Managers’ Meeting Notes, July 11, 2013

Present: Joe Antonioli, Mike Roy, Carrie Macfarlane, Lisa Terrier, Pij Slater, Joe Durante, Jim Stuart, Rebekah Irwin, Peggy Fischel, Mary Backus, Carol Peddie, Rachel Manning, Terry Simpkins, Joseph Watson, Petar Mitrevski and Doreen Bernier

Announcements:

  • Stacy Reardon has started as Librarian
  • Susan Simmons has started as Business Systems Analyst
  • David Wright has started as Media Services Specialist
  • Brett Wells has started as Computing Specialist II
  • We still have an open positions for Information Security Analyst, an ILL Assistant, and Curator of Special Collections & Archives

Web Help Desk – general discussion of best practices

  • Petar mentioned that Media Services has successfully downsized from 4 tracking systems to 1 with the installation of Web Help Desk
  • WHD is slow at times, especially in the afternoon.  Working to resolve this with the vendor and may need to send our database to them for testing/troubleshooting.  Jim Stuart is also looking into possible causes, but thus far the issue doesn’t seem to be on our network end.
  • Mary Backus indicated that SLA alerts had not been turned on, but will be sent out today.  They had been waiting for a way to exclude events scheduling from the alert systems, since these tickets are often entered far in advance of the event date
  • Anecdotal evidence that WHD is fostering communication between workgroups that hadn’t had much direct contact in the past
  • Templates are being set up in Web Help Desk that can assist customers in viewing our priorities.

Review of LIS Directors Goals:
We held a brief discussion/overview of the LIS Directors goals for FY14.  These goals are:

  • policy review
    • Outcome: Clarity within LIS and cross the College about what policies govern LIS activities and how they are determined
    • Comment: although internal and external policies were reviewed last year, a process for input and feedback should be implemented and inventory should be revisited.
  • internal communications improvements
    • Outcomes: A better informed staff, less confusion about where to go for meeting notes and agendas, decisions made with more input from across the organization
    • Comment: The Internal Communications Task Force will be presenting their recommendations at next week’s all-staff meeting.  Terry Simpkins gave a brief reminder of the top issues raised in last year’s short survey.
  • prioritization
    • Outcome: Clarity within LIS and across the College about how work is requested from LIS, and how LIS priorities are established and communicated.  This goal is based on feedback from some of our constituents across campus.
    • Comment: Should there be representation here from across LIS?
  • re-assess teams
    • Outcome: More effective teams that can achieve important goals and allow for effective work across work groups and areas.
    • Comment: can we implement 360 reviews for our annual performance evaluations, as we do with teams?
  • support for professional development
    • Outcome: A staff that is prepared to support not only existing systems, services, and resources, but also prepared for the fast-moving future.
    • Comment: We are looking at ways to allow a certain number of hours per month for staff to pursue training and professional development opportunities.  A survey will soon be sent out regarding this topic.

In addition to these goals, Mike has four other things that he would like to see LIS pursue:

  • effective meetings: How well run are our current meetings?  What could be done to improve them?
  • project management: Interested in some sort of in-depth, multi-session course on project management to help us develop a common approach and vocabulary for this type of work.  Should there be a project management office? Should we develop some sort of tool kit to assist project managers?
  • 360 reviews for managers: we discussed this last year. Mike would like to see all managers in LIS go through some version of a 360 review on a regular basis.
  • balanced scorecard pilot:  a first pass at establishing quantitative and qualitative metrics for understanding how each workgroup, team, and area is performing.

Next Month’s agenda

  • Semester Startup – around-the-table discussion
  • Teams Assessment

Thanks for readin’!
Terry & Doreen