Summaries from the LAUC 2010 Southern Regional Meeting

All of this information was gathered at the time of the LAUC 2010 Southern Regional meeting titled, "The Future of Librarianship" on May 6, 2010. The meeting consisted of LAUC members from the southern UC campuses in addition to a few guests, such as the chair of the CPG committee, Matt Conner, and the current LAUC president, Lucia Diamond.

The meeting, which began with a talk by UCSD University Brian E. C. Schottlaender, was followed by a break out session of multiple groups. Each group was further broken up if a given topic had an excess of participants. We preferred to have groups smaller than 10, though some were larger. Groups worked on specific themes over a short period of time (about 45 minutes) during which librarians brainstormed observed trends, actions that might be taken as a result of such trends, and methods of measurement to ensure the success of those actions. Later we returned as a group to walk among all of the ideas written down to vote for what we though had merit. We had an extraordinary number of ideas that could be implemented. We saw that one way to use this information is to work backwards from the metrics discussed for each action and implement those that are doable in some sort of pilot fashion. More could be done with the remaining actions and trends over time as we uncover appropriate metrics.

Kristin Andrews, Ying Zhang, Rachel Shulman and I (Dana Peterman) used the original posters to identify those ideas that garnered the most votes. Those ideas that had two or fewer votes were not included here, though I did keep photos of the original data. We tried to make sure we understood what was meant for each suggestion, but it was difficult to do so. I later tried to make more sense of the original posters myself and placed them in rank order here. Each of the themes has been explained earlier in this blog, so I won't reiterate them here. You can see all of the photos of the posters at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpetermanus/sets/72157624012236068/ . The statements are followed by a number in parentheses that represents the number of votes that it got.

Twenty-First Century Skills
In this session, participants were asked to identify those skills that would be needed as necessary for the 21st century librarian.

Trends:
Librarians have fewer opportunities to provide input on administrative issues that affect them and their work. (10)
Librarians find that they must be generalists as well as specialists. (6)
Librarians need more and more training on cataloging and other skills less related to previous job functions, and to develop new skill sets. (5)

Actions:
Break down barriers that reinforce the hierarchical structure of libraries. (13)
Train all staff on emerging technologies. (11)
Teach people to be more adaptable and flexible . (11)
Build our project management skills. (9)
Teach technical skills, both electronic and computing skills, as well as cataloging skills. (8)
Teach people how to do marketing and outreach. (7)
Teach subject expertise. (7)
Teach people how to write grants and to fundraise. (4)

Measurements :
Learning and sharing among campuses on training increases. (16)
When there is a question as to the usefulness of a skill, skill set, or program, pilot studies are conducted. (10)
Usage data are acquired, posted and analyzed. (8)

Pedagogy
Trends:
There is more and more online instruction and digital content available. (9)
Libraries provide space for human contact .(4)

Actions:
Create marketing and branding resources – University Librarians need a “marketing czar”. (17)
Create greater communication mechanisms. (15)
Partner with faculty to provide support that is integrated with their teaching. (13)
Create digital services at the point of need. (12)
Provide library space to the university to facilitate partnerships with faculty. (7)
Create a suite of email lists, working groups for collaboration on tutorials, and/or subject guides (LibGuides). (6)

Measurements:
Survey stakeholders to see how of the actions mentioned above. (10)

UC 1-Copy Universe
Trends:
Economics make it tough to be part of shared projects. (13)
One copy doesn’t work for all materials, so there is a need for some redundancy despite our desire to economize. (6)

Actions:
Communication is key and will help libraries and librarians to make better decisions. (26)
Better communication between technical services and collection development. (23)
Develop parameters for single-copy purchase. (12)
Improve distribution for shared collections. (12)
Improve e-document delivery. (12)
Distribute collections budgets across the UC campuses centrally. (12)

Measurements:
Enhance circulation/Interlibrary loan (ILL) to handle situations in which “1 copy” is shared among 10 campuses.(8)
Assess ILL speed. (7)

Evaluation ourselves for promotion
Trends:
We getting so much busier that we have too little time for professional development. (8)
Must be both a generalist and a subject specialist to work effectively. (7)
We have a problem quantifying soft skills like collaboration (4)
Low salaries (4)
There should be a balance between criterion 1-4. (4)
Teaching is undervalued. (3)
Tedious bureaucratic procedures (2)

