Open Educational Resources
Our efforts to lead the charge to educate faculty and students on the open educational resources available to use in the classroom made great strides this week. On Wednesday we held workshops for faculty and staff focused on the myriad of affordable learning resources available to help reduce students expenses without sacrificing quality of teaching. The workshop was held in two parts – the morning was designed for faculty and the afternoon for staff. In both workshops the attendees ranged from skeptics to believers with everything in between. There were faculty from numerous academic departments, regional campuses, instructional designers and of course our own staff. Our speakers brought a wealth of information and we are grateful for their time. They included  Nicole Allen, Director of Open Education for the ARL initiative SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Charlotte Roh, Scholarly Communication Resident Librarian for UMass Amherst, and Nicole Finkbeiner, Associate Director for OpenStax College, a leading provider in open source textbooks. Both workshops were well attended and we will continue to provide similar opportunities this fall. Thanks to the in-house working group who organized the program (Kathy Labadorf, Kate Fuller, Dawn Cadogan, Carolyn Mills and David Ruiz), with some additional help from Merlita, Kristen J, Jean, and Jane.

The second development this week was the unanimous passage of House Bill 6117. The bill, introduced originally by Representative Haddad, 54th District does three main things: (1) requires the Board of Regents for Higher Education and UConn to establish an open-source textbook pilot program that assess the use of high-quality digital open-source textbooks and promotes their use; (2) completion of a report about the pilot by July 1, 2016 addressing the potential costs savings and barriers to the program; and (3) outlining best practices for utilizing these resources moving forward. This bill was championed by representatives from USG and ConnPIRG and I was pleased to work with Representative Haddad to clarify the language before it went to the House floor. The next step in the process for the Bill is to go to the Senate.

Finals Numbers Impressive Again This Year
We continue to be the primary location for students to get their work done during the crunch of finals. The total gate count from Friday, May 1-Sunday, May 10 was 70,255. Thanks again to the staff who helped with relaxation programming and our security crew who kept the wheels turning for 24/7 hours.

Martha on the Move
I had the opportunity this week to join other faculty and staff from the First Year Experience Program on a site visit to the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design (CEID) at Yale University. Housed in a space that was formerly used as the engineering library, the Center is open to the Yale community with the hope to empower students to improve human lives through the advancement of technology. This was a great opportunity to see how others are reimagining their library space and I look forward to more virtual and physical site visits as we reimagine our own space around inspirational learning.

I have also been serving as the academic library representative on the Board of Advisors for the Southern Connecticut State University’s Information and Library Sciences Program. We have been very active in achieving our goal to recommend improvements to the curriculum for reaccreditation of the program. I am joined by other colleagues from around the state, including representatives from industry, public libraries, and the CT State Library system.

Employee Appreciation Committee
As you know the Employee Appreciation Committee was formed this year to develop strategies and programs to strengthen our community and recognize individual excellence and commitment. They are working on a culmination event that will include a staff picnic to be held starting at noon on Friday, June 26th. More information will be coming, but I encourage you to hold the date on your calendar. VPC will be reviewing the committee’s charge and will be looking for more volunteers next year so if you are interested in joining them stay tuned for more information.

Purposeful Plan of Action
Thank you for your thoughtful participation in our open forums on the purposeful plan of action. I hope that you found the discussions useful and are excited at what our future will bring. The next step in the process is that the facilitators for each area of focus will be incorporating the feedback they received into their statements and drafting action steps. If you have any other feedback you would like to share with these groups, please do so as soon as possible. These will be submitted to VPC before May 19th so they can be reviewed. I will also report our progress to the Provost at my May meeting. Because this work is important to focus on, and the generally busy nature of the end of the semester, we will not be holding a VPC Open Forum next week, May 13th.

Finals Week
We are nearing the end of finals week and I would once again like to thank all of you who helped create an environment for which students felt comfortable to work and even play a little while here. Our door counts are consistent again this year, with back to back 11,000 + days. We were also visited by other folks who took time to help students relax such as the police department handing out candy and folks from Insomnia Cookies wandering the building with freshly baked and still warm cookies.

Staff Lounge Beautification
If you have been in the staff lounge this week you will see that it looks a little different. The addition of the door from the 24-Hour Quiet Study allowed us the opportunity to have the whole space repainted. We also hosted a brunch for donors in there on Sunday and the artwork was added to showcase some of the images found in the archives. The event was a part of our ongoing stewardship of donors, treating our guests to brunch and tickets to the CRT’s performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was a nice opportunity to re-connect with some of our generous donors and we were honored to get to visit with Alex and Catherine Babbidge. Alex is the son of Homer Babbidge and Catherine is Alex’s daughter. It had been some time since they were in the facility and they were pleased to see how busy it was on a Sunday afternoon.

