Wendy Shook joined us to discuss the draft Data Management Policy she is in the process of preparing.  This is a requirement for grant applications from certain agencies (e.g. National Science Foundation); applications for funding from these agencies require the inclusion of a data management, access, and preservation plan.

The completed policy will outline objectives for science data preservation and storage using a digital on-campus repository, or, where appropriate, pointing researchers to national discipline-specific repositories that may be preferable.  Currently, Biology, Economics, and Psychology are departments at Middlebury that are most likely to need local data hosting/preservation.

Wendy suggested a 2-stage process.  Stage 1 would be a pilot project using ContentDM in conjunction with a subscription to a digital object identifier (DOI) registry. Stage 2 would reassess the platform and determine if migration to another platform would be beneficial.

We agreed that Wendy should investigate costs to subscribe to a DOI registry, and that we should get an estimate that includes MIIS.  There are also unresolved issues around data ownership and rights management, which Mike will try to have added to the Dean’s meeting agenda for next week.  Finally, Chris recommended that an information security audit and disaster recovery assessment be conducted for ContentDM.

The AD Retreat scheduled for April 19th be cancelled since Mike and Carol are both out.

We reviewed the LIS calendar for April, focusing on:

• the 3rd quarter budget: including travel, labor, capital and operational expenses.  Carol reported we are fairly well on target, budget-wise, with not a lot of wiggle room for unanticipated expenses;
• student labor trends.  We have asked workgroup leaders to review student labor trends to see how we are using student dollars; Directors should follow up and nudge managers as necessary;
• BreadLoaf/Language School planning –Carrie Macfarlane is leading a group preparing a report on support for this coming summer.  She expects to be able to submit it to Terry by Monday (4/8), and we will invite her and other group members to attend next week’s Directors’ meeting to discuss.

The Manager’s meeting agenda for the April 11th meeting will include:

• Follow-up discussion on management training, especially thinking about ways to keep the training moving forward and in active use;
• Professional development — Mike would like to try a pilot program where, for 1-2 Fridays/month, we will set aside time to make staff professional development a priority.  This would mean not scheduling meetings, limiting the amount of email we send to one another in LIS, etc., during this time.

The All-staff meeting agenda for the April 17th meeting:

• Staff awards;
• Norm Cushman will give an update on his organization (not confirmed);

The Optional all-staff meeting agenda for April 18th:

• BreadLoaf and Language School Planning (not confirmed).

Carol will re-engage the Space Team to review office space requirements for new staff members.

Mike would like to re-establish the LIS New Staff Member Coffee meetings for the forthcoming plethora of new employees.

The April 11 directors’ meeting is canceled.  We hope to discuss a proposal for LIS Language School support at the 4/18 meeting.

Thanks for reading,
Terry & Doreen.

The Area Directors provide Mike with weekly updates of activities happening within each areas.  Mike asked that, when the directors are out of the office on business travel or vacation, they either delegate someone on their staff to forward updates for posting to Doreen or provide the updates for the missed week upon their return.  He also asked the ADs to highlight topics that may warrant special attention by members of the College administration, or that demand more comprehensive discussion among the leadership team.

All areas appear to be roughly on schedule for the performance reviews.

Mike has been asking managers how long it takes them to prepare submissions for the quarterly update document.  Times estimates run between 20 minutes and 1 ½ hours, depending on level of detail.  Mike feels this process is working well.

The ADs discussed what the nascent Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium (which includes Saint Michaels College, Champlain College and Middlebury) may mean for our purchasing activities.  The Consortium is intended to look for ways to improve college services and find cost savings by acting together in making purchases in supplies, equipment and services.  At the moment, it is focused primarily on general supplies, but may look to broaden in the future.  The discussion focused mainly around what aspects of LIS purchasing might appropriately be considered for inclusion within any agreement between the 3 schools, and which aspects might be specialized for Middlebury’s needs and require a certain level of continued autonomy.

The update and demo of Web Helpdesk on this week’s agenda will be moved to next week.

Thanks for reading.

Terry & Doreen

Bill Burger, Vice President for Communications joined us for part of the meeting to introduce himself to the directors.  Each of us described the organizational structure of our area and our team’s responsibilities.  General discussion centered around areas where both LIS and Communications overlap, such as the college website, copyright and events requiring media assistance.

