LAUC-R General Meeting

8/17/2007, Rivera 403

2:00-4:00 p.m.

 

Members Present : Diane Bisom, Marie Bronoel, Melissa Conway, Ann Frenkel, Ken Furuta, Patricia Hargis, Margaret Hogarth, Heidi Hutchinson, Debbi Renfrow, David Rios, Emily Stambaugh, Manuel Urrizola, Michael Yonezawa, and Gwido Zlatkes.

Special guests: Lise Snyder, Outgoing LAUC President, and Andrew Hargis, nephew of incoming LAUC-R Chair, Patricia Hargis.

 

1.     Melissa Conway called the meeting to order at 2:05 p.m.

2.     New members were welcomed: Barbara Schader and Christina Cicchetti.  Due to other commitments, neither member was able to be present, so they were welcomed in absentia.

3.     Heidi Hutchinson gave a report on activities of the Systemwide Committee on Professional Governance.

a.      LAUC gathered data from campuses:

                                                              i.      The nature of campus LAUC meetings

                                                            ii.      The nature of the interactions with ULs

                                                          iii.      How often and how regularly campus LAUC groups meet

                                                         iv.      Topics of discussion

                                                           v.      Locally available sources of funding

                                                         vi.      Conferences attended and professional development opportunities that members wish they could attend had there been enough funding. This data had been gathered by LAUC-R.

b.     LAUC-R had surveyed our LAUC members to see where they would like to go if funding were sufficient. Because of this effort, Heidi had a quick response to the LAUC request for data.

c.     UCR had a higher proportion of opportunities desired to opportunities realized than did other campuses.

d.     Heidi will distribute the results to LAUC-R.

4.     Lise Snyder, outgoing president of LAUC Systemwide, joined us as a guest. Lise spoke on the following topics:

a.      There will be a transition meeting next week, Bob Heyer-Gray of UCD will take over as president. He will be a great president and is aware of LAUC's focus points.

b.     Being president was a lot of work, but Lise found it interesting and met a lot of people.

c.     She got LAUC back on track, especially with the activating of charges for committees.

d.     It was encouraging to see multiple candidates on this year's LAUC ballot for vice president/president elect.

e.      People need to commit to LAUC and take LAUC's advisory role seriously.

f.       Librarians have to work with a variety of ULs and the organization must stay vital in good or bad times.

g.     Retention of librarians is an urgent issue. At any time there are 15-20 postings at UCLA. . The UCs are losing librarians to the CSUs and community colleges, and also to other UCs, for a rank change.

h.     Although LAUC is not a negotiating entity, it can still advise and have dialogue on salary matters as related to recruitment and retention. There are also opportunities for us to advise in other ways. For example, the ULs can do something about professional development funding on their individual campuses.

i.        The LAUC president gets to talk to the ULs once during her tenure, and also attends the Committee on Libraries and Scholarly Communication meeting so it is especially important that LAUC representatives on systemwide committees are engaged and are informing LAUC of issues being discussed.

j.        Lise is proud to be finished up with the bylaws project. The bylaw revisions will pass. This is the culmination of a huge amount of work by the Committee on Committees, Rules and Jurisdiction for the last 2 years.

k.     Lise would like to do a confidential survey asking how many librarians are moonlighting in second jobs and why?

l.        Lise wants librarians on all campuses to be aware of what others are doing as there are many discrepancies from campus to campus.

m.   Payment of professional membership dues is an issue.

                                                              i.      Lise gave the figures to the ULs.

                                                            ii.      Look at what other people are doing: subject specialists/selectors would go to subject conferences if they had more money.

n.     Brian Schottlander's opening remarks at LAUC Spring Assembly.

                                                              i.      Remarks were off the cuff; Lise is still working on a summary of LAUC's activities through July, including Brian's remarks, and will send it out next week.

                                                            ii.      Brian's remarks:

1.     ULs are well aware of salary issues. They are discussing this and are concerned about it.

2.     In compensation, we have good health and retirement benefits.

3.     Reactions (in discussion) include: one way to deal with the salary scale is to separate steps/ranks from the amount of salary. [Later Brian changed this to “off scale”.] There is concern that this could lead to iniquities between new people and long-term librarians.

o.     LAUC could serve as a sounding board for a model of salary scale, including off scale components, separations, etc.