ARL Meeting in San Francisco
Last week I attended the ARL Meeting and had the opportunity to engage in a lot of great conversation about many of the things we are working on now. For example new developments in research data and preservation, Open Educational Resources, fair use, how libraries work in a global environment and the critical role the library has in providing services for the disabled learner. I look forward to sharing what I learned with all of you over the coming weeks.

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal Celebration
A reminder that tomorrow we will be celebrating the launch of the first online journal created in DigitalCommons@UConn. Please join us at 4:00 in the Scholars’ Collaborative for some refreshments and an opportunity to talk to the students behind the journal.

Staff Lounge Access for Students
The project to allow after-hours access to the staff lounge is nearly complete. I just wanted to once again remind folks that this space has been offered up to students as a compromise solution for their need to have Homer Babbidge open more hours. It will be opened when the library is closed as a quiet study only space, and they will not have access beyond the 24-hour quiet study room during the day. We will work with the Undergraduate Student Government to monitor the treatment of the space to ensure it is being used appropriately. Thank you for your patience throughout the construction.

Martha on the Move
This Friday I will be travelling with several other staff members to tour the new MakerSpace in the UMass Amherst Library. I hope to not only learn more about the space itself, but how it is being used, by whom, and how UMass was able to secure funding for the equipment and staffing.

Next week I will be heading out to the ARL Members Meeting in San Francisco. The theme of the meeting is “Global Connections of Research Libraries,” and program sessions will explore international copyright issues, shared print repositories, and tools and services for open science. I am also looking forward to a deeper discussion of the transition to ARL’s new Strategic Thinking and Design Framework. Many of our priorities were discussed with these national and international directions in mind so I expect those discussions will be helpful as we work on our own Purposeful Plan of Action. I will return in time for our donor event on Sunday, May 3, to which we have invited guests to join us for brunch and then a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre.

Thanks to all of you for your active participation and thoughtful comments this morning on our Mission, Vision, Values.

VPC Open Forum

The agenda for Wednesday’s Open Forum can be found here. Please RSVP to Kristen if you are able to join us. The minutes from the March 18th meeting are here.

Plan for Purposeful Action

We will be beginning the work to create our ‘Plan for Purposeful Action’ over the next few weeks. The strategy is straightforward – to set our priorities so that we will have a shared direction and purpose.  I will go into more detail at my Mashup on April 10th but I wanted to give you a quick overview of how we will begin the process. Last week VPC met and laid out 5 broad areas based on both national and local trends to focus on and explore further. Those areas are:

• Scholarly Engine

• Collective Collections

• Innovation Lab

• Operational Excellence

• Learning and Working Spaces

These areas represent the framework for which we will use to have more focused conversations. Each area was assigned discussion leaders made up of VPC directors and unit heads. They will lead conversations with the full library in their respective areas at open meetings and other forums they determine beneficial. The results of those conversations will be used to develop our action plan. It is that action plan, or the ‘Plan for Purposeful Action’ that will guide us over the next few years. This will not be a traditional “strategic” planning process often identified as lengthy and arduous but more focused on defining and refining our organization in today’s academic environment. I do hope you will join me on April 10th so that I can lay out the full plan and provide answers to any questions you may have. I will say that I am excited for the opportunity to vision our future with all of you.

Samuel Charters

Many of you may have seen the news of the passing of Samuel Charters last week. Mr. Charters was a poet, novelist, biographer, translator of contemporary Swedish poets, and likely best known as a scholar of the blues, jazz, and musical culture of the African diaspora. Samuel Charters was a friend and generous donor to Archives & Special Collections. In 2000, Sam and his wife Ann Charters, a retired professor in the English Department, donated the Samuel & Ann Charters Archive of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture and continued to add to it regularly over the years. The archives will pay tribute to Sam Charters through a series of blog posts which began this week.

Digital Commons’ First Online Digital Journal is Live

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal is an open-access, bi-annual research forum edited by graduate students of humanities, arts, and social sciences here at UConn. The journal marks the first online digital journal created in our Digital Commons using the Bepress software. In addition to the support they received from Kristin Eshelman as coordinator of the repository, Marisol has also provided support as a member of the editorial board. I also understand that forthcoming in the journal will be some photography submitted by Kathleen Deep.

