Alfred University Librarians Meeting
12/15/2021 Online via Zoom
Attending: Kevin Adams, Ellen Bahr, Samantha Dannick, John Hosford, Maria Planansky, Mechele Romanchock, Brian Sullivan
Excused: Laurie Lounsberry Meehan Opening Conversation
Brian expressed appreciation to the librarians for their work this semester, which has been challenging in a variety of ways. He also thanks the librarians for providing thoughtful feedback as part of the administrator evaluation process.
Approval of Minutes
Minutes of 12/01/2021 meeting were approved.
Updates
List and background info of unwritten customs, traditions, and expectations to be discussed in future meetings
Brian shared a list of topics for discussion at future meetings.
International Year of Glass, 2022
This is a United Nations event that will involve activities at the College of Ceramics. Be thinking about potential projects, events, displays, or ways to host activities that highlight glass, to be scheduled at any point in the coming year.
Digital Projects & Archives Planning
Natalie will be working remotely through Friday, January 14. Brian has started conversations with John and Laurie about potential future directions. Next step is to draft a written proposal in coordination with John and Laurie, for further discussion and feedback.
January Meeting with Hinkle Librarians from Alfred State
Hinkle librarians expressed an interest in meeting with the Alfred U librarians. Mechele will follow up with Hinkle about a potential meeting on Friday, January 14.
Policies, Procedures, and Workflows on the LibGuides
Reminder of existence of this guide and encouragement to keep it up to date. Considering this morning’s discussion about file storage, we may also want to experiment with using Team for storing and sharing these kinds of documents. Discussion about benefits of LibGuides vs. Teams, issue of privacy, keeping documents up-to-date, ease of use, etc. Mechele will experiment with Teams and its potential usefulness for this purpose.
Paul Vickers Garner Space in Scholes
The collection has been relocated to Binns Merrill Hall and the space has been turned back over to the libraries. Mechele would like input on potential uses of the space – please contact her prior to the next librarians meeting.
ACRL Stats
Data is due to Mechele by February 16, allowing her to resolve any questions prior to submission.
Information Literacy Reflections
Reminder to respond to prompts for information literacy reflections this semester, with revised deadline of January 10.
New cover page for AURA research/scholarship
Sam worked together with the systems team and Lyrasis to add a cover page to faculty-submitted research and scholarship in AURA. The cover page is generated automatically.
Discussion Topics Library Logos
The staff and librarians agree about logo preferences. Mechele will follow up with Olivia about the next steps.
LibChat
Kevin has completed most of the configuration for LibChat and would like input from the librarians at this point. He sent us an email with detailed information about the setup and can also do a demo for all of us. Kevin is looking for people to do some testing. Some things that we flagged for further investigation: emails going to Junk folder, turn-around time for answering non-chat questions, team-to-team chatting, student worker access, etc. Continue to send feedback to Kevin, by January 17 if possible. Kevin hopes to begin live testing in mid-March and have it fully launched by fall 2022.
eBooks
We continued our conversation about eBooks, controlling costs, and the overall desirability of demand driven eBook collections. We have been spending in the range of $5000-$9000/year, which is more expensive than some of our eBook subscription packages. The original goal was to provide access to resources that our patrons want and will use, as opposed to our trying to guess what they might want. Discussion touched on budget implications of DDA/PDA, overall strategies for collection development, the potential need for different strategies for varied subject areas, the time involved in title selection by librarians, benefits of recommendations from patrons, putting additional parameters on DDA, mediating DDA purchases, and DDA alternatives.
AU Libraires Calendar and Remote Work
We continued our conversation about the pros and cons of asking librarians and staff to indicate WFH on the shared libraries calendar. For now, we have decided to ask librarians and staff to indicate on the calendar when they are working from home, with some possible exceptions for staff who have unusual arrangements. We deferred conversation on some related topics such as using Skype for phone communication from home and how to ensure library coverage when librarians and staff are working from home.
Minutes respectfully submitted Ellen Bahr
12/16/2021
