VPC Open Forum

The agenda for the VPC Open Forum scheduled for tomorrow, October 14 can be found on Ibis. My apologies for the delay in getting this out to you. A few of the topics include reviewing the updated emergency closing policy and procedures for Homer Babbidge and an update on our conversations regarding the process for student technology fee requests. Please RSVP with Kristen if you are able to attend. The minutes from September 30th meeting can also be found on Ibis.

Active Shooter Training

UConn’s Police Department will be offering active threat training for Library staff again this semester. This is required for all professional and student staff who have not attended before.  I would also suggest that a refresher for all staff would be more than appropriate. Dave Avery will be sending out further information, but the dates to check your calendar for are November 10 – 3:00-5:00pm and November 11 – 6:30-8:30pm.

24th Annual CT Children’s Book Fair

Mark your calendars for the 24th Annual CT Children’s Book Fair this November 14-15 from 10-5pm in the Rome Commons Ballroom. You may remember from a message last fall that we had the opportunity to meet Huck Scarry, the son of Richard Scarry when he was visiting the states on a book tour from Austria. Richard Scarry is best known for the Busy Town series, including Lowly Worm which you pass every morning going through Bookworms Café.  In addition to his own work, Huck has continued the tradition of his father and is producing more Lowly Worm and Busy Town works. That meeting last year was a great opportunity to connect with one of our donors and that connection allowed us to pursue his interest in returning. So this November Huck will be joining us at the Book Fair on Saturday, November 14 as well as participating in an illustration Master Class with the School of Fine Arts and a public lecture during the week in conjunction with the Neag School of Education. More information on the lecture will be available shortly but in the meantime you can find more information about the Book Fair and who is joining us this year at www.bookfair.uconn.edu. The Book Fair is a fundraiser for the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection and for those of you who have come before you know it is a lot of fun to attend. If you are interested in volunteering please talk with Jean.

VPC Open Forum – September 30
The agenda for this Wednesday’s Open Forum can be found here. Please RSVP with Kristen if you are able to make it. Minutes from our last meeting are also available.

Babbidge Library Master Plan
Thank you for joining me last week to review the progress on the Homer Babbidge Library Master Plan. As mentioned in the presentations, these are conceptual drawings based on the research done to date.  You will see that the plan reflects the current work of the libraries and the priorities found in the Purposeful Path Forward. The drawings are also informed by data gathered outside our immediate environment to include scans of recent library renovations and industry benchmarking standards.

The next step in the process is for staff to have an opportunity to provide feedback on the conceptual plans. Beverly Wood left the display board of each floor with us and we will be moving them around staff areas starting tomorrow.

• Level B, staff lounge – 9/29-10/2
• Level 1, prior ILL staff area – 10/5-10/9
• Plaza Level, outside JoAnn/Barbara’s offices – 10/12-10/16
• Admin Offices – 10/19-10/23

There are three ways in which you can provide feedback

1.  Online Survey
2. Post-it comments – Alongside the display boards will be a supply of sticky notes and markers to add your comments directly to the boards.
3. Annotating maps – Alongside the display boards will be printed copies of each floor for you to mark them up with questions.

We have been given the opportunity to take a first look at these plans, which will be going to the Provost and PLAC before a broader conversation with the campus in November. As was noted in my Mashup these are not for public distribution. I expect that you will respect the process and honor this request. They will be shared widely in the next phase.

Meeting with Mark S. Valenti
As Beverly mentioned in her presentation last week, UConn has invited internationally-renowned technology leader Mark Valenti to campus to discuss how to effectively plan for a rapidly-evolving technology-enhanced future. Mark was part of the team that helped develop the newly remodeled Hunt Library at North Carolina State University. The visit is scheduled for Tuesday, October 27 from 10:30-12 and the location is still to be determined. Once we have further confirmation I will let you know.

Staff Notes
It has been a bit since we’ve done some staff shout-out’s so I’d like to pick that back up today.