Actions:
Communication between ULs and LAUCs should be improved. There is a perception that ULs are not present and are out of touch at local LAUCs. (18)
Evaluate and streamline internal administrative processes (15)
Make the librarian review and reward process more reflective of what we really do day-to-day. (14)
Should have continuing education (in order of preference) - Management/supervision (4); Project management (4). (14)
Collect and analyze data for decision making (12)
Expand the definition of scholarly to include web 2.0 contributions. (9)
Create more uniformity in how criteria are applied and which are expected of a librarian. (8)
Succession planning, mentoring and training are needed. (6)
Learn how to emphasize our own impact. (6)
Create reading/study groups to discuss professional literature and develop papers.(6)
Increase the use of social networking tools to increase visibility with faculty and students. (5)
Skills to bridge IT and public services and other functions. (5)
Recognize and support membership and activities in alternative professional development organizations (e.g. technical and subject specialties). (4)
Professional should a voice in what is taught in library schools. (4)
Leadership development skill training. (4)
Create a LAUC review committee to review ALL campus librarians to create greater consistency for all. (4)
Create a grievance outlet, which faculty have. (4)
Have the 10 ULs meet with us at an annual meeting to improve communication. (4)
LAUC should issue state-wide recommendations for things like the number of review letters required. (4)
We should read or re-read position paper #5. (3)

Measurements:
UC library hits or downloads of presentations. (7)
Amount of Librarian research in eScholarship. (4)
Amount of UC-wide sharing of review process. (4)
Evidence of interaction with review initiator for concrete feedback (and criticism). (4)
Existence of peer review groups for de-briefing process. (4)
Add staff-to-staff "reference" questions to statistics we keep. (3)

Discovery and delivery
Trends:
Mobile technology in all areas. They are a part of the job environment. We will provide mobile devices for students to use. (21)
WorldCat local is complicated by how difficult it is to access electronic content and how difficult it is to determine local availability. (8)
Digital delivery of any digital content (e.g. UC pays for any request, like Questia articles). (6)
Problems reconciling local v. more union-like catalogs. (6)
UC wide, our instruction efforts focus on discovery. (5)
Patrons expect that electronic materials have replaced print. (3)
Challenge for us to help patrons in unfamiliar electronic environments via tools such as QP. (4)
Use of archives for undergraduate teaching and research. (4)
Using resource collection funding to support document delivery. (4)
Fee based delivery even though users expect free services. (3)
Federated searching that is less helpful than a user wants or needs. (4)

Actions:
conduct user assessments both ethnographic/surveys to better define specific user groups and user needs. (13)
More formal union catalog. Get back to basics and get WorldCat to listen to librarians. (11)
Work on current shared catalog first to get priorities and use of money right. (9)
Generally support WorldCat with major improvements and simplifications. (6)
Improve ILL with all partners, not just UCs. (6)

Measurements:
Conduct assessments and analyze results - map to gaps/causes in collections, interface, user education, etc. (9)
Continuous user assessment studies as WorldCat local evolves. (4)

Schottlaender's "On the Record" presentation

Additional reports and presentations from the Spring Assembly May 7, 2008.

Brian Schottlaender (UCSD) "On the Record"; The Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

The Library of Congress, in response to the evolving information and technology environment, convened the Future of Bibliographic Control Working Group to examine the future of bibliographic description in the 21st century. As a member of the working group, Schottlaender will discuss the group’s final report and the implications and ramifications of the report or the UC libraries.

Referred to in presentation:
On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control
presented: January 9, 2008

Thomas Mann. “'On the Record’ but Off the Track” - a response on behalf of the Library of
Congress Professional Guild

LC’s Cataloging Policy and Support Office has issued decisions regarding LCSH
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/pre_vs_post.pdf

Shared Library Facilities Board (SLFB) Board Report and Presentation by Chuck Eckman

Additional reports and presentations from the Spring Assembly May 7, 2008.