The rest of the meeting was dedicated to addressing the recent security event affecting the campus email system.

Agenda for Jan. 31

• Curricular Tech Team visits (10:00)  – to be rescheduled
• LIS stats (Mike)
• policy summit review/next steps
• finalize 2013 APS timeline

Thanks for reading
Terry & Doreen

As part of our disaster recovery planning efforts, Chris has been interviewing functional areas across campus  to inventory work processes and discuss  contingency planning efforts in the event critical system are not available.  Chris indicated that he may need assistance with this interview process from the ADs.  Once the interviews are done and the data is gathered and stored, the functional areas will be expected to update and maintain their own information on a yearly basis.

On Friday, the ADs will be holding a retreat to discuss budget planning.  A short discussion was held outlining the afternoon’s agenda.

Mike will invite Bill Burger, the new Vice President for Communications to next week’s AD meeting to meet the group.

We talked about some of the MISO Survey results and what our next steps might be to make improvements to our services.  Some suggestions are to:

• Additional data gathering re: public printers on campus, video conferencing and helpdesk.
• Look at the Liaison Program and see how it ties into current and future assessment pieces.
• Make  “wireless” a priority project to help make improvements across campus.  Increase WAPs in residence halls and change out those that are problematic.

We discussed ways to encourage more staff award nominations.  Terry will join the R&R crew as sponsor.  We also briefly discussed ideas for the upcoming in-service day to be held during March break.  Perhaps a security theme, but we can’t tell you about it (just kidding!)…

February’s optional All LIS Staff meeting will be about project prioritization.

We talked about keeping the “Outage & Alerts” page up-to-date on the LIS site.  Mary reminded us that any LIS blog post relating to downtimes, outages, etc., tagged with “Helpdesk Alert” will automatically feed the Outage & Alerts page as well.

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?
  • 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
  • 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 final 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.

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.

Discussion touched the issue of which policies (vs., for example, guidelines or procedures) to prioritize.  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.  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.

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

1) We met with the Web Team to thank them for their work before disbanding the team, and to discuss how we can best use the LIS Content Managers program to maintain the LIS web site.

• One person (tentatively Dan Frostman) will be designated to be responsible for report to Communications on a quarterly basis as that group takes more responsibility for oversight of the College’s web presence;
• We will have regular LIS content managers meetings or communications to remind staff of their responsibilities in this area, and to help them with training and/or tools.

2) We met with Joseph Watson from the Space Team to review their recommendations for repurposing the space now occupied by the information desk.

• remove current desk;
• spread current practical functions (e.g. outgoing mail, staplers, etc.) to periphery;
• install some sort of electronic information kiosk;
• put something aesthetically pleasing (e.g. tree, fountain, reproduction of Michelangelo’s David – just kidding about that last bit) where the desk is now;
• involve a designer in the redesign process, who in turn will involve stakeholders (e.g. students);
• goal is for work to take place between summer school and fall term of 2014 (10th year anniversary of building);
• design/selection of centerpiece might involve Committee on Art in Public Spaces;
• could conceivably separate design of the functional areas from the design of the more decorative portions.

Agenda for Dec. 12

• Security Team Visit (10:00)
• Review calendar
• LIS holiday party
• Policy summit next steps
• LIS website next steps
• The Williams:Wesleyan:Wellesley:Brandeis:Amherst:Middlebury (henceforth W3BAM) group is meeting at Williams on February 25th.  Who should attend? We want to have three groups:
  1. sys admins/network admins (from the last meeting)
  2. digital humanities types
  3. CIOs

Thanks for reading

Terry

Present:  Mike Roy, Mary Backus, Terry Simpkins, Chris Norris, and Doreen Bernier.  Special guest: Joseph Watson.

We talked at length about the next round staffing needs.  The ADs will work with managers to identify and/or clarify staffing needs within their areas, and the ADs will address the topic at the next retreat, scheduled for early Nov.  We will also have another open staff meeting just prior to the retreat to give staff another avenue for input.

The College-wide goals document has been simplified.  ADs wll review for accuracy and correct.  Doreen will share the version of the document with the ADs.  Once vetted to confirm that all stakeholders agree to the goals, the list will be shared broadly.

