1. Minutes of the General Assembly Meeting of March 8, 2005 and the special meeting of April 12, 2005 were approved conditionally.  Any changes should be sent to Carol Brigham.
2. Election Ballots were collected by Al Vara and Carol Brigham for tallying.
3. Vice Provost Larry Alford had no report to make subsequent to the all-staff meeting on May 6.  He briefly summarized some points from that meeting and then took questions from the membership on the following subjects:
   1. Paley renovation: the library is hiring a consultant to plan for renovation of and/or addition to Paley and other facilities on the main campus. The money for any renovations, etc., is not yet in place.  Four firms have been selected to receive our RFP.
   2. Fire in transformer: it is not yet known exactly what happened, if anything, to cause the transformer to arc and burn out.  The transformer and nearby wiring had to be completely replaced, which is why it took a long time to restore power to Paley.
   3. Funding for new library acquisitions: the release of funds is contingent upon the strategic plan currently being developed, but the funds have been included in the budget that was recently sent to the Board of Trustees.  Funding cuts at the state level are a potential problem, but library funding will still be a high priority.
   4. Elevators: the administration has been trying to get information about the inspection of elevator #2 to no avail.
   5. Merit Guidelines: (the question was about the relationship between the criteria for merit and the overall performance aspect of merit awards in the new university-wide guidelines.)  All three criteria must be considered by the applicant and by all those involved in evaluating applications.  The Provost makes the final decision, and all supporting documentation used earlier in the process should be made available to him so that the recommendations of the committee and the vice-provost are part of a transparent process.  Larry went on to clarify that it is not necessary to be outstanding in all three areas described by the criteria, but that it would be necessary to demonstrate that there were no serious weaknesses.  The faculty, at whom most of the guidelines are directed, may have had some practices of awarding merit that differed from ours; hence there may not be many changes to our practices.
   6. Publishing: necessary for librarians? While it is important in an academic institution for people to do research and publish in peer-reviewed journals as a contribution to the profession, it ispossible to take it too far.  Although publication is valued, it is even more important, in Larry’s opinion, to build collections and support the teaching and learning of the institution.
   7. Format for this year’s personal annual reports: the same as last year.
4. Nominations and Elections reported that ties in two races required a runoff ballot to be distributed to those present.
5. Merit The membership discussed CVs v. resumes, the three criteria, and the weight of supervisory evaluations in the merit process.
6. Nominations and Elections presented the election results:

   Steering Committee Vice-Chair/Chair Elect:  Fred Rowland
   Steering Committee Member-at-Large:  David Murray
   Continuing Education Committee 2-year term:  Derik Badman
   Continuing Education Committee 1-year term: Susan Golding
   Nominations & Elections Committee: George Fowler
   Selection & Appointment Committee:  Brian Schoolar & Kathy Szigeti
   PARA:  Andrea Goldstein & Laura Lane

   Al Vara and Carol Brigham thanked all those who were willing to run for positions.
7. Standing committee reports
   1. All standing committee reports except the Steering Committee were distributed to the membership via the list. Greg McKinney summarized the Steering Committee annual report. There were no questions on any of the annual reports.
   2. Gretchen Sneff, as the AAL’s Faculty Senate Representative, volunteered to write a report of her activities and distribute it to the membership. Some discussion followed a question that was asked about the current state of the General Education requirements, which will go into effect in the fall of 2007.
   3. The membership thanked Gretchen and the rest of the Library Prize committee for their hard work on that initiative and congratulated them on its success.
8. New Business
   1. Penelope Myers asked for short articles or announcements for inclusion in the library blog. They can be sent to any member of the committee. Gretchen mentioned that according to the Faculty Senate Bylaws (on the web at http://www.temple.edu/senate/) the Library has two representatives to the Faculty Senate rather than one. She asked the Steering Committee to clarify whether they meant to count the Faculty Senate Library Committee representative as a representative to the full senate as well.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:03PM.

Respectfully submitted by Carla Davis Cunningham