The University of Kansas Libraries

KU Libraries Support Staff

KULSS Executive Meeting
Thursday, October 7, 10:00-11:00
Watson 503A

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

Previous Meeting's Action Items

• Jill contacted Marianne Reed about the Holiday Party committee. She said she is happy to send out an email to ask for volunteers. Jill briefed her on the Dean's Council meeting discussion about the party. Lorraine suggested to get a committee together by the end of September. Marianne will put out a call for volunteers.
• Yes, we can rearrange the groups in the Code.
• Robert will send an email to his new group.
• Jill created a second addendum that is identical to Addendum I. Kristin will add the new addendum to the Code page on the website.
• Jill spoke with Kent about the break room but he hasn't emailed Kristin or Adam yet. Jill will remind him.
• Jill emailed Mike to set up a meeting to discuss the EEO job categories and is waiting for a response.

Minutes Correction:

• Change the language regarding Deb Ludwig attending the staff picnic: she was the only person from administration to attend to she was the only administrator to attend.

Other:

• Julie and Kristin will talk about arranging monthly potlucks again for Room 210.
• We might not have had large attendance at the staff picnic because the Celebration of Excellence was the night before.

Group Reports

Group 1 (Adam):

• Congratulations to Jennifer and David Johnson as they celebrate the birth of Owen Nikolas Johnson, born October 2, 2010. Please join us on Monday, October 18, 2010 from 11:00am to 1:00pm in Watson Library, Cataloging Department.
• Didn't hear anything back from the groups about the new membership in response to email notification of changes.
• People are scrambling to find odds and ends to do when Voyager is down next week.

Group 2 (Julie):

• Jules sent an email to to the new group members. Lois Bauer responded with thanks for taking on Acquisitions.
• Staff are dealing with the upcoming Voyager downtime.

Group 3 (Robert):

• Nancy Hawkins is retiring. A celebration will be held for her on October 27th at 3:00 in Watson 455. Mark your calendars!
• Channette Alexander is having trouble with the computers in Spahr, but the problems they were having with the express scanner have been fixed. Anschutz will be giving Spahr 8 of their laptops since their current laptops are having some issues.
• On October 21st there will be a party at Spencer Research Library for Miloche Kottman, Tara Wenger, and Karen Cook, whose positions have become permanent instead of interim.
• Deborah Dandridge is having a presentation panel on the Sumner Story on October 29th. RSVP to attend this event in the Johnson Room at Spencer.
• Becky Schulte will be presenting the History of the Jayhawk at Liberty Hall on November 1st. RSVP to Courtney Foat to attend this event.
• Art and Architecture wants a new cataloging computer. Mark Swails, the new Operations Manager, got a tour of the computer labs from Kim Glover and Robert gave him a tour of Anschutz.
• Administration is getting a hand on purchasing.
• Anschutz will have flu clinics this month and next month.

Committee Reports

Support Staff Senate: Nothing to report.

University Committee on Libraries:

• They will have meetings at the end of October and again in November to discuss decoupling and the Connecting to KU sessions with Keith Russell that have to do with the task force report that recently came out. Jill will attend one of these meetings.
• Jill will talk to Sheila Orth, our representative for this committee, to make sure she is getting emails from them.

Planning & Resources Committee (PRC):

• This committee is no longer meeting.
• Erin Ellis, LFPA Chair, determined that putting the committee on hiatus does not require a vote or a code change. Erin sent an email to continuing members of PRC notifying them of the committee's status. Committee members will still be listed as members until next summer's expire and can still be called on if necessary.

Mentoring Committee:

• Meredith contacted everyone in the Community of Interest. Most responded that there was no interest and if someone wanted to take the lead then they can go for it.
• Living Green is the only one that seems to have any interest. They've had functions over the past few years and have increased recycling options in Watson and Anschutz. They haven't met since spring but will meet again this fall. There is usually good attendance at their functions.

Meeting Updates

Dean's Council (last 9/24; next 10/22):

• Lorraine Haricombe discussed the new positions she has requested, which are awaiting Provost approval: Head of IT for Libraries and an Instructional Design Librarian. Hopefully they will have a response from the Provost by next week.
• The Provost is bringing in consultants to look at our structure. This will probably occur in the spring and any changes made as a result will coincide with the start of the new fiscal year.
• Discussed the annual review evaluation form for faculty librarians. They are supposed to estimate the percentage of time they spend on teaching, review, and research but faculty would like to be able to revise them at the end of the review to reflect what they actually did.
• In May there will be a slot open on the University Senate for an Unclassified Professional Senate representative, which Kim Glover is interested in. Hopefully we can get a representative from the libraries on the Senate.
• Rebecca Smith talked about major gifts and grants to KU. She's pursuing an agreement that would earmark for the libraries a percentage of the moneys that KU gets. The earmarked funds would go to support library infrastructure.
• KU Libraries Art Committee will be headed up by Courtney Foat and will involve having student art displayed in Watson and Anschutz. The goal is to have something in place this spring (develop guidelines, start hanging art, decide on an annual rotation of the art in the spring).

Management Council (next 10/20): Hasn't met yet.

Dean's KULSS Meeting (next 11/2): Hasn't met yet.

Concerns to Bring up with the Dean:

• We are discouraged by the lack of participation among support staff. It's unclear if support staff view themselves as being part of or contributing to the bigger library picture. Could we come up with some questions about involvement in the form of a questionnaire or survey about feelings of connectedness and participation? Maybe it would be a good idea to send out kudos to staff. It doesn't have to be grandiose (e.g. 40,000 people came through Anschutz...kudos to the staff who helped). Jill will think more about this topic.

Action Items for Next Meeting:

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

• Workshop Planning

Next Meeting: October 21, 10:00-11:30 at Spahr in Alcove E.