I have just signed my support to a grant request by Betsy Pittman to collaborate with Wesleyan University on a proposed project titled “Digitizing Atwater: Nutrition, Agriculture, and Home Economics in the Long 19th Century.” Wilbur Olin Atwater’s (1844-1907) groundbreaking work in nutrition science resulted in the popularization of the calorie. He was also the founder of the first U.S. Agricultural Experiment Station and the basis for the Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station archive here at UConn.  He was a graduate of Wesleyan College and his family papers were donated to Wesleyan in 2008-2009 which tie the two institutions together for this project.

The New England e-Science Program is sponsoring a workshop focused on data management tools on November 20th and Carolyn Mills will be leading the afternoon ‘New England Research Data Management Roundtable Discussion.’ The discussion is focused on librarians actively engaging in data services, providing practical ideas to better advocate the libraries’ role in the data management life cycle.

Several staff members continue to help the Libraries push forward with our goals to educate and encourage the use of open educational resources. This week Kathy Labadorf will be speaking at the Open Educational Resources workshop being held by BLC. And Kate Fuller worked along with her colleagues on the Senate Student Welfare Committee to propose a resolution to the University Senate to support the Open Textbook Initiative. That resolution passed at last week’s Senate meeting.

Patrick Carr was just elected to the Executive Committee for the Eastern Academic Scholars Trust (EAST) project through BLC. He will be providing an update on activities at this week’s VPC Open Forum.

Collections Budget Review

Thank you to our liaisons for working with faculty and our electronic resources staff for collecting the data necessary to suggest reductions for our fiscal year ‘16 collections budget. I know that managing a significant cut in a short time frame while still providing high quality services in a busy new academic year can be very challenging. As we continue to progress down this path we have been receiving feedback and are working with all those who have expressed concerns. We are doing our best to communicate the overall fiscal picture that we are facing, explaining the methods we are employing to make informed decisions, and emphasizing the importance of their participation. We are also taking note of ways in which we can improve the process to help make the second round of reductions more effective and efficient. While there is no doubt that this is a difficult situation, the response has reinforced our value to the UConn community as faculty are expressing a sincere need for our resources and services.

Martha’s Mashup – Monday, September 21

I look forward to seeing you all at my Mashup on Monday. We will be joined by Beverly Wood to discuss where we are currently with the Homer Babbidge Master Plan, including sharing some conceptual diagrams. If you can’t make the meeting, there will be ample opportunity to see the concepts and provide feedback on them.

Annual Report to the Provost 

Amidst the planning going on for the upcoming year, I submitted our Annual Report for 2014-2015 to the Provost last week. It was a wonderful reminder of the good work that you all continue to do on behalf of the UConn Libraries. Included in the report are three goals for the Library in 2015-2016. These are based on our Purposeful Path Forward as well as the goals that the Provost has set for the Libraries.  I hope you will take some time to read through the report, which can be found here.

Role of Special Payroll

I have been asked about the use of special payroll in the Library and I wanted to take a moment to address this. The use of special payroll across campus comes with specific criteria for use and regulated by Human Resources, but in general is designed for short term, temporary services that fill critical needs.

The funding often comes from one time funds, primarily salary savings although we have used grant funds as well. I know we use the term ‘salary savings’ quite a bit so let me be a little more specific. When we have an open position, for example after a retirement, the University takes back 40% of the yearly base salary and fringe as a management vacancy tax. The difference between the give back to the University and when the position is filled again is what we call salary savings. As for the open position itself, refilling it is not guaranteed. Instead, we are tasked with making the case for a refill as is or reconfigure it for a different job or skill set. The plan to refill that position is then vetted by VPC against the libraries priority job openings and the result is sent to the Provost’s office for approval or denial.

As we work through that process, it is the role of Vice Provost’s Council to identify projects that need to be done outside of current staff responsibilities and find ways to manage this in both the short term and long term. Often the short-term is done through special payroll. The process required is quite different from a permanent hire because of the temporary nature. There is an assumption that you have a qualified candidate in mind so you are asking for HR approval of the person and the work, not just the work as you would when sending through a permanent job description. Special payroll positions may also be advertised if necessary.  HR checks the job duties, the salary range and duration. A special payroll hire has no job benefits, including sick time and vacation, or health insurance.

