Happy New Year to you all!

Position Updates

We continue to work through the positions that were approved last year and are currently actively searching for three subject specialist librarians (Entrepreneurship and Innovation and two STEM specialists), Head of Licensing and Acquisitions, and a Digital Repository Analyst. Thanks to all of you who continue to participate in the interview process. I also wanted to share that we have approval from the Provost for three replacement positions – a Conservator, a Social Sciences/Instructional Designer, and an Associate University Librarian for Research, Curriculum and Access Services.

UCL Budget Hearing

As I mentioned in a previous message, we are currently preparing for our Budget Hearing on February 2nd. The questions being asked are similar to those in the past and include our current financial health, how we will manage projected operating deficits through FY19, major financial strengths and weaknesses, our use of external resources, and any new external funding opportunities that may exist.

Meetings with the Provost and Deans

This week I had the opportunity to meet with the new interim dean of CLAS, Davita Glasberg to discuss the Library goals and how we can continue to work with CLAS in the coming year. I am looking forward to my first official meeting with Provost Teitelbaum in early February. I have also been meeting with deans across the institution to talk about the state of the Library. These meetings began with Dean Polofroni from the School of Nursing and Dean Faustman from CAHNR so that we can address the impact of both the recent round and project future cuts from our Health Sciences budget.

Staff on the Web

There is a lot of great information to be had out there and I am always pleased to read things from our own staff. Janice recently forwarded me some articles written by Rich McIntyre that were great reads. Currently working as a Library Technician on his way towards an MS in both Library and Information Science and Information Systems at Drexel University, Rich’s focus has been on ensuring that people have access to high quality medical information and also feel comfortable asking for help. Like you, I believe tackling these two issues is at the heart of being a librarian. In these two articles he touches on both of these topics, first from the perspective of a librarian and how we can enhance our customers experience by examining the five step approach that Apple employs in its retail stores. And secondly, by taking a look at the assumption that all Millennials have superior searching skills.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reference-librarians-have-thing-two-learn-from-apple-retail-mcintyre?trk=prof-post

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hey-millennials-youre-great-searching-information-rich-mcintyre?trk=prof-post

And the other great piece of material I’d like to suggest you take some time to read is the process that our own conservation and digital production labs have used in their project to digitize the rare Latin American newspapers. I am certainly aware of the good work happening in these areas, and have no doubt in our ability to manage such complex conservation needs in order to provide access to important historical documents, but what I was not prepared for was how beautifully Michael Bennett told the story, with both photography and video highlighting each step in the process. This article has already been shared in the well-known photography site PetaPixel and perhaps a not so well-known site Gizmodo. Here is Michael’s original post.

http://tundragraphics.com/blog/2016/12/digitizing-19th-century-newspapers-using-humidification-and-electrostatic-force/

One Good Thing

Keep the wonderful comments coming.  Here are a couple more:

Fred Rick is always helpful and quick in assisting me to resolve any issues.

Valori Banfi is adaptable, tireless, smart, talented, and a positively positive workhorse (and friend).

VPC Meeting

The next VPC meeting will be Wednesday, December 14th. A formal agenda will be coming shortly but please mark your calendars since this is a date outside of the normal rotation.

Great news for the Master Plan

At yesterday’s Board of Trustee’s meeting, approval was given for the University to spend $3.9M for renovations to Level 1 and another $1.1M to complete the board room on Level 4. With this funding we can officially start working through the Master Plan! In addition we have already earmarked funds for changes including new furniture to the North Entrance Lobby and Plaza lobby areas, which will begin shortly. This has been two years in the making so congrats to everyone who has attended meetings and provided feedback to get us here. I would like to particularly thank Holly and Dave for shepherding us through the countless meetings, brainstorming and blueprints. There is much more work to come and we will have more information shortly including timelines and more detailed plans.

Interim Provost

As many of you have likely heard, President Herbst has called upon Dean Jeremy Teitelbaum to serve as the Interim Provost. I am looking forward to working with him, educating him about the library priorities including staffing and collection concerns, and learning about priorities for his term. His recent support of $500,000 for the Library’s collection budget has been instrumental in maintaining our collections this year. I welcome further conversations about the importance of our services to the University with his leadership team, and with members of the University Finance office during our February budget hearings.

