In advance of meeting, Chris distributed the latest version of the Data Classification Policy for review.  The policy describes various types of data classification (e.g. sensitive) and how they should be handled, but does not discuss policy enforcement.  The Data Classification Taskforce may suggest names of people to serve as “data stewards” within functional areas, but it will be up to the FA to appoint the data steward.

Some suggestions from the ADs were to:

• provide training for data stewards, possibly in conjunction with the Training & Education and Security Teams
• provide training for new employees
• edit the policy to reflect current thinking about how we write policies, e.g., lay out the “why this is important” up front and recast the preamble in plainer language.
• create a timeline listing activities and who will be responsible for these activities

Next Steps:

• Data Classification Taskforce should begin conversations within their areas
• Have this discussion added to the LEADS agenda (possibly February 18th)
• Mike would like to present this to President’s Staff, possibly at their March 2013 meeting

Chris also announced that the PCI Policy (Policy for Accepting Credit Card and eCommerce Payments) has been approved by Patrick Norton and has been posted to the Controller’s website.  An early January email from Patrick to all staff explaining this policy will be sent out.

A brief discussion was held regarding the eNewsletter and how we communicate to the college community.  Should this discussion be to move this to the Communications Taskforce?  Since their current charge is to evaluate internal communications, this could be something to consider in a subsequent phase, either with this group or a new one focusing on external communications.

We made good progress on finalizing Education and Training Team membership.  We still need to have a few conversations with staff before announcing, but stay tuned.

Mike asked the ADs to think about how we can improve our project prioritization practices. An AD meeting in January will be dedicated to this topic.  Specifically:

• how do LIS priorities fit with College priorities
• how do ad hoc projects get integrated into existing planned commitments?
• how do we keep focused on high-level (e.g. data classification, information literacy, SLAs, etc.) issues and make reviewing projects habitual?

Thanks for reading,

Terry & Doreen

Mike provided a summary of his CLIR-CIO meeting in Washington DC.  Some of the topics discussed were:

• MISO survey
• Digital scholarship
• On-line education
• Classroom design
• Quiet zones in the library
• Security
• Organizational structure
• Collection development issues

The Dec. 20th optional all-LIS staff meeting has been canceled.  Happy holidays

Chris led a discussion about next steps regarding our policy review (aka, Policy Summit). We looked at some of Gartner’s recommendations for policy management. After reviewing notes from the Policy Summit meeting and survey results, the following topics stood out:

• Data ownership, privacy, classification
• Education and awareness
• Technology enablers (ie. tools)
• Governance and enforcement

A consolidated list of next steps was generated:

• Inventory all LIS policies and policies that affect LIS
  • What do we have? What’s missing? What’s no longer needed? – Chris has contacted Donna McDurfee, who sends out yearly update notifications on handbook policies, to request a spreadsheet containing an inventory of the current policies as a starting point.
  • Where are the policies? When were they last updated? Who is responsible for each policy?
  • Does the policy work? Would it work if it was enforced? How to deal with exceptions?
  • Is it an LIS policy or a College policy (or other, such as a guideline, practice, or procedure)?

• Determine institutional temperature of policy creation
  • Who should be leading this effort? Who should be involved?
  • Relationship to the data classification taskforce work?
  • What should the priorities be (i.e., currency, legal)?
  • What is the institutional philosophy around policies (e.g., comprehensive, prescribed? simple, broadly worded?

Chris reported that the latest draft of the Data Classification Policy (created by the Data Classification Taskforce) has been completed. A review of this draft will be added to next week’s AD agenda for further discussion.

Our discussion touched the issue of which policies (versus, for example, guidelines or procedures) to prioritize/focus.  There was at least some sentiment to focus on policies with an element of enforcement to them (as opposed to, for example, something like the library gift policy that mainly provides guidance to staff as well as donors).

A second round of Policy Summit discussions will continue during the January optional all-staff meeting on January 17th.

The ADs discussed whether the LIS Strategic Directions need to be updated (please… hold your applause).  It has been several years since the last revision.  Sentiment varied as to whether we have the time, and whether it is worth the effort, to engage in this now.  We will continue to poke at this.

Thanks for reading,
Terry & Doreen

The Security Team joined us with an update on recent activities, including:

• roll out of a computer-based training program for College Advancement; Human Resources will be next;
• revamp of the “roadshow” project from last year, focusing more on computer-based training and less about privacy;
• web-based SASS survey; writing policy for the Data Classification Taskforce; developing security questionnaires for vendors;
• hard disk encryption roll out;

Looking forward, the team would like to begin working on:

• mobile device security management;
• secure communication solutions.