Shared Library Facilities Board (SLFB) Board Report from Mary Ann Mahoney (Berkeley)

Chuck Eckman (UCB) New Funding Models for Scholarly Communications: BRII and SCOAP³

Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII), co-sponsored by UC Berkeley's Vice Chancellor for Research and the University Librarian, is an 18-month pilot project supporting faculty members, post-docs, and graduate students who want to make their journal articles open access. SCOAP³ (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) is a consortium that will attempt to facilitate Open Access publishing in High Energy Physics. By re-directing subscription money, everyone involved in producing the literature of particle physics (universities, labs, and funding agencies) pays into a consortium (SCOAP³) which then pays publishers so that all articles in the field are Open Access.

Presentation slides from Stephen Abram talk "Heading for the 3.0 World"

Stephen Abram (SirsiDynix): Heading for the 3.0 World: Technologies and Behaviors to Watch (PPT 26.4Mb) (PDF 8.3 Mb)

Abstract: Can academic libraries be more open? Can we be more open to our scholars, our researchers, our learning communities, to new technologies? Can we be more open to change? How? Are there technologies that we should be trying and piloting to see if they improve the library's mandate? Which ones are worth investigating? What are the emerging learning technologies? Are there different and improved ways to enhance our organization's missions? Can we enhance our research and learning communities and attract more funding and use? What about books, OPACs, databases and interfaces? What changes are happening here? Stephen Abram is an inveterate library watcher and strategic technology futurist for libraries. In this session, he shares the top technologies that we should think about 'playing' with while finding a way to make our libraries more open to our learning, publishing and research communities. Can we drive quicker adaptation to change in our own library culture? He will end with five suggestions about how to have fun with change and technology adoption.

Slides will be linked from Stephen's Lighthouse blog (http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/)

Committee reports posted to Spring Assembly schedule

Committee reports for the Spring Assembly are linked from the meeting schedule.
http://lauci.lib.uci.edu/springprogram2008/Schedule.htm

Draft Minutes, Fall Assembly 2007 Nov.15-16, 2007, UC Merced

o Research and Professional Development Committee – S. Dunlap (UCSD)
LAUC Minigrants Program -- [Sample] Call for Minigrants Spring 2008 -- R&DP Revised Calendar

o Diversity Committee – Chimene Tucker (UCSB)

o Heads of Technical Services (HOTS) Summary of Activities FY2007-08 - Tony Harvell (UCSD)

o Resource Sharing Committee (RSC) Report - Lisa Mix (UCSF)

With regards,

Mitchell Brown
UC Irvine vice-chair

About the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII)

Berkeley Research Impact Initiative:
Advancing the Impact of UC Berkeley Research

co-sponsored by UC Berkeley's Vice Chancellor for Research and the University Librarian

The Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) supports faculty members, post-docs, and graduate students who want to make their journal articles free to all readers immediately upon publication.

An 18-month pilot program, BRII will subsidize, in various degrees, fees charged to authors who select open access or paid access publication. The pilot will also yield data that can be used to gauge faculty interest in — as well as the budgetary impacts of — these new modes of scholarly communication on the Berkeley campus.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/brii/

About the speaker: Charles (Chuck) Eckman is the Associate university Librarian and Director of Collections at the University of California, Berkeley where he provides leadership for the library's collections and scholarly communications programs. Prior to coming to Cal in June 2006, he worked at Stanford University as Head of Social Sciences Resource group (1997-2006) and Principal Government Documents Librarian (1995-20060. While at Stanford he also served as project director for the GATT Digital Library, a collaborative endeavor with the World Trade Organization aimed at digitizing and providing access to the historic record of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade <http:/gatt.stanford.edu/>. He also served as consultant to the California Digital Library (2002-2003) on a project sponsored by the Mellon Foundation assessing the challenges of preserving web-based government information. He holds an MLIS from UC Berkeley (1987) , PhD in Politics from Princeton (1986), and BA in Political Science from Indiana (1979). His intellectual and professional energies are focused on expanding both scholarly and public access to research, a passion he attributes to his experiences working as a government documents depository librarian.

Articles and Presentations by Stephen Abram

The May 7 morning presentation from Stephen Abram from SirsiDynix is entitled “Heading for the 3.0 World: Technologies and Behaviors to Watch.” A collection of articles by Abram are available from his blog.