DD/ILL Location in School of Fine Arts Resource Center

In the event you missed the email from Erika, the Fine Arts Resource Center is once again a drop off and pick up location for interlibrary loan. Thank you to the DD/ILL staff for their work to make this happen for our patrons.

Association of Public & Land-Grant Universities Meeting

Last week I joined regional colleagues from other land grant universities for a discussion about how libraries are supporting agriculture and natural resource programs. This formative meeting included a lot of wonderful brainstorming and discussion of the Ithaka S+R Research Project on this topic. Thank you to Sharon and Carolyn for their excellent work in assessing how our own CAHNR faculty do their research for our local use, and as input to this national study. You can find the report here. There will be a brown bag about this shortly- stay tuned.

Homies Student Organization

You may have seen some information about a student group called The Homies: Friends of the Homer Babbidge Library. Headed by one of our students, Sam Mairson, they officially became a student organization at last night’s USG meeting. Their purpose is to “promote and assist the UConn Library by way of providing student advocacy and input on library issues, hosting events and fundraisers for the benefit of the UConn Library, and organizing volunteer projects.” They are currently working on increasing their membership, getting the required training for officers and starting their programming. They have discussed helping with some finals activities such as buttons (they handed out dozens last night) and are researching the Ignite fundraising opportunities through the UConn Foundation. If you have any questions or interest in helping the Homies, you can talk with Joel who is one of their advisers or Jean who has been working with them on some projects.

One Good Thing

Today I’ll share with you a comment I received about Ryan Marsalisi. “Ryan is so  agreeable it’s unbelievable. He is always friendly, responsive and concerned about doing a great job. I think he works exceptionally well with everyone.”  I have had the pleasure of working with Ryan and seeing him daily here in the Admin office and I couldn’t agree more. Thanks Ryan!

Congratulations to the Babbidge Builders

While they may not have won the gingerbread house decorating contest last week, it was certainly not due to their lack of effort. I enjoyed watching them work on building what they called the #foundationofthenation – the Homer Babbidge Library.

I hope to see you all at the Solstice Party on the 21st!

Martha

This Week at VPC

As you know the VPC Open Forum is every other week and Vice Provost’s Council will continue to meet on the opposite week. Much of what we discuss outside of the Open Forum is a high-level overview of what is happening around the library and is brought back to area and team meetings via your AUL. While that is still an expectation, I’d like to also start including some of the discussions here in my message to help continually improve our flow of information around the organization.

Today’s meeting was a discussion regarding our 2017 budget hearing. Because of the projected outlook for the State’s budget, we have been asked to plan for additional permanent cuts to our budget. We will be meeting this week with the Provost’s Library Advisory Committee to begin what will be substantive discussions between PLAC and VPC on the nature of that plan.

At last week’s meeting we received an update on the status of the searches and discussed strategies to keep them and others that are on the list moving forward. We also continued our discussion of the role of liaisons outside of Research Services, including expectations for delivering services, time commitments as well as how to balance new opportunities for staff who express the desire to reach beyond their day to day unit duties with needs of the units.

There will be no VPC Open Forum next Wednesday.

BLC Workforce Development Program Update

As you have read in a few of my previous messages, the BLC has assembled a group of Associate University Librarians from across our member institutions to strategize on ways to build and develop staff with the right skills for today’s libraries. A proposal was submitted at our September meeting which includes a two-pronged approach to both strengthen and enhance the consortium as well as provide benefit to the individual institutions. The first step proposed is to create a BLC workforce development infrastructure that includes minimal staffing to support the initiatives such as helping to plan events, coordinating a mentoring program and maintaining an event calendar. The second is called BLC Leads: Building Our Capacity to Learn, which is a six month participative program where individuals from member libraries will attend in-person and virtual learning sessions that introduce new and familiar content to enhance leadership skills. We have agreed that one person from each institution that meets the suggested qualifications, will have the opportunity to join the program. We will manage the multiple expressions of interest through prioritization and staging over time since we expect this program to continue. An announcement will come out soon but in the meantime if you have any questions, you can contact me or Holly who is our representative on the working group.