On a related topic, the quarterly goal updates, normally due Oct. 1, are pushed to Nov. 1.

After discussion, we agreed that the project directory in Roadmap is too labor intensive to keep up to date, so it will be discontinued. Mike is asking each director to provide him with a list of what projects have been recently been completed, what are we working on and what is on the horizon.  Mike will prepare a summary to ADs to share with workgroups.

We reviewed items from the quarterly update, focusing on staff morale issues (““How we do our work”) – see:  http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/files/2012/09/lis-quarterlyupdate-summer2012.pdf.  It appears we are making good progress!  We will add two items from this discussion to future updates:  governance and reviewing management training with workgroup leaders.

Joseph joined the meeting for a discussion and review of the list of space requests to send to Facilities Services.

Chris talked about a new assessment tool: Gartner’s ITscore.  From Gartner: “Gartner’s ITScore is a tool that quantifies the maturity of both the IT organization as a provider and the enterprise as a consumer of information technology. Enterprise and IT leaders can use ITScore to identify and remedy constraints on their ability to leverage IT.

Roles (ie. assessment questionnaire areas)

• Enterprise Perspective
• Application Organization
• Business Intelligence and Performance Management
• Business Process Management
• CIO Perspective
• Enterprise Architecture
• Infrastructure and Operations
• IT Sourcing and IT Vendor Management
• Program and Portfolio Management
• Security and Risk Management

For more information, there is a video at: http://my.gartner.com/html/itscore/itscore-video.html

Thanks for reading,
Terry and Doreen

We agreed to have discussions of readings of interesting or provocative articles relating to technology in education, libraries, strategic planning, etc., that are germane to the work we do in LIS.  We will establish a rotating schedule so that every 2 weeks one of us will propose readings as a starting point for conversation around a topic.  Mike will set the schedule.

We reviewed the proposed SLA response times for each workgroup, the purpose of which is to keep customers involved and updated without having to constantly request status updates.  We looked especially at groups whose response times seemed especially long, and talked briefly about the need for measurement tools to track response times (the new incident tracking system will help, but some groups track requests outside of that system).  Within the next 2 weeks, all area directors will talk to workgroup managers about the recommended SLA times.  We’d like workgroups to conform to our recommended response times whenever possible, but realize that there may be completely valid rationales for longer times in some cases.

We approved a request from the Research & Collections Services area to hire a temporary, part-time reference librarian for the 2012-2013 academic year to assist with reference coverage while the R&I group is operating at reduced staffing levels.

Reviewed the goals/projects summary for the next 3-6 months plan.  We have yet to see all the potential goals resulting from the annual planning process, but we reviewed the latest quarterly project list for accuracy and completeness.  As a corollary to this, the ADs are going to reestablish our Friday meeting series focusing on team issues and team update.  This will be in partial fulfillment of one of our AD team goals.

Reviewed updates from each director.  Among the highlights:

• We will be discussing issues around curricular software support at our Sept. retreat
• Mary will convene a kick-off meeting of technical support staff who work outside of LIS.  Details (frequency, etc.) will be determined by the group at their first meeting.

Thanks for reading,
Terry

The Communications Task Force presented to the ADs their communications plan for LIS.  The plan calls for the distribution of a survey to LIS staff to gather information about communications issues within the department.  The results of this initial survey would then be analyzed to produce a second round of information gathering survey to gather more specific information about communications issues within LIS.  After discussions with managers and staff, the Task Force would make recommendations for solutions to the ADs.

This proposal was approved by the AD group, and the task force will now bring the proposal to managers at their Aug. 9 meeting and to staff at the Sept. 19th All Staff meeting.

The ADs decided to re-establish Friday morning meetings with (or about) teams.  Roughly once a month, a team will meet with the ADs to provide them with updates.  During meetings with no teams scheduled, the ADs will use the time to focus on issues relating specifically to the team program and team work.

The LIS Summer Potluck Picnic will be held on Aug. 22, 3:00 pm, at Hadley Barn.  The library will be open during this event, so managers should make sure they have student staff available to cover library services areas.

Thanks for reading,

Terry & Doreen