ACADEMIC ASSEMBLY OF LIBRARIANS
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
2:00 PM
Paley Library Lecture Hall
MINUTES
Attending: Rachel Appel, Jasmine Clark, Matt Ducmanas, Erin Finnerty, Leanne Finnigan, Andrea Goldstein (chair-elect, presiding), Justin Hill, Josue Hurtado, Sarah Jones, Delphine Khanna, Karen Kohn (recording), Molly Larkin, Dave Lacy, Joe Lucia (ex officio), Urooj Nizami, Katy Rawdon, Matt Shoemaker, Cynthia Schwarz, Jackie Sipes, Gretchen Sneff, Kim Tully, Nancy Turner, Sarah Yerger
Not Present: Carla Davis Cunningham (chair)
1.Approval of minutes from the September meeting (Karen Kohn)
Minutes were approved.
2. Introductions:
Patrick Lyons, Innovation Librarian
Patrick was not present. We will introduce him at a later date.
3. Dean’s update (Joe Lucia)
He has been working closely with David Washington on fundraising for the new building. There are prospects for some very large gifts, including a potential gift that would include naming rights for the building. The goal is to raise $20-25 million as an endowment. This would provide yearly income for operating the building itself, i.e. maintenance, technology infrastructure, and programming.
Joe is undergoing a fifth-year review process, which is standard for Deans. The staff may hear from the committee that is reviewing him.
He mentioned that there will be some activities to prepare us for working in the new building. This will start early Spring 2018.
4. Faculty Senate update (Josue Hurtado)
Josue has attended three Faculty Senate meetings. Joe presented at one of the meetings. There were a few concerns about the new library, but overall faculty were comfortable with the building and said positive things about library staff. The Senate talked about issuing statements related to DACA and other political events. Review of the RCM budgeting model has been completed, and a report will be forthcoming. It will include input from other schools.
5. Slack: what, why, how (David Lacy)
Slack can be used for private or group conversations. Many conversations about Primo have taken place on Slack. Conversations within a channel are open and can be a place where ideas are generated that get incorporated into the formal development process.
Invitations have been sent out in the past, but anyone who would like an invitation who doesn’t have one can contact Dave, Cynthia, or Jim.
Other organizations, such as LITA, have Slack channels that are open to the public, so people can use it for conversations outside Temple also. Some groups are private (such the Paley channel, which is invitation-only) and others are open, depending on the community that set it up.
The Libraries pay for Slack, so it is ad-free, but the company uses our data for studying communication in workplaces. It is actually an acronym for System for Logging All Communication and Knowledge. We don’t know the level of privacy of our conversations. The administration at Temple is not able to view private conversations between staff members, but these may still be included in the data that the company analyzes.
6. Library groups and committees (Nancy Turner)
Nancy presented the results of her data collection on groups at Temple, which was done in preparation for creating the beta Strategic Steering teams.
The Steering Committee expressed interest in seeing a list of what committees currently exist and who is on them. There is a page on the existing website called Roster of Working Groups and Committees (https://library.temple.edu/about/committees/roster), but it is out of date. Cynthia is working on an inventory of website pages, so when the website re-design is done, responsibility for maintaining this roster can be assigned to someone.
7. Old business
8. New business
9. Adjournment
Adjourned at 2:55.