Collections Review 

The conversation about the Libraries’ budget and how it will affect our collections continues to evolve. As many of you may have seen in yesterday’s Daily Campus, there has been a change of direction worked out between the Library and the Provost’s Office. We continue to work out the details but the Provost has committed his support to finding resources through careful reallocation of funds to minimize the impact on our collections. As good stewards of the University’s collections, we will still proceed with our Comprehensive Collections Review to assure we are purchasing the best resources in support of research and teaching needs. We will continue to work with faculty by sending requests to review those items which seem underutilized and worthy of further scrutiny.

Update on The UConn Library System

I am pleased to announce that we are moving forward with a formal collaboration with the UConn Health Library so please join me in welcoming Janice Swaitek to Vice Provost’s Council. As Director of the Health Library, Janice will be reporting to me to facilitate the coordination of centralized services and infrastructure where appropriate. Projects have already been started including working with the Web Governance Workgroup on website changes and with the LibGuide review on management and standards. VPC will be meeting at a retreat next week to discuss the need for some reorganization to properly integrate Health into our management structure, to review and prioritize open positions, and to create a plan to address the departure of Francine. If you haven’t already, I hope you have a chance to meet Janice on one of her visits to campus in the coming months. I am looking forward to the opportunity to work with her more closely.

Master Plan Update

Please mark your calendars for next Wednesday’s Open Forum (February 17th) for a look at the updated Master Plan for Homer Babbidge.

Comprehensive Collection Review

As you know we have been working hard on laying the groundwork to review our collections and soon we will be launching the external part of the process. Today I sent a memo to my colleagues in Dean’s Council outlining our goals and the plans. Patrick has also launched a series of webpages that provide greater detail and will be the source for ongoing updates to our community as we progress.

I welcome you to review the webpages and read the memo since they lay out not only our plan but our goals which includes a data-informed and transparent process.  I have spoken with the Provost and he is pleased with our commitment to reviewing our resources and as I state in my letter, I am encouraged by recent conversations that have shown his deep commitment to providing the resources for maintaining the essential collections identified. I anticipate that we will also create a better infrastructure to allow us to review our collections regularly.

Patrick has put together a calendar of what will happen over the next few months:

• January – June – Analysis of monographic resources.
• January – February – Internal review of subscribed resources.
• February – Consult with the Office of the Provost regarding outcomes of the internal review.
• February – March – External review of subscribed resources. This will entail us sharing the more targeted list with faculty and graduate students for input. Patrick and Joelle are working on an easy to use feedback mechanism.
• March – April – Analysis of input received during the external review and further consultation with the UConn community.
• May – Identify and share plans for how expenditures for subscribed resources could be reduced.
• Summer – Fall – Establish FY2017 collections allocations and then implement any necessary reductions in collections expenditures.

As we forge ahead with the review, I want to take a moment to thank so many of you who have put countless hours into this. While it is a significant amount of work, it will give us a healthy overall look at our holdings to ensure we are meeting UConn’s resource needs.

Welcome to 2016

2016 is upon us and I hope you will join your colleagues as we take some time to celebrate ourselves and recognize the work we have accomplished in 2015 at our ‘Hats off to 2016’ party. Hosted by Vice Provost’s Council, the event will include current and former employees including an opportunity for us to publicly thank recent retirees Bill Miller and Janet Swift for their years of service. There will also be fabulous prizes for your creative hats that represent what 2016 means to you.

Avery Point Staffing

There has been some staffing changes at Avery Point that I would like to share. Beth Rumery has requested new roles and responsibilities, and has stepped down as Director to fill the position of Research & Instruction Librarian. As you are all aware, Beth just received at 2015 Love My Librarian Award from ALA which is further recognition that her true passion is helping students and her community. I am pleased to announce that Sheila Lafferty has stepped into the leadership role as Director of Avery Point as well as her duties as Director of the Torrington Library. Also, as I mentioned in a prior message, Nanette Addesso is now full time in Avery Point, taking over the duties as Access Services Assistant.

Employee Appreciation Committee

At this week’s VPC meeting the Employee Appreciation Committee presented their final report, which you can find here. I want to thank the members of the Committee for all of their work in helping to encourage more respect and participation across the organization through various activities. The committee included Co-Chairs Brian Coleman and Barbara Mitchell, and members Janice Christopher, Jennifer Eustis, Khara Leon, Carolyn Mills, Tony Molloy and Jean Nelson. Their work was of benefit to the organization and they have left a wonderful legacy of ideas for the new group to consider. I would like to put out an official call for a re-population of the committee and welcome those who were on it last year as well as new members to join. I have asked Khara Leon to take leadership of the committee moving forward so if you are interested, please let her know.

New Communication Strategies

As we continue to work at improving our internal communications as laid out in our Purposeful Path Forward, I am pleased to see that there are several initiatives coming together in 2016. Francine has already begun conversations among our unit heads for ideas to update and strengthen the expectations regarding the nuts and bolts of our communications. For example, expectations for usage of calendars, when is it appropriate to Skype/Lync, our emergency notification systems, and other protocols to help with the daily communications among colleagues. We are also working on the formation of a workgroup to help improve the flow of information throughout the Libraries. While this is still in a preliminary draft stage, activities such as town hall meetings and in-service brown bags where we share information and expertise are possibilities for this workgroup charge. Finally, on a more personal note, I would like to hear more about the ideas and activities happening from staff so I will be working with directors and unit heads to join your meetings periodically so that I can hear more of what is happening around the Library. I am excited to see these initiatives working together towards the same goal – to improve our internal communication strategies.