We also discussed:

• team membership, specifically how new members from other areas in LIS provide a good, less technical, perspective on the issues — especially training issues that might need to be covered;
• potential implications of how the data ownership policies under consideration by College administration will impact privacy recommendations made by the team;
• the idea of holding security workshops, possibly in conjunction with the Education and Training Team, focusing on:
  • cyber security; privacy;
  • eCommerce;
  • safe home network setup;
  • setting up wifi encryption at home;
  • the idea of holding security workshops at future LIS in-service days for staff (LIS and College-wide);
  • videotaping roadshows to use as web tutorials.

Lastly, we talked a bit about the team charge and scope, specifically:

• whether the team should be involved in the physical security of data centers on campus;
• hardening computers before distribution;
• resources outside of LIS that may be able to assist with certain projects.

We then talked about the LIS holiday party, which will be 12/18, 4-6pm. Location almost finalized, but not quite so stay tuned.

We reviewed the Dec. calendar:

• Tim Spears will join us for the 12/19 all-staff meeting;
• January and February AD retreats will focus on budgets.

We discussed outcomes and next steps from the recent Policy Summit. Chris Norris will organize planning policy strategies, and review compliance and enforcement issues. We’ll hold another open meeting to discuss next steps on this.

Finally, we continued the discussion about LIS website maintenance and refreshing options in the post-Web Team environment. Dan Frostman will serve as a point person for website content managers, and for communicating with the Communications office on website issues. The ADs would like to see an annual content managers gathering to review content manager responsibilities and expectations. The first of such meetings will be scheduled for January.

Thanks for reading,

Doreen and Terry

This month’s all-LIS Staff meeting will be canceled.  Mike will talk with Sheila Andrus about holding a workshop allowing LIS staff to participate in exercises taken from management training sessions. The first will be on giving and receiving feedback.

We discussed creating a centralized location on the Area51 AD site for ready-access to certain types of heavily used data (i.e., benchmarking and analytical data, server level monitoring, etc.).  Mary, Carol, Chris and Terry will suggest what data to include.  We also agreed to share interesting or provocative data and readings from Gartner Research (or other sources) for discussion at meetings when possible.

Mike met with Tim Spears and Marna Whittington, the Board of Trustees’ new chairperson, for a general discussion of the kinds of library and technology issues the Board is interested in learning about from LIS.

Mike also discussed establishing a framework within the Academic Affairs group for discussion regarding the scope of activities LIS engages in, as well as how to further involve LIS in effecting change throughout the institution, and how LIS can align its work with the goals of the academic programs.  This might involve assessment efforts to ask questions such as:  What do we do about faculty development and student services?  Who are the faculty that are using technology?  How can this be done on both the department and college levels?  Mike will meet with Susan Baldridge to brainstorm further.

Thanks for reading,
Doreen & Terry

We discussed College-wide content management issues around with the website.  Carol will continue the discussion with the Web Editorial Group (through College Communications).

The first topic of discussion was how to move forward with 360 reviews for managers.  Mike and Terry will work together to create framing document for this pilot program.  They will gather information from Human Resources to see what services are already available and LIS workgroups who have already adopted this process, and work with managers to devise appropriate questions and format for receiving responses.  The SLT agreed that we do not think anonymous feedback fosters a healthy, candid atmosphere for conversation, and at this point are disinclined to allow anonymous comments in the 360 review process.

We had an animated discussion related to revising the draft LIS Priorities document, especially around the concept that serving the academic program is always a top priority, and of how best to convey the amount of resources are required to maintain those ongoing LIS services that our patrons and customers rely heavily on (e.g. helpdesk, library services, etc.). This is still a work in progress. We plan to post this as part of the July Quarterly Update. (Mike also reminded the group that updates to goals and the project directory will be due on July 1.)

Thanks for reading
Terry & Doreen

Today’s meeting began with a tour of 118 Main Street.  Mary Stanley took us through the newly renovated building, which could possibly serve as office space for LIS staff.  Currently, the upper offices are being used by retired faculty and the lower level is vacant.  There is potential office space for 8-9 staff members.  Mary Stanley will send a copy of the floor plan to Joseph Watson and he will bring it to the Space Team for discussion.

