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AD Meeting Notes, Aug. 30, 2012

October 3, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

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

The President’s Office has begun efforts to gather information about internal compliance requirements (“things which we require or request of ourselves, office-to-office, in order to get our work done.  Things that used to be able to get done with a single phone call that now requires several forms, paperwork, and follow up”).  Discussed their request for a list from each department of processes that might have the effect of making it more difficult to get work done.

We deferred discussion of  the Curricular Technology Team’s charge until the September AD’s retreat.  A future All-LIS staff open meeting will also be dedicated to how the teams vs. workgroups are working.

We talked about the academic software request process.  Terry will convene a small group (Lisa Terrier, Carrie Macfarlane, Carol, Terry, Mary).

Mike requested agenda suggestions for future LIS meetings (managers, directors retreats, all staff meetings and optional all staff meetings).  Mike will create a draft list and distribute to the ADs for comments.

Thanks for reading,
Terry & Doreen

 

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Area 51 notes, August 23, 2012

September 5, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

Present: Mike, Terry, Chris, Mary, Carol

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

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Area 51 notes, Aug. 3, 2012

August 17, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

Present:  Mike Roy, Carol Peddie, Terry Simpkins, Mary Backus, Chris Norris, Joe Antonioli and Joe Durante

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

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Area 51 notes, July 26, 2012

August 17, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

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

Chris Tangora joined the meeting to discuss the proposed Curricular Technology Team charge:

  • The CTT is the LIS resource for investigating & implementing technology for enhanced teaching & learning.  The team monitors & researches technology trends that lead to this end, and act as the senior LIS resource for consultations with those who are investigating or experimenting with those technologies.

The new charge would shift the team’s responsibility to a primarily advisory role in the investigation of new curricular technologies, and would not be project oriented.  The conversation generation a number of questions, including:

  • How would the team make faculty aware of other technology trends happening elsewhere on campu?
  • How would the team relate to the Innovation Task Forces and the liaison group?
  • What would workflow processes look like for uncovering and evaluating new curricular technologies?
  • How will the team keep abreast of existing technology on campus? Should an inventory be made of already existing technologies and coordinating resources?

There seemed to be general agreement around the basic idea of the charge.  Mike suggested some changes, which we will look at and finalize.

We discussed the idea of participating at some level in the Wikipedia Loves Libraries events, many of which will be happening in October to coincide with Open Access Week.  Given the College’s past complicated history with Wikipedia, Mike felt as though this was worth discussing with Academic Affairs before we dived in.  Once he talks with that group, we will revisit the idea.

Chris distributed a draft memo on confidentiality policies for review.  This document will become the basis of language for the the College Handbook.  We made some suggestions and wording changes, and Chris will follow up with Drew Macan on any HR implications.

We reviewed and discussed the Data Classification Task Force’s proposed policy and procedures documents.

Thanks for reading,

Terry & Doreen

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Area 51 notes, July 19, 2012

August 17, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

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

We discussed the agenda for the AD retreat on July 27. This meeting will be focused on the preparing goals and materials to send to the Office of Planning and Assessment, which is overseeing the goal-setting process for the College this year. We also discussed draft goals for the Senior Leadership Team, and will continue that discussion at the retreat as well.

We also reviewed the status of LIS projects to help Mike prepare his Dean’s Quarterly Report, which identifies some of the primary work LIS is focusing on for the next 3 months. Thanks for reading,

Terry & Doreen

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Area 51 notes, June 14, 2012

July 5, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

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

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

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Area 51 notes, June 7, 2012

July 5, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

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

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

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