Present: Michaelyn Burnette, Elizabeth Byrne (chair), Myrtis Cochran, Carlos Delgado, Jan Carter, Jim Church, Manuel Erviti, Paul Hamburg, Dayna Holz, Amy Kautzman, Shayee Khanaka (recorder), David MacFarland, Adnan Malik, Carrie McDade, Steve Mendoza, Mari Miller, Jim Ronningen, Lilian Castillo-Speed, David Sullivan, Allan Urbanic, Linda Vida, Kathryn Wayne, Bruce Williams
Announcements:
Affiliated Librarians and members of the Social Sciences Council were welcomed. P. Hamburg of an event he has been planning, Celebrating Dahlia Ravikovitch 1936-2005, which will be held in the Morrison Library, Thursday, March 9, 2006 at 7:30 p.m. Bancroft's Centennial Exhibit will remain on display at the Berkeley Art Museum until December.
Council Reports:
Administrative Services Council (J. Carter):
Kronos: upgrade from version 3.4 to 5.1 is scheduled for late in the spring after the end of the semester. The new version is completely web-based.
Performance evaluations: The Chancellor wants a standard, merit-based, structured method in place by this fall. Campus has issued guidelines to this effect. Current library procedures are, for the most part, already in compliance with the new guidelines. Among the changes, all annual evaluations to be conducted at the same time. Currently, library employees are evaluated in two groups based on alphabetical order.
Doe Annex Seismic Project: An Early Bird is scheduled for March 10 to update staff of the progress of this project.
Budget update: Campus budget calls have gone out from the Chancellor. The library will be receiving funding ear marked for raises and possibly a few specific projects.
Security issues: A new Library Security Committee is being formed to deal will security issues in all the libraries.
Technical Services Council (B. Williams):
The council discussed CDL’s Bibliographic Services Task Force Report from a cataloging standpoint. The procedures and programming for withdrawing copies from Melvyl records with multiple holdings (same Campus) seems to be more complex. Programmers have not yet figured out how to deal with this issue.
Collections Council (D. Sullivan and S. Hinojosa):
Bridge funding requests have already been decided and distributed. Requests for one time funding for major purchases will be discussed in March 7th meeting.
Discussion Bibliographic Services Task Force Report (BSTF) lead by A. Kautzman:
Background: In December 2004 conference Call, The University Librarians asked SOPAG to review the future of bibliographic services and rethink procedures currently in practice. In February 2005, an exploratory meeting was held, in which around 40 people from U.C. campuses participated. From this meeting SOPAG developed a Charge and then a group, named Bibliographic Services Task Force (BSTF) was charged with reviewing current practices and making recommendations to improve them.
The task force looked into bibliographic service procedures and practices in all UC campuses and noted that many campus libraries are duplicating each other’s tasks and procedures.
Also; the group examined how users search for information in library catalogs vs. popular search engines such as Google and Amazon what works, what doesn’t and what is transferable into the library world. In library catalogs, a patron must follow several steps to achieve desired results. By contrast, a Google patron can achieve similar results in one step, much of the time. Another example would be to incorporate ONIX records from publishers, such as , Amazon does as a way of incorporating useful metadata.
The task force examined many tools for enhancing library research. Among these ideas were the advantages of incorporating the library into course management tools such as Black Board , Web CT, and Sakai. Interesting aspects of catalogs were also highlighted as examples of where the library could move: redlightgreen.org, the NCSU catalog, etc.
Recommendations of BSTF are grouped in four segments:
Enhancing search and retrieval by providing easy and comprehensive access to collections, among other things
Rearchitecting the OPAC by creating a single ILS for the entire UC system; shared central file of UC metadata
Adopting new cataloging practices and eliminating duplicate processes across U.C. campuses
Supporting continuous improvement through on going process of reviewing and evaluating practices and procedures
Concerns from Arts and Humanities Council members included the following:
Local files that are unique maybe obscured by the new system. A. Kautzman responded that some local control may be lost but we would gain other richness. Of course, until a system is examined and chosen it is impossible to truly answer detailed questions.
Googlization is dumbing down of knowledge. Quality of research will suffer as a result of this. Amy pointed out that current user behavior is based on Google and Amazon practices, and, that libraries should consider adapting these changes to a research collection with the ability to search the whole bibliographic enterprise (articles, archives, books, images, data, etc). The new system will not be simply based on popular search engine practices, but would need to reflect academic needs and interests
Adding another layer of bureaucracy to an already cumbersome one, could slow the flow of materials even further, especially a bureaucracy like CDL Amy responded that we should not make any assumptions that CDL will be running the next stage of the catalog. Everything is up for discussion.
The full BSTF report is available online at, http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/.
Comments and concerns should sent to Bernie Hurley by March 21st. The next UC-wide meeting will be held in May to plan the next step.
Go to Arts & Humanities Council minutes