General Assembly Meeting Minutes
May 8, 2001
Paley Library Lecture Hall
Presiding: Carol Lang, Chairperson.
The Minutes of the General Assembly Meeting of March 7, 2001 were approved with one revision.
Report of the University Librarian (M. Pastine):
- Our Annual Library Staff meeting will occur on Thursday, June 7th from 2:00 – 3:30 p.m. in the Lecture Hall. In addition to the Staff Recognition Award for University Libraries, there will also be such awards for HSC and Law Libraries and possibly CIS. A short video will be shown by Human Resources on quality clientele service with a bit of discussion. The meeting is in June rather than earlier in May as we wanted President Adamany here to respond to questions. He is most willing to get some in advance – send them to me or Carol Lang and we will compile and forward, or just bring them to the meeting and he will respond.
- I have completed the PARA and the Merit recommendations. I want to say that last year at this time I made a number of recommendations to the Librarians regarding what my expectations were for documentation coming to me, including the past two year’s annual reports, letters of support, the Committee’s documentation (first to me and I give it to Administrative Services when I have completed by reviews), and evaluations from the Department Heads. I also added what I expected beyond the position description, i.e. service / professional / scholarly work with copies demonstrating active participation, copies of publications or book reviews, etc.). And, I asked the librarian to provide the benefits to themselves as well as to the Libraries and the University. I also asked for more than 10 days to respond because April and May are really busy months for me. The majority of the Librarians remembered to do all of this. Thanks so much.
- I also informed you that we would be getting the Immigration Ship Manifests returned to us. That decision has been changed so we will not get these.
- I was also hoping that we would get to raise funds for the Baptist Temple for archival and special collections/museum type materials. Although that looked promising for a while, it no longer does – so put your thinking caps on this.
- We were also just beginning the IMLS project. We are now well underway with another grant – for 2 years – with an extension on the first one. The second one is for $510,000. To see what has been done, check out the URL: diamond.temple.edu:81.
- The PEW $167,000 grant for the Illuminated Manuscripts of many Philadelphia’s libraries and museums was completed and shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Our Special Collections was part of this.
- The Ambler and Urban Archives compact storage is completed.
- The Assistant to the University Librarian, Carol Lang, has been hired and doing really excellent work.
- The Electronic Reserves module pilot program of Diamond has been underway for some time.
- The Portable Laptop Program was re-opened in the Tuttleman Learning Center with a new hire, Dawn Bloomer, who is doing great.
- The Greenstein Celebration has not yet occurred but processing will be completed this summer.
- We celebrated the dedication of the Libraries/Computer Labs in both Norris Home Project and the Dunbar School.
- We celebrated our two millionth volume.
- We began a collaborative working relationship with the University Press, with them now reporting to the Libraries.
- We brought up our portion of the PALCI URSA union catalog.
- We received $75,000 from Access PA to catalog selected music materials scattered throughout the many buildings of the School of Music and will begin working on this soon.
- We had the first meeting of the Libraries/University Press Executive Board to assist with advancement and development projects.
- We began an Internship program.
- We completed a systems audit. Dept. Heads have the documents.
- We are hoping to fill 17 library positions. (Question: hiring freeze?)
- We are still awaiting an answer to our request for permission to continue to proceed on hiring processes already started.
- It is time now to review our Strategic Plan for the next year’s priorities. For budget planning purposes, our priorities will include User Education and bridging the gap between K-12 and the community; subject specialists liaison work with faculty; marketing and visibility and continuing systems work in the Libraries.
Merit Committee Issues (C. Lang): C. Lang noted that the University administration has begun to require more information and stricter procedures documentation with faculty merit, promotion and tenure considerations and M. Pastine believes that the same increased documentation and form will very probably be carried over to librarians’ PARA and Merit procedures: more librarian annual reports (achievements, problems, evaluative reviews of supervisors – usually by department heads). Clear and detailed checklists need to be prepared and the librarians’ Merit procedures need review. Andrea Goldstein will chair a task force to look into Merit guidelines, checklists, instructions, etc. M. Pastine noted that we don’t know for sure if Adamany will give as much attention to librarians as to faculty but he certainly might.
M. Darby noted his concern on peer review and department heads and philosophy on staff. Regarding both Merit and PARA he has concerns on the paperwork, on formal reviews of two-week old new staff, and he asks the all librarians read the TAUP contract and the procedures currently used in these programs and be ready to understand it all for any future paper changes and task forces.