Charleston Conference

As you may have seen yesterday, Sara, Michael Rodriguez and Patrick attended the Charleston Library Conference and have invited us to a brownbag discussion at noon on Tuesday, November 22 in the OVP Conference Room. The Charleston Conference is an annual event that pulls together librarians, publishers, electronic resource managers, consultants, and vendors to discuss issues of importance such as collection development, resource assessment and access. I encourage you to attend.

New Look for Security

Our security staff has a sharp new look! We have changed the official uniform for our security staff to offer a more approachable look and to incorporate our new library branding. They are here to provide a level of safety to our users as well as to be helpful and supportive and I believe this new look will emphasize this role in a more visual way.

One Good Thing

Last week I shared with you some kind words about a staff member and so many people were able to guess, but for those who didn’t it was Michael Rodriguez. This week, I’d like to  spotlight a few of our Hartford Library folks for a job well done:

• Michael Howser is thoughtful and fair; his gentle humor helps calm troubled waters and he creates an atmosphere of trust.
• I could write for pages about what I appreciate about Marsha and Claudia!  They are wonderful colleagues: dedicated, helpful, kind, reliable, inventive, collaborative.  I couldn’t ask for better colleagues!

Keep them coming! I love to read them.

Next week is a student break and of course Thanksgiving (remember, no VPC Open Forum next week) so I’ll take the opportunity now to wish you all a wonderful holiday with hopes that you eat your fill of your favorite Thanksgiving treats!

Hiring at UCL

Thank you to those who joined us this morning for the first candidate to lead our Metadata & Discovery Service unit. As you know there are several other positions we are in the process of filling and I would like to encourage you to get involved when you can. Hiring the right people that fit within the organization and can help move us forward is critical for our success so your input is vital. Often when I meet with candidates I hear how welcome we make them feel and I do appreciate that. I look forward to seeing you at these events.

VPC Open Forum Cancelled

Due to the candidate presentation on Wednesday, we will be cancelling the Open Forum Meeting.

Development Initiatives Update

This week I am looking forward to presenting to the UConn Foundation team responsible for Library fundraising. I will be talking with them about the role of the library in student success, highlight some of the changes we are embracing along with many other academic libraries, and some of the great things happening here that have development opportunities such as the Master Plan and our work with Open Educational Resources.

I would also like to extend an invitation to you all to join us on Monday, November 28th at 6:30pm for a wine and cheese reception to officially open the Ronald Searle Exhibition in Babbidge. We will be joined by Robert Forbes, who has been generous with both the loaning of this unique collection of art as well as with a donation to help with its installation. He will be joining us for a gallery talk alongside Cora Lynn Deibler and Alison Paul from the School of Fine Arts. I know many of you have commented on how wonderful the exhibit is and this would be a nice opportunity to thank Mr. Forbes for his generosity.

Holiday Party

It’s that time of year again! If you are interested in helping plan our annual holiday party, please let me know.

Out & About with UConn Health Sciences Library

Our colleagues in Farmington have been reaping the rewards of their hard work over the last few months. On September 13, Kathleen Crea presented a poster at the New England Assessment in Action Symposium regarding the research program she and her colleagues completed as part of the ALA/ACRL Assessment in Action: Academic Libraries and Student Success (AiA) program. The research project, run by Kathleen, Evelyn Morgen (now retired), Arta Dobbs and three clinical faculty and educational administrators looked at how students used resources over four years through a series of surveys. Survey questions aimed at trying to understand how students felt their ability to find information improved over time, what became “must have” sources, and what instructional sessions were most useful. The program was highlighted in a recent National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) New England Region blog.

On October 24th at the 2016 North Atlantic Health Sciences Libraries (NAHLS) conference Teri Shiel, Kathleen Crea and Rich McIntyre presented a poster session titled “Outreach: Web-Based Content Creation Tools that Promote Your Library.” The challenge of  balancing work and fun at a conference was also successful at NAHLS, as evidence of this image we found on Facebook.