Staff Shout-Outs!

I have a few wonderful staff notes to share with everyone.

• The popular vote for the husky dog statues on the Plaza are in and our own Patty Guardiani’s dog won!

• Patrick Carr’s article manuscript titled “Aligning Collections with Student Needs: East Carolina University’s Project to Acquire and Promote Online Access to Course-Adopted Texts Serials Review” was accepted for publications in Serials Review. It will appear in the upcoming issue v. 42, no.1, 2016.
• Janice Christopher will be presenting about our Alma/Primo implementation at ALA Midwinter in January.

Boston Library Consortium

I am pleased to announce that I have been appointed Vice President/President Elect of the Boston Library Consortium. I think there is no better time to be involved with BLC and furthering their resource sharing goals across member institutions. I am looking forward to working with the dozens of institutions that make up the consortium in the years ahead.

I know many of you will be taking time off over the next few weeks so I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a wonderful holiday. As I said in my Mashup earlier this week, I am truly honored to work alongside each of you and appreciate the work that you all do every day. I hope you will take some time to relax and spend time with family and friends this winter break. And if you haven’t already done so, please mark your calendars for our New Year’s Party on Thursday, January 14th from 1-3pm.

And finally for a little Friday afternoon fun, my colleague Dean Steve Smith at the University of Tennessee Knoxville is the juggler- too bad I have no similar talents!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2HWR9AajfE&feature=youtu.be

Oversight of the Website

As you know, Tony and the Web Governance Workgroup have been managing our web presence since Dave Hicking left last year. As we look to balance workloads we will be shifting the management of the web to Joelle Thomas. Joelle has been successfully leading the Web Governance Workgroup since last year and has a thorough knowledge of our web infrastructure and many of the technical aspects of the site. We are also acknowledging the role of the website as a major communication tool and will be shifting the responsibilities of oversight to Finance, Planning & Assessment. Holly is responsible for our communications unit as well as Joelle and will serve as the VPC Liaison to WGW. IT will still work closely with WGW and FP&A on the technical pieces of the site.

Congratulations Beth

Please join me in congratulating Beth Rumery for receiving a 2015 I Love My Librarian Award from the American Library Association. Beth was nominated by Sue Shontell, the Executive Director of the New London Housing Authority for her outreach efforts both to students and faculty at UConn and the community at large. With physical changes to make the library more inviting and a safe location for students to come and discuss issues with sexual orientation, depression and other difficult personal issues, she has created a sense of place within the library. She has also been an active member of the greater Groton community, reaching out to the low income elderly and disabled housing authority and their families. According to the nomination, her work has “opened university speakers to staff and families as a way to reach them and show that they too can go to school, not be intimidated by campuses and connect with their lives.”

Beth received her award, which includes a $5,000 prize, last evening at a ceremony in New York City. The event was hosted by Carnegie Corporation of New York, which generously sponsors the award along with The New York Public Library and The New York Times. For more information and a copy of the nomination form, please see ALA’s website at http://www.ilovelibraries.org/lovemylibrarian/2015/15winners

This week I received a copy of a letter to Provost Choi from faculty in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. The letter lays out concerns regarding the cuts to the UConn Libraries budget this year and next. Since that letter was submitted, I have had the opportunity to address it with Dean Teitelbaum, Vice Provost Reis and Provost Choi. The authors of the letter provided a good amount of information and arguments backed by statistics and I took the opportunity in my conversation to correct any inaccuracies and confirm what is true and would like to address some of these with you directly. The first item in the letter that I would like to address is there is no proposal to eliminate our acquisitions entirely next year. As you know we reduced our book budget this year but this piece will be back on the table for discussion for FY 17. We are also not targeting major electronic journal packages. We will continue to look at all of our collections, including those larger packages. It may be necessary to break some of them up but no packages or disciplines are being singled out. We will continue to be careful with the responsibility to curate our collections, including making data informed decisions in conjunction with faculty feedback. Finally, while we have reduced the amount of ILL royalty costs we will incur, we have not eliminated all expensive ILL requests across the board. This is once again an individual conversation between staff and faculty on possible alternatives.

I would also like to address the comment about the lack of consultation with faculty. I believe this to be wrong, as I know that our subject specialists and other members of the staff have taken great care in reaching out to the faculty regarding the cuts. We have been working directly with them to minimize the effects of the collections reduction. The reality is that we are facing budget cuts along with the entire University and none of this is pleasant, but I personally want to thank you all for working through these difficult discussions with professionalism and respect for our users and each other.

In all of the conversations I have had, including the one with Provost Choi yesterday, I do my best to remind people of the great work this Library is doing. While it is true that we have one of the lowest staff ratios compared to many of our peers, I have never been so sure in the ability of this group of people to work together to maximize what we have been given. I believe in this staff and our commitment to work through these difficult times. This is likely not the last public or private concern for our budget and I am pleased that our faculty find our collections and services important to their work and the ultimate mission of the University. As we move forward with the comprehensive review of collections and services to address our 2016-2017 budget, I look forward to seeing the staff pull together towards our shared vision and mission to make this the best UConn Libraries we can.