                                                              i.      Lise suggests that these ideas be floated by LAUC. LAUC can tell why the idea might be a problem. The ULs could get input from people who would be affected by the decisions.

                                                            ii.      Faculty don't understand that librarians can't be paid off scale.

                                                          iii.      Patricia Hargis asked if a non-permanent ad hoc committee could be formed to look at salary issues. Lise responded that creating a new standing committee would require a bylaws change.

                                                         iv.      The situation never goes away and the contract is set to expire in March.

                                                           v.      It would be good to have a group of people who have fingers on the pulse of salary issues all the time, a group committed for years. It would be best to have people whose job it is to do that.

                                                         vi.      Greg Carreaga put together documentation on the cost of living salary increases. Lise asked if he would be willing to update the documents, but he is short staffed. A group like the one suggested may not be feasible.

                                                       vii.      Some ULs use the union as an excuse to not take action.

p.     Previous president Terry Huwe wanted LAUC assemblies to shift the focus away from salary to issues such as professional development.

                                                              i.      He wanted assemblies to not do business but focus on programming and speakers of interest to librarians across the system.

                                                            ii.      An example is a program about mentoring.

q.     Are there areas we are interested in that weren't addressed and need looking at?

                                                              i.      Michael suggested that LAUC work with the ULs to sponsor a systemwide conference for all areas of the library, e.g. technical services and public services, much like UCCSC for computing services.

1.     Attendees would get immeasurable benefits, learn about the other campuses and meet people.

2.     Each campus would take turns planning local arrangements, north and south.

3.     Programming would be planned by an ad hoc committee.

4.     This could be for librarians and staff.

5.     The outcome would be sharing knowledge and experience, and the creation of best practices and initiatives. 

All present commended Michael's idea, and Lise said she will talk to Bob about it.

                                                            ii.      A brown bag travel fair was suggested, to help the campuses strategize best ways to arrange professional development.

                                                          iii.      LAUC-R can arrange group discounts where possible for conferences such as ALA.

                                                         iv.      What would an ideal organization do? Lise observed:

1.     Those who complain the loudest often contribute the least.

2.     As an advisory group LAUC can't make the ULs do anything, but we can cause the ULs to think differently. ULs want facts to back up ideas so if we should always give the ULs facts to back up  what we want and recommend. An executive summary of reports would help.

r.       Accomplishments this year under Lise's leadership:

                                                              i.      She made the organization work. It wasn't in good shape when she took over.

                                                            ii.      Bob will inherit a functioning organization and infrastructure, and fixed bylaws.

                                                          iii.      We now have different ways of interacting with ULs. We will be able to change directions more easily than in the past. We have a lot of dialogue with the ULs.

5.     Melissa called for applause for Lise's accomplishments. Attendees responded warmly.

6.     Lise closed by announcing that she will be chair of the LAUC nominating committee. She said she would be looking for talented people to serve on LAUC's executive board.

7.     Melissa summed up LAUC-R's year.

a.      Her first decision was to have fewer general meetings, since all our schedules are so packed. Melissa asked the group if they preferred this schedule. Most preferred the schedule.

b.     Melissa focused on encouraging professional travel and secured additional travel funding for each librarian.

c.     We focused on programs this year, featuring Heidi Hutchinson's presentation on orange crate labels, and Jim Brown's on the history of UCR.

d.     The first planning stages of a mentoring program for young librarians and library students at UCR were undertaken.

Melissa closed with the question, what do we want from LAUC-R?

Answers were as follows:

                                                              i.      A forum to discuss professional issues, travel funds, and salaries.

                                                            ii.      A mechanism to see that important issues are handled more consistently across the campuses.  This might be accomplished by creating one systemwide document with the best practices from each campus (e.g., UCR librarians can take sabbaticals.)

 

The meeting was adjourned at 4:00 pm.

 

 

Prepared by Margaret Hogarth August 17, 2007