One Good Thing

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to send me nice things about our colleagues. I will be periodically sharing these with you so please keep them coming. One of our staff members was mentioned by two different colleagues:

• He is the Energizer Bunny of colleagues. Ask him to do something, and he asks if he can do *more* for you.

• As a new member of the library, he was one of the first staff members to reach out to me from outside of my department. His work is a tremendous asset to the library, but beyond that, it’s his ever-present positive attitude that really makes a difference in the workplace.

Civility in the Workplace

It’s no secret that this is a time of year when students become overwhelmed with the semester and that creates a flurry of activity. It is also a time in which I know we show our love of the profession with excellent customer service to our users, often going out of our way to help.  I see examples all the time when I go by the iDesk or receive notes and see social media posts from appreciative patrons.

I am however concerned that there is still an undercurrent of a lack of respect for the work that others do which manifests itself in troubling behaviors towards each other.  There are no unimportant jobs or staff of lesser importance than others here.  The UConn Code of Conduct sent out last week in the Daily Digest includes a section on civility where I was reminded that one of our values is to work in an environment that promotes a spirit of civility and collegiality, while fostering open and constructive intellectual debate including those times we may disagree about our priorities or varied approaches. We all have a responsibility to treat each other with consideration and respect. These are the standards we follow as valued colleagues and employees.

There are days I go home with real concern about this lack of respect and compassion we still show to one another. I also believe that many times this isn’t on purpose. We don’t see how our behavior is affecting our colleagues. Tone of voice, body language, or a shortness in your response during a time of stress can carry significant weight. I think we can do better and I am committed to being a part of this. I am working with Holly and Khara to schedule some time for our supervisors to meet with the University’s ombudsman Jim Wohl. Our supervisors are often on the front lines of this issue, working with their own staff and members of other units to work out differences. Jim is also a great resource for you as individuals. I have gone to him myself and found him to be a wonderful listener and able to provide actionable advice. I am also putting out a call right now to see if anyone is willing to work together on appreciation/getting to know each other events.

Civility in the workplace can often seem like it is too big to tackle, particularly when we are feeling the stretch of fewer staff, increasing work and an uncertainty with the State budget. Yet like anything else, change comes from one person at a time and each of us has a role to play in building a civil and respectful work environment. So I ask you all to join me in helping to make progress in this area by following these three simple rules:

1 –Self-monitor the respect you display in all areas of your communications, including verbal, body language and listening.  Approach each interaction with respect, regardless of whether you believe that the other person’s behaviors “earn” or even elicit that respect.

2 – Avoid the tendencies to become caught up in gossip, complaining, or other forms of negativity in day-to-day interactions.

3 – Be supportive of the Library and your colleagues when talking with people both inside and outside of the organization.

Many of you who were here when I joined the UConn Library may remember the ‘One Good Thing’ exercise in which I asked you to tell me one good thing about your supervisor, and supervisors were asked to do the same for each of their staff. With new staff and new challenges, I am asking each of you to send me one good thing about any member of the staff. If both staff members are in agreement, I will gladly share them in future messages.

If today each of us shows respect and good manners to our colleagues, we can make a difference.

VPC Meeting

This coming Wednesday we will have special, guest Robert Corbett from UConn Planning, Design and Construction join us to discuss the ‘re-set’ of the Master Plan as well as some short and long term goals to keep an eye out for as we move forward. We will also be getting an update on the eReserves transition. The agenda can be found on Ibis and please make sure you RSVP to Kristen so we can ensure there is enough room for everyone.

Humanities Institute

Move in day is today! After they have settled in and unpacked we hope to have a series of meeting to learn more about what each other are doing and ways in which we can work together. In the meantime if you haven’t been up there and need a quick walk, it looks great!

VPC Planning Day

This week VPC met offsite for a planning retreat. In the morning we talked about the integration of the UConn Health Sciences Library into the One Library and the afternoon focused on the Master Plan for Babbidge, with particular interest in the programming on Level 1. The conversations resulted in a greater understanding of what is currently happening and what we still need to do to move forward together in both areas on our Purposeful Path.