The nature of special payroll allows for a mutually beneficial relationship – we can make progress on some short term projects or fill gaps, and a special payroll employee can work to gain skills and still have flexibility to find permanent work. We have seen a significant amount of benefit from the hiring of special payroll in the past few years, moving forward some high value projects and priorities including specialized cataloging, temporary desk staff, collections maintenance, service reviews, financial services support, bridging the gap between the scholars’ collaborative and Digital Media and Design, and implementing lynda.com. As we navigate our budget constraints, including the challenge of trying to adapt to new kinds of work, we will continue to strategically hire temporary employees through this process when appropriate.  If you have any specific concerns, please let me know.

Vice Provost’s Open Forum
The agenda for the next forum on August 19th can be found here. Please RSVP to Kristen if you are able to attend.

Days Away to Plan

There is no doubt that change is happening in and around our organization and our ability to adapt and keep an eye on our purposeful path will take some creative thinking. I know many of you have already made adjustments to how you do your work as individuals and units, so I believe this is a good time to continue to do that on a wider scale. In the next few weeks we will take some steps to start strategic conversations with two groups. IT staff and the staff who are liaisons as their primary duty.

We are currently working on the agendas but in both cases we will utilize the time to review current services, identifying those things we will no longer need to do, those things that will be done differently, and new activities we must begin to engage in.

Our collective vision in the Purposeful Path Forward is one that relies on innovative technology, exploration of new models of teaching and research, and rethinking how we present our resources and services to our users in this new environment. It is clear from our vision the roles of these units are vital to our success and I am looking forward to the conversation. More groups will be convened in the coming months.

One UConn Library Update
There was a One UConn Library meeting on Monday at the School of Law where we continued to lay out our plan. We will be embarking on a review of each of libraries’ roles and what we have in common, what is unique in these environments, and where there may be gaps that need to be filled in order to create a seamless experience among our users.

Collections Budget Update
Thanks to Patrick, Galadriel and Alice for their presentation this week on the plan to thoughtfully manage our collections. If you were unable to attend, the PowerPoint can be found on Ibis.

Demonstration Interactive Classroom
The HBL Lecture Center is now the ‘new’ demonstration interactive classroom!  We are working with UITS to make the final adjustments to the room which will be ready for orientation sessions for faculty and TA’s very soon.  As Beverly Wood indicated in a message to the Provost this week, “this has been a great collaboration among a subcommittee of the Classroom Committee (chaired by Joe Crivello), Library, CETL, UITS, Fac Ops and PAES.”  The room will now provide a space for developing teaching capabilities and engaging students in new ways in the classroom environment.  The room will be managed by CETL and the feedback loops will continue to inform scalability, future classroom design and changes in pedagogy.

Staffing
I would like to offer some further information regarding the recent staffing changes and subsequent emails and discussions. As mentioned in the Union Wire and in Alice’s letter, a number of UCPEA staff were affected by the recent layoffs. I would like to stress the layoffs are part of a University-wide effort to manage several years of past, current, and future deficits. The library was not a target, in fact most, if not all, academic units faced the same percentage of budget cuts. The library was able to minimize the cuts to staff by negotiating with the Provost to allow for more than half of the 9% budget deficit in FY 16 & 17 to come from the collections budget. While it has been past practice to absorb much smaller budget cuts by giving back open positions, this is not an effective way to plan for the future of our organization.

In the coming months we will be working across the organization to focus on job duties and responsibilities. We will look at what we can stop doing, how we can do things differently and more efficiently, and reallocating some tasks to help in balancing workloads. As Alice suggested in her note, this is the time to evaluate our positions and duties in light of the changing nature of academic libraries.

As with UCPEA, we have left the announcement up to each individual affected, honoring their wishes for privacy when desired. I realize this is difficult with such a small staff and most of you know the members, but I do hope that you will also respect their privacy.  I also expect that during difficult times such as these, we continue to remain professional with each other and other members of the community.