Congratulations were given to Mark for his recent collective bargaining contributions for both faculty and librarians. M. Pastine noted that salaries for librarians is a hot topic of the ALA President, and that she is on the ALA Committee for Status of Librarians. And, she reminds all to “keep that special personal file!”
Assembly Elections (A. Goldstein, A. Berhanu): Ballot counting was initiated at this stage of the meeting, resulting later in the meeting with the report that there were two tie votes (for Chairperson-elect and for one of the Selection and Appointment Committee positions), and that a revote on these two was required. The final results were later reported by the Nominations and Elections Committee as:
- Vice Chairperson/Chairperson-elect: Al Vara
- Steering Committee, Member-at-large: Andrea Goldstein
- Continuing Education Committee: Carla Davis Cunningham, 2 years
- Anne Harlow, 1 year
- Faculty Senate Library Committee Rep.: Laura Lane
- Nominations and Elections Committee: Penelope Myers
- Selection and Appointment Committee: Carol Brigham
- Rick Lezenby
AAL Web Page Task Force Update (C. Weng):
At the March General Assembly meeting at Ambler C. Cunningham and J. Chen were selected to work on the proposed AAL web page with C. Weng as Chair of the Task Force. Later G. McKinney was recruited to the membership.
The Task Force meet on March 22nd and:
discussed and considered, without finalization, materials which should or could be on the site: all important AAL documents, hyper-interlinked (By-laws, members and addresses, meeting schedules (Assembly and Steering Committee), meeting minutes of Assembly and Steering Committee (5-year archive), standing committee annual reports and procedures, committee charges, committee members and terms of service.
agreed on assignments for the members of the Task Force: Carla and Cathy to begin collecting the documents from office holders, committees, past presidents, archives in Templana, and wherever else possible; Jeanne and Greg to work on design and the technical work.
planned a tentative time table: by the end of May have all documents collected and scanned, by mid-July have the majority of documents physically loaded on the web, and use August for the tweaking and cleaning up of the site.
C. Weng noted that already the Task Force has noted that there are, surprisingly for the past five years, missing annual reports and minutes.
C. Lang asked how the Task Force wanted the annual reports due today to be delivered. C. Weng will accept them now in any form but in the future they should be sent electronically. M. Pastine reminded the Task Force to check with the Library’s Webmaster (P. D’Andrea) to be sure all is up to par with Systems.
It was questioned whether the site would be restricted. C. Weng said that the thoughts of the Task Force so far were for openness. There was discussion on this and the T.F. will consider this further – perhaps may recommend restricting to the campus.
Annual Reports
C. Lang reported on the Steering Committee noting the Committee’s putting more programming into the General Assembly meetings, especially on professional issues and development. She reviewed the Assembly meetings and the programs the Steering Committee encouraged.
PARA was noted as handling four candidates during the year.
G. Sneff reported for the Continuing Education Committee, which held two programs during the year, their JSTOR meeting with a JSTOR guest and their “Brown Bag/Sharing of Meeting Information” meeting.
T. Whitehead reported on the meetings of the Faculty Senate Library Committee.
S. Stormont reported on his representation to the Faculty Senate and noted that in the future he would forward meeting minutes to all librarians.
C. Weng reported for the Selection and Appointment Committee and the ten searches they had participated in during the year (Copy Cat Coordinator, Database Manager, User Education and Social Sciences librarians, Access Services Librarian and Electronic Resources Cataloger, Science Librarian, Reference Arts & Humanities, Government Documents, and Systems librarians.
This ended the Business Section of the meeting, immediately followed by the topical program: the Intern Panel:
The three remaining graduate library interns, Maura Boyle, Susan Dreher, and Bob Hull each spoke to the Assembly, noting their backgrounds, their daily work here, their feelings and what they felt they had learned during their experience at Temple. One noted comment: “Everyone at Temple was willing to share information”. In response to “Would you recommend Temple?” all three resoundingly answered “Yes”! They were thanked by the Assembly for their work and for helping us learn from them and their up-to-date educational work. Susan asked if it were possible that interns could be put on the library staff e-mail list, and Bob, well Bob interested everyone with a recommendation for reading: What Do You Want to do When You Grow Up? Dorothy Cantor and Andrea Thompson. Little Brown, 2000.
The General Assembly ended at 3:45 following applause for the interns and applause for Carol Lang and her Chairpersonship during 2000-2001.
T. Whitehead,
Recorder