Donation to Open Educational Resources

As you have already seen, the UConn Co-op has donated $300,000 to continue the work to push for more use of open and affordable course materials at UConn. The Co-op was a member of the Open Textbook Taskforce, showing their commitment early on to this initiative. They were helpful in providing information to the committee on some of the courses with the highest textbook costs and how many students enrolled purchased the required texts. They were also active in getting faculty to submit their course materials early which helps students determine the full cost of the class. With some of the funds we will be creating an endowment which will serve two purposes – to allow for long-term sustainability as well as an avenue for funders to directly support the efforts on campus. We have seen from the work so far that boots on the ground are incredibly successful in getting the word out, so my intention is to utilize some of this funding to do just that.

CT Freeze Campaign Donation

Last Friday we celebrated the donation of the Connecticut Freeze Campaign records to the archives. The CT Freeze Campaign was one of the nation’s largest and most effective grassroots campaigns opposing nuclear weapons during the Cold War period. The records are a compilation of materials donated by over 100 peace activists across a 15-year period (1980-1995) and include organizing tools, educational outreach models and the lively memorabilia of this prolific movement here in CT. The celebration included an invitation only reception that welcomed activists from around the state to music, remembrances from key activists, declarations of importance from former Senator Chris Dodd and current Senator Chris Murphy, and a keynote from Lawrence Wittner, professor emeritus of history at SUNY/Albany. Along with the records have been some donations to help digitize the collection and we look forward to using those funds to make these important records available for researchers.

Goodbye’s Last Week

Last week we wished Jo Ann Reynolds well in her retirement with a wonderful reception. We are indebted to her service to UConn, first starting in Human Resources and then for the many years at the Library. Thanks to the planning committee – Kathy Banas-Marti, Kim Giard, Kristen Jones, Jean Nelson and Kim Wilk and Rick Sarvas for the photos. Last Thursday also marked the last day that Silvia Celeste was with us. While here she met with each area as well as individuals doing work she was interested in and gave a presentation at VPC on UNICAMP.

Travel Schedule

I have just finished up the first of two business related travel trips over the next week. I led the BLC Board Meeting at Williams College in Williamstown, MA in their beautifully renovated new library. We wished our colleague Will Wakeling a wonderful retirement as he is ready to leave his post as the Dean of Northeastern University Libraries, and wished Elaine Martin all the best as she moves on to her new role as Director of the Countway Library at Harvard Medical School. We also reviewed the proposal from the AUL committee with their recommendations for a more thoughtful and realistic workforce development program as well as a BLC leadership initiative, and engaged in several conversations on resource sharing and collection development. Early this week I will be attending the ARL Fall Meeting in Washington, DC. In addition to topics such as trends in ARL statistical data and updates from committees such as the Membership, Engagement and Outreach Committee I serve on, there are two special presentations I am looking forward to. First is the Open Access panel where we will discuss shared value and the different paths to move open scholarship forward and secondly a “debate” of sorts on Sci-Hub where ARL directors will take sides in the piracy vs. public good conversation.

Retirement Reception for Jo Ann

I know you all received an invitation and I look forward to seeing you this Thursday along with some of the faculty and retirees that she has worked with over her 40 years at UConn.

Staff Smiles

There are two things that I would like to share that I hope will bring a smile. First is Jenny Miglus. Jenny gave her nursing outreach program at the Health Sciences Library this fall a new look. Since the idea is to hunt down answers to questions and other needed materials in a Question Safari, she dressed the part. I also wanted to share with you that I just became a grandmother again – Kepler Bedard was born on September 8, all of 4lbs, 12 oz. He joins his brother Bode and my son Noah and daughter-in-law Chelsea. Both of these pictures are reminders to me of how important it is to find joy in all of the things that are a part of our lives – at work and at home.