Open Educational Resources Update
With the help of the UConn Foundation, we have been in conversations with the Davis Educational Foundation regarding the possibility of grant support for Open Educational Resources here at UConn and Connecticut. We have pulled together a grant writing team that consists of Kate Fuller, Kathy Labadorf, Christ Petkovich (Foundation) and Daniel Byrd (USG) and will be meeting with the Davis Foundation today to further discuss their interest.

I have also mentioned in a previous message, the passage of House Bill 6117 which includes the development of an open-source textbook pilot program throughout CT. The President’s office is currently working to appoint members of the UConn community to that project.

And finally, as a member of BLC we have signed on with more than 90 organizations to support the call to the White House to take administrative action to ensure federally funded educational materials are made available as Open Educational Resources that are free to use, share and improve. A copy of the full letter, which was sent on Tuesday, can be found here.

Martha’s Master Plan Mashup
Keep an eye out for an early September date for my next Mashup, which will focus on the progress to date for the Babbidge Library Master Plan and the next steps in the process.

Purposeful Path Forward
At Wednesday’s VPC Open Forum, we reviewed the final two sections of the Purposeful Path Forward – Operational Excellence and Innovative Spaces. I was unable to attend but did hear that there was great feedback for incorporation into the final draft. The Council will be meeting today to review the Mission, Vision, and Priorities in the context of all of the feedback to produce a final document for distribution early next week. I have seen a draft and believe the open forums and input along the way have been a critical component in its strength. The path is laid out in such a way that will provide the structure to move us forward in a meaningful way while allowing some fluidity as things shift. I want to thank you all for the time and energy that has gone into this and hope that when you read it in total, the work behind it is as evident to you as it is to me.

Master Plan Update
From what I understand there were questions about the progress of the Babbidge Master Plan yesterday so I thought I would provide another update. We are still in the very early stages of the plan, working on gathering current usage data, student growth projections and looking at other academic libraries of interest. Beverly Wood, Director of Planning and I presented a basic outline of this information as well as a time frame for moving forward to Provost Choi at the end of June. We have asked to consider waiting for several pieces to fall into place before we dig into an actual plan – our Purposeful Path Forward, the principles for which we would like our space used for, and the University’s effort to standardize space allocations for staffing, classrooms, etc. We have already seen some draft space standardization language and have indicated that there are library staff that require exceptions to enable proper work efficiencies and we will continue to monitor this. At this point we do not have a Babbidge Master Plan in place to share. It is my intention that when we have a better sense from the Provost of what the next steps are, I will have a Mashup to discuss it in greater detail.

I also wanted to take a moment to mention the work that is still continuing on the off-site preservation facility. As you may remember, we have been working with the University planners on this project and are hopeful that it will allow us to utilize our space in more creative and innovative ways without sacrificing access or preservation needs of the collection. There has been substantive work on this over the past few months and we continue to work with the University and other state-wide partners in making this a reality.

Homer Commons Help Services
I am pleased to announce that we will be partnering with UITS to provide help services in Homer Commons this coming year. The help desk, which is currently run by the Library, will now be run by UITS and their HuskyTech staff. They will provide the full complement of services to students defined by HuskyTech as well as computer and technical support for library equipment on the first floor. For all other issues that are not basic technical issues, a system will be worked out in which they will refer the patron to the proper library staff.  This switch will take place for the fall semester.

Martha on the Move
I am so pleased to announce that I am a grandmother again! A healthy and very sweet Bode Bedard was born on July 2 and I will be spending the next two weeks visiting him and his parents. I will return to work on July 27th. If you have any pressing issues over those two weeks, please feel free to contact any of the Directors for assistance.

VPC Open Forum
Our discussion of the Purposeful Plan will continue next Wednesday, July 8th at the Open Forum starting at 9:30am. This conversation will be similar to our last meeting where we discussed the action steps for the three programmatic priorities but will focus on the remaining two empowering priorities – Operational Excellence and Innovative Spaces. The agenda can be found here and please RSVP to Kristen if you are able to attend.  If you were unable to join the discussion last week, the minutes can be found here.