This year’s February Board of Trustees meeting was held in Monterey, which Mike attended.  While he was there, he had conversations with various MIIS folks, the high points of which include:

• videoconferencing conversations are happening all over the place, both at MIIS and MIDD.  We will pull together a meeting of some of the LIS folks involved with these to update everyone on what’s being discussed in different venues
• MIIS is exploring wireless vendor optionsMIIS is also maintaining an AS400.  Sadly, we’re not alone.
• There continues to be interest in the idea of staff exchanges
• the MIIS library has some interest in exploring OCLC’s WorldShare and SubsPlus

Mike will ask Jim Keyes to present at the March 21st all-staff meeting.  LIS awards will also be handed out at this meeting. If Jim isn’t available, we’ll fold the staff meeting into our in-service day.

Mary presented a proposal for a “penalty points” system for overdue library materials for review.  Mike suggested that we gather reactions from FLAC and SLAC, and also touch base with Alison Byerly.  We also asked for more information regarding why certain classes of users were exempt, and what the impact might be of not excluding them.  We will discuss again in the near future.

We had a brief conversation about how to communicate the outcomes of the management training. The plan right now is to have a de-brief session with all LIS managers, and then to have an all-LIS presentation about what we learned, and what we plan to do differently based on what we learned.

Future Agenda Items

• Space Team to discuss 118 Main Street possibilities
• Bradford Campus Manager

Thanks for reading,

Terry & Doreen

Tim Spears joined us this morning to for the final stop on the “listening tour” that he and Mike have been holding with LIS workgroups to discuss the outcome of the Staff Council survey.  As with the other workgroups within LIS, Tim asked questions about working conditions and morale within our area.  All information gained from these discussions are considered confidential to individual workgroups.

Brenda Ellis and Carrie Macfarlane then joined the meeting to update the group on the Infolit planning progress.

A research practice survey was given to first year seminar students to assess their research skills.  The department of Institutional Research assisted in identifying students to take the survey to ensure that we had a good mix.  They found that a good number of these students did in fact open the survey, but many closed after the first few questions.  Some of the findings showed:

• students tend to surf the web to find information and choose to not ask a librarian
• students think they know how to do research, but lack knowledge of basic concepts (e.g., many students think Time is a scholarly resource)
• students don’t know how to cite sources
• there is a lack of understanding of terms

Moving forward, Brenda and Carrie suggest that they either give the survey to first year seminar students again in the fall, but probably independently (i.e. not in conjunction with HEDS), or do it again in the spring with HEDS to see a cross section of data from other schools.  HEDS will need to be notified by February.  Brenda’s recommendation is to do it in the spring.

Brenda also recommends that a summary of the report, with a link to the larger report, be sent to the faculty by email and not posted on the blog.  Brenda and Mike will continue discussions.  This should also be presented to Academic Affairs.  The report should not be posted in the website.

Carrie explained that a list of technology and research skills all graduating students should have went to the faculty.  For intermediate and advanced skills, a plan is being created for two pilot programs involving Chemistry and History of Art and Architecture (HARC), to ensure students have these required skills.  The Chemistry department has signed off on the list of skills and target classes; plans for assessment are next on the to-do list.  HARC would prefer to teach skills in 1 course covering objects and analysis.  Next steps for HARC need to be discussed with the department.

Mike recommended that Carrie and Brenda ask to be added to a meeting agenda of the “Chairs” committee to discuss moving Infolit to all academic departments, and to meet with FLAC.

Brenda and Carrie are scheduled to present an update to LIS at the optional all LIS staff meeting on 2/17/12.

Thanks for reading,

Terry & Doreen

Present:  Mike Roy, Chris Norris, Shel Sax, Carol Peddie, Mary Backus, Terry Simpkins and Doreen Bernier

We discussed two change management proposals.  Web server maintenance is scheduled for Sunday morning, Dec. 18th and the following systems will be affected.

• LIS digital archives
• Primary MySQL Database server for Middlebury and MIIS web sites
• File Server for Computer Science
• Web application services for Middlebury and MIIS primary web sites.

These systems will not go down, but editing and changes will not be saved during this time frame.  An email to the community will be sent out in advance.

The 2nd change proposal involves VMWare clients/labs.  This is a software upgrade that will only affect thin lab computers and 4 stand-alone computers and will take place on Dec.19-20. This was also approved.