Stephen’s Lighthouse

http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/

About the speaker: Stephen Abram, MLS, is the current 2008 President of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) and the Past-President of the Canadian Library Association. He is Vice President of Innovation for SirsiDynix and Chief Strategist for the SirsiDynix Institute. His previous appointments included service as the Publisher of Electronic Information at Thomson following successful management of several special libraries. Mr. Abram has been listed by the Library Journal as one of the top fifty people influencing the future of libraries and has received numerous honors. A recognized international speaker, Mr. Abrams is also know for his commentaries and columns which often appear in Information Outlook, Multimedia, Internet@Schools, OneSource, Feliciter, Access and Library Journal. He is also the author of Out Front with Stephen Abram (ALA, 2007) and the popular Stephen's Lighthouse blog <http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/>.

Background on Draft Report of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

Draft Report of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/draft-report.html

"In reading the report, you will note that its findings and recommendations are structured around five central themes:

1. Increase the efficiency of bibliographic production for all libraries through increased cooperation and increased sharing of bibliographic records, and by maximizing the use of data produced throughout the entire "supply chain" for information resources.

2. Transfer effort into higher-value activity. In particular, expand the possibilities for knowledge creation by "exposing" rare and unique materials held by libraries that are currently hidden from view and, thus, underused.

3. Position our technology for the future by recognizing that the World Wide Web is both our technology platform and the appropriate platform for the delivery of our standards. Recognize that people are not the only users of the data we produce in the name of bibliographic control, but so too are machine applications that interact with those data over the network in a variety of ways.

4. Position our community for the future by facilitating the incorporation of evaluative and other user-supplied information into our resource descriptions. Work to realize the potential of the FRBR framework for revealing and capitalizing on the various relationships that exist among information resources.

5. Strengthen the library profession through education and the development of metrics that will inform decision-making now and in the future. "

"The period for public comment on the report is open until December 15, 2007. Comments can be submitted via the Web site at http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/contact/. Electronic submission of comments is encouraged. "


From LJ Academic Newswire
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2007/07-219.html

LC: Draft Report on Bibliographic Control To Be Released Nov. 13, 2007

For a year, the library world has been watching to see what the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, convened by the Library of Congress (LC), will say about the future of bibliographic description given the increasing reliance on web-based searching and electronic information resources. The wait is nearly over. LC officials said today that a draft report will be presented to LC managers and staff at 1:30 p.m. EST on Nov. 13, along with a live webcast. A comment period will follow and last until Dec. 15.

Even before the announcement, however, American Library Association (ALA) President-elect Jim Rettig, in testimony Oct. 24 before Congress, expressed concern that LC not move too precipitously. Rettig, university librarian of the Boatwright Memorial Library, University of Richmond, VA, told the Committee on House Administration, that ALA "strongly recommends that the Library of Congress return to its former practice of broad and meaningful consultation prior to making significant changes to cataloging policy." Rettig said he hoped LC fully "understands the impact" that its decisions have on other libraries, noting that LC bibliographic records "are accepted without editing by thousands of libraries of all types and sizes throughout the world to facilitate an individual's access to library resources."

He added, "Inevitably, on the Internet, with its huge and ever-increasing amount of digital information, general search engines must be relied upon. And, in years to come, there may be far more sophisticated search engines. But we are certainly not there now. The consumers of the Library's cataloging products must continue to rely on the traditional cataloging services in order to meet the needs of their users…. Further, unilateral and sudden changes to cataloging practice initiated by the Library of Congress and others severely and negatively affect citizens' ability to find answers in libraries and elsewhere."

Information on the Working Group and its findings is available at www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/

British Library response to the Library of Congress Working Group on. the Future of Bibliographic Control http://www.bl.uk/services/bibliographic/pdf_files/bl_response_lcwgfbc(final).pdf

About the speaker: Brian E. Schottlaender is the Audrey Geisel University Librarian at the University of California, San Diego. Prior to joining UC San Diego in 1999, his career in libraries included positions at the California Digital Library, UCLA, the University of Arizona, Indiana University, and int he European book trade. In 2008, Schottlaender was appointed Secretary of the Board of Directors of The Center for Research Libraries (CRL), a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries that acquires and preserves traditional and digital resources for research and teaching. In addition, he has been elected to the members Council of OCLC, a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization that serves more than 60,000 libraries in 112 countries internationally, and serves on the Steering Committee for the Coalition of Networked Information (CNI). He was president of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in 2006.