VPC Open Forum

At last week’s VPC meeting I took some time to clarify the role of Vice Provost Council as well as the meeting structure we have found to work best. The Council is responsible for libraries-wide budgeting and resource allocation, policy development, priority setting, staffing decisions, and advising the Vice Provost on the overall administration of the University of Connecticut Libraries. The Council meets on a regular basis in two forums (1) VPC Planning Meetings are weekly closed meetings to discuss a wide range of current issues and establish agendas for the VPC Open Forum. (2) VPC Open Forums are held biweekly and library staff are encouraged to attend. It is an opportunity to communicate by sharing reports, updates, and discuss decisions and issues with the wider library.  The minutes from the full meeting on March 4th can be found here.

The agenda for next week’s VPC Open Forum on Wednesday, March 18 can be found here. Please RSVP to Kristen if you plan on attending.

Open Source Textbook Committee

The university-wide Open Source Textbook Committee has been busy over the last few weeks. There are two bills currently in the House and Senate that we have been monitoring. House Bill 6117 is titled “An Act Concerning the Use of Digital Open-Source Textbooks in Higher Education.” The bill is to establish an open source textbook consortium to help lower the cost of acquiring a college degree in Connecticut. Members of UConnPIRG testified at the hearing in support of the bill. Senate Bill 931 is titled “An Act Concerning Requirements for College Textbooks.” This proposed bill would prohibit requiring students to use a new edition of a textbook any sooner than three years following the date of the initial publication. In this case I worked with Government Relations to provide written testimony that indicated our support for textbook reform but concerns over the seemingly arbitrary three year requirement.

Here at UConn, members of UConnPIRG have been meeting with faculty members asking them for a commitment to consider open source textbooks. We anticipate reaching out to those faculty members with the offer to provide support and learn more from their experiences. The Undergraduate Student Government passed a resolution this week urging faculty to submit their textbook requests on time as required by the federal Higher Education Opportunity Act. This was also supported by PLAC at our meeting yesterday.

Our internal task force, led by Kathy Labadorf has been busy collecting data, reports and teaching materials from across the country, and internationally. Dawn Cadogan is developing a libguide and today Kathy is attending a conference at UMass Boston focused on Open Educational Resources.

If you are interested in seeing any of the testimony or legislative documents, please let me know and I would be glad to share them.

RFID Tags

For those of you who do not subscribe to the staffchat zlist, Fred Rick sent out a piece of library history last week that I thought I would share. Although we will continue to use our RFID system, the barcode will now be  imprinted directly on the tags so we will no longer need to print labels. As Rick said in his message, it’s an “end of an era.”

The good news on this front is that at long last we are finalizing our agreement with the new vendor and in fact I signed the paperwork yesterday so stay tuned.

Have a great weekend!

Budget Hearing Update

Last week Holly and I presented at the FY15 Budget Hearing. I have mentioned this in other venues including my message, but to remind folks the hearing was an opportunity to present our budget to the Provost and members of his budget committee. The information we provided included our current financial status and how we will manage a 3% permanent budget reduction for FY16, hiring plans, and what specific areas we will focus on for both investment and divestment. We made our case to the panel that we play a significant role in the health of the University and its aspirations. We talked about the kind of essential resources and services we provide, the increased pressures we are seeing from our users, and how we see our ability to continue to manage the expectations of those users with continued cuts to our operating budget. We also shared information on the wider conversation regarding trends in academic libraries and the strategies being employed at a national level as we strive to be the world-class library the University expects. They were appreciative of our role and the information we provided. In a follow up meeting with the Provost’s office this week after the Governor’s proposed budget, we were asked to prepare for more significant cuts. We are awaiting further word on what that means as no final decision has been made.

Staffing Update

AUL for Collections & Discovery Search
It is my pleasure to formally announce that Patrick Carr has accepted our offer to join the University of Connecticut to lead our collection and discovery efforts. As many of you communicated through feedback from his visit, his depth of experience in the stewardship of collections including acquisitions, collection development, and e-resource management will be a significant asset to the Libraries as we look towards the future of collection management. Patrick will be leaving his position as Assistant Director for Acquisitions & Collection Management for the Joyner Library in the much warmer climate at East Carolina University in the next few weeks and will join us officially on March 20th. Please stay tuned for more information regarding a welcome coffee.

Archives & Special Collections
After more than 38 years, Terri Goldich has submitted her intent to retire this June. The members of the archives unit have been working to reassign her primary role as archivist for the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection (NCLC). The NCLC began in the 1960’s with a donation of about 600 volumes and has grown into a nationally recognized resource for researchers and an integral part of Archives & Special Collections. The collection now includes more than 44,000 children’s books as well as the manuscripts of over 125 authors and illustrators. To continue the forward progress, Kristin Eshelman will be taking on the responsibilities for the collection this summer. She will turn the reins of the institution repository over to Betsy Pittman next month.