We continued our discussion about LIS Values (https://sites.google.com/a/middlebury.edu/lis-strategic-planning/mission-values ) from several meetings ago.  Each area director was asked to discuss these with their workgroup leaders: are they relevant?  Are they useful?  If so, how do people use them?  We decided to bring the topic to a managers meeting (i.e., rather than discussing during an all-LIS gathering) in order to continue the conversation and hear more feedbacks. The values are a way to ensure that we pay attention to not only what we do, but how we do the work. We want to find ways to acknowledge work that is done acccording to these values, and to work with individuals whose interpersonal style may not be consistent with our shared understanding of how we should approach work.

We then discussed the idea of holding open meetings on Friday mornings to discuss various topics, projects or policies of current interest.  These would be “optional” meetings for interested staff, and might involve topics such as:

• Disaster recovery
• Monitoring metrics and analytics
• Google evaluation
• Mobile tools
• Digital scholarship
• Service level agreements
• Video recording workflow

The remainder of the retreat was devoted to discussion around area budgets.

Upcoming agenda items:

• sophos anti-virus deployment plan
• google apps/mslive evaluation plan
• network monitoring policy development

Thanks for reading,
Terry and Doreen

Joe Antonioli presented the Curricular Technology Team report on the decommissioning of Segue which proposed a timeline for shutdown and migration of current faculty sites.  The timeline was discussed in detail.  Mike asked that the team prepare a communications plan for the timeline announcement to the college community.  Joe will consult with liaisons regarding the communications process as well, and Mike will send out the final announcement.

Joe also requested that the SLT re-examine the current CTT charge.  Since another campus group has been created and tasked with evaluating technology needs in classroom spaces, the SLT agreed to remove “evaluate the use of teaching spaces and make recommendations” from the CTT charge.  We also reviewed the charge to “create a ‘tech incubator’ to assess current technology and watch for emerging possibilities,” which overlaps with the charges of the 3 recently established taskforces on innovation, each of which includes a member of LIS.  We agreed that the LIS members of the innovation task forces should work to keep CTT and the rest of LIS informed about what’s happening in those talks.

The next topic discussed was whether or not FEMTOCEL units should be installed at the Bread Loaf campus and the Snowbowl.  These units would provide limited cell phone service to these areas.  This topic needs further investigation around the issues of cost and quantity and the “cultural impact” of providing cell service, and will be revisited.

The agenda for the Dec. 8 managers’ meeting was set and will include discussions about Service Level Agreements, the ticketing system and workflow processes.

We decided to cancel the December LIS Staff meeting, or, shall we say, we decided to move it to 51 Main the day before!!

The agenda for the Dec 8 SLT meeting:

• System down time during break
• Banner migration weekend review
• Review staffing proposal to SRC

[TS note: yes, I'm aware of the irony in posting agenda items "in advance" for a meeting that happened yesterday.  We'll get there.]

Thanks for reading,
Terry and Doreen

Jim and Ian joined us to discuss the proposal to migrate our anti-virus solution to Sophos.  The project team working on this consists of Brian Foley, Chris Tangora, Petar Mitrevski, Rick James, Jim, and Ian.  We reviewed the draft change management form, and the SLT requested 1) more detail specifying where the responsibility lies for each step in the process and b) .  Ultimately, most of the work involves testing and deployment; the impact on end-users should be minimal.  We also discussed how the timing of the project might be impacted by other major projects such as the Banner migration and the roll-out of the new Network Access Control system.  We agreed that testing should be done in January, and, assuming the testing goes smoothly, roll-out should occur in February.

Mike presented an idea for an upcoming decisions list.  The idea is to provide transparency regarding proposed ideas and projects, and to give a sense of the direction in which LIS is moving.  After some discussion, we agreed that this might be best tied into the our goals page on the strategic planning site and, like the goals, updated on a quarterly basis.

Next up, we talked about the LIS values statements we created roughly 3 years ago, and how these relate to some of the feedback we heard from the staff survey.  We agreed that we should revisit our values, focusing on whether or not we have articulated the “right” set for LIS, as well as whether or not we live up to them as an organization.  We have also had enough staff turnover in recent years to warrant a re-examination of these values statements.  We agreed that each director will have discussions with their managers about ways to solicit input for refining or revising our values statements, and that we’ll continue the discussion once those discussions have occurred.

We began a discussion about the defining the parameters of the Google/MSLive evaluation that Shel will be leading.  We ran out of time for this piece, and will continue on 11/18 at our monthly retreat.

Thanks for reading,
Terry