Save the Date for a visit with CRL

Bernie Reilly, President of the Center for Research Libraries will be vising UConn on Wednesday, September 14th. The theme of his visit is “Enriching Research, Expanding Possibilities” and will include several meetings and presentations for you to participate in. During our Open Forum from 9:30-11:00am he will be talking with staff about the access to primary sources and other materials we have through our CRL membership. From 1:30-2:30pm he will host a public presentation for faculty and researchers in the Class of ’47 where he will give an overview of CRL’s collections and discuss the future of primary sources in the Digital Era. He will also be meeting with members of the Collections Steering Committee and DD/ILL throughout the day. More detailed information will be coming shortly, but I wanted to make sure you mark your calendar as early as possible.

International Guest – Sylvia Celeste Salvio

On September 6th will have the pleasure of welcoming Sylvia Celeste Salvio to the UConn Library. Silvia is currently a reference librarian at the Physics Library in the Institute of Physics “Gleb Wataghin” at the University of Campinas, Brazil and is working through an exchange program through Unicamp.  She received her MIS from Pontificial Catholic University of Campinas, Brazil and has expressed interest in learning more about our academic liaison program, how we are assisting in research data management, our outreach with the Scholars’ Collaborative, and public services such as reference and tutoring. She will be spending time in each area for the first week or two followed by work on a special project for the remainder of her time here, which is through September 30th. Sylvia will be located in the office next to Holly so please stop by and give her a warm UConn welcome.

Music & Dramatic Arts Library Changes

The transformation of the M&DAL is nearly complete! As of today, the library will change its services and become the School of Fine Arts Resource Center. The Resource Center will be staffed with students and continue to circulate the music scores, sound recordings, videos, playscripts, and stagecraft books that are still in the building. The remainder of the collection, as well as the services such as ILL and reserves have been moved here to Homer Babbidge. Lois has also joined us here in Babbidge, and now has an office in the Access Services area behind the Circulation Desk. This has been a long time in the making, with many moving parts and I want to thank each of you who have had a part in making this happen.

New Faculty Orientation

I had the pleasure of joining my colleagues in welcoming new faculty to campus last week. I did have to follow Jonathan, which seemed a bit unfair, but in my short time I focused on the services of our subject specialists, available tools and resources to help with their teaching and research, and many of our new initiatives such as Open Educational Resources and the Greenhouse Studios. I challenged them to come and be inspired at the heart of the academic community of UConn.

Davis Educational Foundation/OER Update

This week we will be submitting our first progress report to the Davis Educational Foundation. Having just read the report I am so pleased at the progress we have made in this area. We have truly done an astonishing job so thank you to everyone who has had a role to play. We will continue to work toward more integration of these resources on campus and are looking forward to starting up the Campus-wide Open Textbook Task Force with the start of the semester.

And of course – today marks the start of the semester. I’m not sure where the summer went exactly, but I am looking forward to working with all of you along our collective path forward. There is no doubt that we are dealing with constraints, but also on the horizon are some great things about to happen. We will be hiring new staff that will continue our push for innovation and inspiration, seeing upgraded spaces in our libraries, and embracing new collaborations and processes to extend our reach and maximize our resources. I love the excitement and energy that new students bring to the library. Many are often a little lost in many ways, but usually can find their way to a library where our caring staff are very helpful and can ease their fears. The anticipation I feel in the air is energizing and I wish you all a wonderful Fall 2016 semester!

Homer Babbidge Flooding

As you all read in Dave’s email yesterday, a water fountain in Bookworms broke and seeped water through levels B and A over the weekend. Work continues to remove the wet materials and the large cabinets from the areas to facilitate proper drying and cleaning. This is being done under the guidance of the Division of Environmental Health & Safety. Nothing will be moved back into the area until we have the approval from EH&S. I want to thank all of the folks who have made quick work to remedy this unfortunate accident, particularly Mike Slowik and Charlie Pei.  Mike and his wife were in the building checking on something when they heard of the flood. They spent several hours removing books from the flowing water and covering up cabinets as the custodians were working to remove the water from the Plaza Level. And Charlie has worked over the weekend to begin the task of drying the materials affected.

