB2916 - 2007. 
• Fund a 3.5% Cost of Living Adjustment for all university classified and support staff.

*Cost of goods calculated using the Current Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov/inflation.htm). For this chart, monthly inflation rates were reported as fiscal year (Jul-Jun) instead of calendar year (Jan-Dec). COLA data reported by the K-State Division of Budget (http://www.k-state.edu/budget/Percent%20increase%20Classified.pdf).

**The Consumer Price Index measures items such as: food & beverages, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education & communication

• Continue to support and fund longevity for all eligible employees.

• Maintain and fully fund the existing KPERs retirement system for new and current employees.
  
  

You are more than welcome to take a vacation day off (with your supervisor’s approval) and join the group visiting the Capitol.  Those who have gone before have found it to be a very rewarding experience.  If you’re interested in going, please contact Betty Colbert, 4-5455, bchilder@ku.edu.

University Committee on Libraries: Nothing to report.

Mentoring Committee: Nothing to report.

Libraries Organizational Staff Development Committee (LOSDC):

• LOSDC is trying to get ready for the February all-staff meeting where they will make their debut. They are meeting with individual members of the Dean's Executive Council, with supervisors, and with governance groups (KULSS & LFPA). They started with 5 questions (the first 3 ask about broad goals for units or the libraries). The other 2 questions they posed to us:
  • Q. How do you approach development? (How do you approach development with supervisor and how do supervisors approach staff?)
    • A. We're currently planning our spring workshop and will send out a survey to gauge the interest of staff for various topics for sessions and activities. The sessions are similar to previous workshops but what we're doing differently this year is a session on emotional intelligence or personality type and we're dividing the day up into a longer morning session and shorter breakout sessions in the afternoon.
      • Angie suggested we also look at the Discovering Your Strengths session that HR offers. It's something to consider for our event and LOSDC is also exploring it. They are exploring the idea of how to communicate across departments and how to tap into people's strengths across departments.
    • A. There's always been an issue of participation. When we bring it up to Lorraine her response is that the work comes first. We recognize that some of our workshop activities fall under professional development and some are just for fun. We're not sure if this plays a part in the level of staff participation. This year we wanted to change the format so it could be more applicable to our work and so the professional development aspect would be more substantial but still have fun activities like the chair massages. We're hoping if the event is more serious it would entice the supervisors and encourage more participation.
  • Q. What development efforts work for you (either that you've seen or tried)?
    • A. There are a lot of NISO webinars available but they aren't very well attended by support staff because they don't relate to staff's daily workflows. They are more helpful for general knowledge. If you don't have something to apply this information to immediately it doesn't stick.
    • A. Many people are taking advantage of the tuition assistance program.
    • A. There are sessions to try to get people interested in what librarians do and to interest staff in certifications, but lots of people seem content to stay where they are and aren't interested in moving up.
    • A. Searching to figure out what people really want and what they need and we're still not sure. People don't really tell us because they don't necessarily have a specific idea; they need it to fall into a certain context and meet a need.
    • A. The supervisor's job should be to encourage staff to take advantage of classes or webinars to learn practical technology skills so they can participate in projects. But they also shouldn't force staff that aren't interested, but encourage those that are.
    • A. We had the idea to do staff profiles to make people aware of each other's backgrounds and interests.
    • A. There may be times when learning something may be sort of applicable but why do it when there are people who know exactly what they're doing and could do it.
    • A. It's good to go to other libraries outside of KU to see how they do things and meet other people in their field. It would be great to get people out of the office, something more than a webinar to invigorate staff.
    • A. Evaluations: If professional development is included in the evaluations then it needs to include a specific learning outcome, not simply to participate in an activity but what staff will accomplish from it. There is also the issue that the goals are written in January or February and by the time the year rolls around the goals may change or the supervisor may ask something different. The structure of these evaluations isn't flexible. Will it reflect poorly in the evaluation if the goals change?
    • A. It would be nice to receive monthly advertising for staff development opportunities. (This is one of the charges of LOSDC: to document and promote activities. They hope to have an interactive calendar so many people can contribute to it.)
  • Kristin will send a copy of our workshop survey to Angie.
    
    

Meeting Updates

Dean's Council (next mtg: 1/21): Nothing to report.

Management Council (next mtg: 1/19): Nothing to report.

Dean's KULSS (next mtg: 2/1): Nothing to report.

Concerns to Bring up with the Dean: Nothing as yet.

Action Item's for Next Meeting

Parking Lot
(Items to be aware of for the future, not necessarily discussed in current meeting)

Next Meeting: January 27, 10:00-11:30 at Watson 503B.