Music & Dramatic Arts Library

Earlier this week Dean Brid Grant coordinated a public forum for students in the School of Fine Arts to discuss their ideas for what that library might look like in the future. The goal was to learn more specifics about which collections, services, and hours they rely on the most. The forum began with a discussion of the University’s Master Plan with Beverly Wood which included a closer look at a production facility being built for them and a look at how the south side of campus will connect with the north side in the future. We received great feedback from them and the next step is to coordinate a survey to drill further into the details.

VPC Minutes

There was no VPC last week but the minutes from January 21st can be found here.

Thank You to Last Week’s Winter Weather Crew!

It’s another Monday storm today but please help me thank the winter weather crew for getting the library open shortly after the storm last Monday. I have been told that there were students waiting to get in and were extremely appreciative of our efforts. Thank you to David Avery, Bill Haalck, Mike Slowik, and Aaron Albee. They were joined by student employees Ethan Avery, Jaylen Williams, Abby Cheng, Tyler Washington, and Katie Riddell.

Music & Dramatic Arts Library

As many of you may have seen in the Daily Campus or on social media, there has been rumors that the Music & Dramatic Arts Library is closing. While we have been in discussions with the School of Fine Arts and the Provost’s Office, there has been no outcome as of yet and these are still in fact rumors. If you recall from my message on October 10, as part of our ongoing commitment to review our services Dean Grant and I charged an ad hoc committee that included representatives from the School of Fine Arts and the Library to analyze the services and collections and their feedback was shared with the Provost’s Office last week. This is still an active conversation and we have certainly taken note of the student feedback. The next steps include some focus groups in which our primary concern is determining collection usage and where the materials are best housed.

The positive side of this is that much like when we altered the hours in Homer Babbidge, the potential changes have reiterated the importance of the library to our students. Here is one of my favorite comments found online:

“Library funding should be the last of any budget list to be cut. They are the symbol of education, the ideal that anyone can find the knowledge they seek if they have the drive to search for it. I understand that money is hard to come by nowadays, and sometimes this requires sacrifice, but there must be some route to compromise.”

Open Textbook Committee

In October the Undergraduate Student Government voted unanimously to formally explore the use of open source textbooks as a means of dealing with textbook affordability. One result of their vote is that the Provost’s Office has asked me to chair a university-wide committee to look at this further. This is a wonderful opportunity for the library to show leadership in an area that affects both students and faculty. To help begin the process, I have appointed an internal task force to set out the resources and strategies for helping to move this initiative forward. The members of our task force include Dawn Cadogan, Kate Fuller, Kathy Labadorf (chair), and Carolyn Mills. There will be much more information coming so stay tuned.

Welcome Kristen Jones

Thank you to the members of the search committee for the position of Assistant to the Vice Provost – Khara Leon (chair), Christine Aniello, Kate Fuller, and Betsy Pittman for their excellent work in bringing forward highly qualified candidates. As you know from Francine’s announcement last week, we are pleased that Kristen Jones has accepted the position. Kristen has been serving in this capacity since January, 2014 and because of that many of you have had the opportunity to work with her as myself and other members of the Vice Provost Council have. Her effective support skills make her a valuable asset to the Office of the Vice Provost staff.

Money Message

There were a few budget items discussed in VPC on Wednesday that I would like to share with those who were unable to attend. The first is in regard to operational equipment. As of today, the ticketing system is ready for requests. The process begins with you submitting your needs into the ticketing system (please use the special equipment request category) no later thanWednesday, January 28th. Requests after that time will not be considered in this forum. ITS will route your request to the appropriate person to help determine cost. All requests will eventually end up with the director of each area to determine what will ultimately be submitted for discussion by VPC so please make sure you include your unit heads and directors in conversations along the way. There will be a two week turn around after the 28th for the final vetted spreadsheet for prioritization by VPC and ultimately matched against what is determined as available monies. There are two considerations to keep in mind – the first is that we will be taking note of requests that include recurring costs (like service contracts, etc.) so please indicate that need in your request. Secondly, if the item you are requesting is ergonomic you must have it reviewed by Occupational Health and Safety first.

The second money item is regarding travel requests for the remainder of the year. We have expended close to 75% of our allocated travel budget. Please make sure you review your allocations and if there are any funds you are not going to use, please send a note to Christineso it can go back into the pool. If you are anticipating the need to travel this spring with funds that were not previously approved, please send an email in addition to the standard travel request form indicating what you would like to attend and why it is important.