One UConn Library
I have been asked by the Provost to lead a task force called the One UConn Library, which will look to deepen our commitment to collaboration with our colleagues in the Law School and the Health Center Libraries. The overall goal is to better integrate and streamline our services across all of the libraries to provide a consistent experience for our users, wherever they are in the system. I have been working with the Provost and my colleagues in the other libraries over the last few weeks to set the stage for the work to come and the announcement was made by the Provost this morning. I strongly support this initiative as do my colleagues and I look forward to looking in-depth at the services we all provide and finding ways to make the experience better for our users. We will begin the process next week and are planning for recommendations to be made to the Provost by the end of this calendar year. Below is the official note that came out from Provost Choi this morning. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Dear Colleagues,

The UConn Libraries, the UConn Law School Library, and the UConn Health Center Library all serve vital roles within their distinct University communities to inspire groundbreaking research and in advancing learning, teaching, and entrepreneurial thinking.  Together, the Libraries have a long history of sharing expertise and outstanding educational and research collections.  Most recently the three Libraries have worked together to launch an integrated library collection management system which will improve access and discovery to all the resources collectively available, in a simplified, consistent, and unified manner.

Building upon this relationship, and the inherent collegiality of our Library staff, I am convening a task force to define a future based upon an even deeper collaboration.  The task force, chaired by Vice Provost Martha Bedard, with membership from all three Libraries including:

Martha Bedard, Chair
Holly Phillips
Jocelyn Kennedy
Darcy Kirk
Janice Swiatek

is charged with recommending organizational structures, modes of communication, service improvements and efficiencies, and decision making for an integrated One UConn Library. The overall goal is to improve and enhance access and services to all in a time of fiscal constraint and rising costs, while exploring opportunities to meet the challenges of providing an ever expanding and complex range of services that includes communities with unique needs.  I will review the recommendations with Deans Liang, MacNeil and Fisher and implement the appropriate changes in structure, organization and service.

Best,
Mun

Mun Y. Choi
Provost & Executive VP for Academic Affairs
University of Connecticut

Happy 4th of July
I hope you all enjoy the long holiday weekend!

VPC Open Forum

The Open Forum this Wednesday will focus on the action steps for the Purposeful Plan of Action. The minutes from the June 10th meeting can be found here.

Scholarly Communications Design Studio

This is an exciting project that I mentioned at last week’s VPC Open Forum as well as in other conversations with staff and thought I would take a moment to dig a little deeper into what it is and what it means for the Libraries. The Scholarly Communications Design Studio is a collaboration with Digital Media & Design (DMD) and the Humanities Institute and will change the way the University approaches scholarly work. The idea is simple – to take the collaboration often done at the implementation stage of a project, like we have been doing with the Scholars’ Collaborative, and bring that collaboration in at the start. This allows the opportunity for fresh insight and deep, sustained conversations with professional designers, web and app developers, librarians, data management experts, editors, and scholarly publishers. It uses the two years of successes of the Scholars’ Collaborative and work done by DMD and the Humanities Institute as pillars to reach the next level of scholarly communication.

Being led by Tom Scheinfeldt, Associate Professor in DMD and History, the proposal was accepted for funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The support from the Mellon Foundation is due, in part, to the University’s commitment to refill the position vacated by Anna Kijas in February. The position has been reworked and will now be the Digital Scholarship Librarian/Scholarly Communications Design Studio Managing Director. This position, as well as the center, will be housed here in the Homer Babbidge Library. This is a key piece of the collaborative theme in our Purposeful Plan of Action, particularly when considering usage of facilities space. This need is part of the conversations we are having regarding the Babbidge Master Plan so more on how it will fit in physically will be coming in the future. In the meantime, the project will move forward with the planning stage which includes surveying and fact-finding from other institutions, determining the right organizational structure to maximize our resources, creating an advisory board of experts in the field, and defining the design process. This planning stage has been funded by Mellon at $95,000 and we anticipate it will go through December, 2016. On our end, we will begin advertising the position shortly and Greg Colati has agreed to serve as co-investigator along with Brendan Kane from the Humanities Institute. The planning stage will lay the groundwork if we successfully meet the grant requirements, for a subsequent, three-year, $1,000,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation in 2017.

I am excited to see this project as it unfolds. There will be much more information coming from this project but if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask me or Greg.