Vice Provost Council – August 3

Many of you were unable to join us last week for the Vice Provost’s Council Open Forum so I wanted to take a moment to update you on that meeting. We were able to run through a round-table style format with each of the areas, including information on the ’16-’17 area goals. I was extremely pleased to see the way that each area aligned to our Purposeful Path Forward. It is clear to me that the areas were thoughtful in how we could maintain our essential services while being creative in bringing innovation to the forefront. I was struck by several goals that included a bit of clean-up in areas of the library, a late spring cleaning of sorts. For anyone who has felt the satisfaction of cleaning up an attic or messy kitchen, it does create a refreshed feeling and will help us to better use our spaces. All of the area goals are being compiled this week and will be available for everyone to review on Ibis next week. The minutes from the August 3rd meeting can be found here.

We did not review the Health Library goals but will be talking about them in upcoming meetings. As you know, we are currently working with them on managing a cut to their collections budget. I will also be meeting with each member of the Health Library one-on-one as I did when I first joined the Library. I will also be offering those one-on-one meetings to anyone who has joined the staff since those initial meetings.

Website Improvements

Thank you to everyone who came to the Web Governance Workgroup’s town hall meeting. I would like to thank the members of the WGW for their continued work on making improvements to our website. I realize that this is supplemental to each person’s regular job and their dedication to continued improvements is appreciated. They have proposed some changes to the main page and are currently doing usability testing. Please consider providing some feedback to the group, and if you know of anyone who might be interested in helping with usability testing, please reach out to them. The more feedback we get the better the improvements will be.

eReserve Changes

As mentioned in yesterday’s Daily Digest, this semester we will be working to continue the transition to an unmediated eReserves model. This is a significant change for faculty and I know that each of you who have the opportunity will do what you can to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Staff Notes

Please help me congratulate Michael Rodriguez for his recent published work in the ACRL publication The Small and Rural Academic Library: Leveraging Resources and Overcoming Limitations. Michael’s chapter is entitled “Technology Triage: Assessing and Managing Library Systems and Projects.”

Educause Key Issues for 2016

I know many of you are involved with Educause and I wanted to point out their latest ‘Key Issues in Teaching and Learning 2016’ release. This is a nice reference document that outlines the discussions and programming Educause will be focused on. You will quickly see that many of the identified issues are ones we are already participating in so you may find some of their resources helpful.

Curriculum & Certificate Review

We received our first request last month as part of the newly formalized process to include the Library in the approval for new academic programs or certificates. As you may recall, this is a result of our advocacy through the Senate to allow us to provide input on the availability of resources prior to approval. In this case, the liaisons responsible for the area were given the opportunity to comment in which they were able to offer their support of the program while at the same time raising concerns about our ability to support deeper research needs in the current environment. I have also received approval to be included on updates the University makes to the academic programs and provides to the State’s Office of Higher Education. This information will be very helpful for many things, most notably for our collection development strategies.

Fiscal Year 2017

As we begin a new fiscal year, we, along with other academic departments, have not seen an additional cut to the already known 3% for the year. We will need to remain vigilant in how we spend our funds to achieve the 3% cut this year so I encourage you all to continue to think of ways to do things differently with less. One such change that has recently been instituted is to our binding services.  As you may recall the Graduate School no longer requires a bound copy of thesis and dissertations so as of July we no longer provide the service to departments or individuals who do still want a paper copy. I have sent individual notes to each of the departments that were identified as frequent users and received notes back of understanding from many of them. We have created a new webpage that offers alternatives to users who would like binding services so if you get any questions from patrons, please refer them to the site.

Master Plan Updates

For those of you who were able to attend last week’s VPC meeting, you heard that we have a new lead architect working with Antoaneta Fedeles.  We are pleased that Robert Corbett will be working with us as we already have an established and professional relationship with him through his work on the Hartford campus library within Hartford Public. VPC met with both Robert and Antoaneta this morning for what they call a “reset” of the Master Plan. It was incredibly helpful for all of us to recap where we are now in the process and take a look at some of the changes that have been made since we first began these conversations over a year ago. We are working at rethinking some of our temporary strategies in light of new timelines and budget numbers as well as continuing the focus groups for the 1st floor. Many of you have also been asking about the floor number changes and at this juncture we will not be changing them in the immediate future but will continue to advocate for that change when most appropriate.