And finally, I want to thank all of you who took time out of your schedules to come to my drop in meetings and send emails regarding our fiscal future. Many of your ideas will be incorporated into the document we will send to the Provost. If you have any other ideas, specifically on revenue generation and services to evaluate, please feel free to send me a note.

Adverse Weather/Emergency Closing Staffing

There has been a change to our plan to staff Homer Babbidge during adverse weather/emergency closings. The State Labor Board reviewed the designation and plan and ruled the University was within their management rights to designate bargaining unit members as emergency support. The outcome was an agreement by UCPEA and the University identifying the members in the Circulation & Reserve Services Unit as ad hoc emergency support services. The remainder of the plan, which includes utilizing volunteers and students first has remained unchanged. For those of you outside of that unit, we are working with human resources on readjusting your status.

Search Committees

I have been asked to serve on the search committee for the new Director of Health Sciences. Over the next two weeks I will be traveling to Farmington to participate in candidate screening interviews. I look forward to working with the committee to select someone with a history of collaboration and cooperation so we can build a stronger relationship in the years to come.

Internally, we are currently in the process of interviewing for the position of Sciences Librarian. Jill has sent out the resumes for the remaining candidates and I encourage you to attend the presentation and coffee, as well as provide feedback to the committee. Additionally, thank you to those of you who took the time to provide feedback for the candidate for the position of Collections & Discovery.

A Personal Note

“….a crucial measure of our success in life is the way we treat one another every day of our lives.” ― P.M. Forni, Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct

If you remember when I came to UConn, I made a point to meet with every member of the staff to help get a sense of the way things worked and the culture of the organization. It became clear to me there were concerns that not all staff treated each other with respect. I have taken this issue seriously and continue to work to build trust and encourage opportunities for staff to not just work together, but see each other as individuals. While we have made progress in this area, we still have work to do. So as we enter a new year, I challenge you to join me in taking a fresh look at one another and attempt to put aside differences. I believe that for this institution to reach our goal of becoming a world-class library in times of budget constraints and other challenges we will all need to work together, sometimes in ways we didn’t expect. To do that, please remember that we are all individuals with strengths, skills, and weaknesses and show consideration for each other.

VPC Retreat

The Library has been asked to participate in the University’s upcoming budget hearings. The documentation we need to provide is in three main areas – our current financial status, how we will manage permanent budget reductions next fiscal year (FY’16) and our outlook for the following fiscal year (FY ’17) in terms of staff hiring plans and management of operating deficits or surplus’. Based on the short turnaround time we have, the directors will begin a targeted discussion of this tomorrow at an off-site retreat. Our agenda includes discussion of potential revenues, what methodologies we will use to evaluate our current services and resources, and specific short-term budget reductions. After our retreat this week I will open up the conversation to all staff through open meetings.

I believe this process is another opportunity for us to prioritize where our resources should be focused and plan our approach to reach out in new and innovative ways. This will all be the base of our Purposeful Plan of Action so I encourage you to look over the agenda and begin thinking of ways we can continue to move forward. If you would like to see the actual guidelines for the 2015 budget hearing, they can be found here.

VPC – January 7

VPC went on the road this Wednesday to the Trecker Library to visit the campus and attend the afternoon retirement reception for Bill Uricchio. I think everyone that was able to attend will agree that the reception was truly a fun and meaningful event.

We are approximately half way through the fiscal year and are beginning to look at both the equipment and travel budgets. We will be starting the equipment budget process again in a few weeks which will follow the same process as we did this past fall. As we prepare for that we will provide more information and accurate timelines. We will also be reviewing the allocations made in the travel budget. I encourage all supervisors to discuss individual travel allocations and upcoming plans with staff at mid-year reviews to determine if there are any changes that need to be made for spring. Please note the UCPEA allocation has changed from $650 to $350 per person so we will need to adjust our figures based on that change.

Staffing Changes

It is with regret that I announce the resignation of Anna Kijas. Anna has accepted a position at the Boston College Libraries to build their digital programs. It will allow her to follow her passion for digital scholarship and I wish her well. We will be working with the School of Fine Arts on how to address her liaison work. As for her Scholars’ Collaborative responsibilities, we have an opportunity to work with Tom Scheinfeldt in the Digital Media Center on an short term solution. This semester long arrangement includes sharing the supervision and work of one of Tom’s Ph.D students, Susanna Aho. Susanna will work with Anna over the next month to get up to speed on projects currently in the works and continue our own work in digital scholarship.

AUL for Collections & Discovery Candidate

You have all received the announcement for the upcoming candidate Patrick Carr, but I wanted to take a moment to encourage you all to attend the presentation which is scheduled for Monday at 9:00 in the Class of ’47 room.