Spring Assembly Minutes 04/06/2021

LAUC-B Spring Assembly Minutes
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
12pm-2pm; Virtual

Noon to 1pm: Aisha M. Johnson, Ph.D. book talk

Open to all community members

Aisha M. Johnson is the Assistant Professor and Program Director in the Library and Information Sciences Department of North Carolina Central University.  Dr. Johnson discussed her research and recent book, The African American Struggle for Library Equality: The Untold Story of the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program.

1:20pm-2pm: LAUC-B business Meeting

Open to LAUC-B members

A. New LAUC-B members and open recruitments (R. Collins)

  • New Hires: 
    • Adrienne Serra, Digital Project Archivist for the Bancroft Library
    • Anna Sackman, Data Services Librarian
  • Open Recruitments:
    • Director of The Bancroft Library and Associate University Librarian for Special Collections
    • Head of Metadata Services
  • No Separations

B. Treasurer’s report  (J. He)

  • The Treasurer’s report was presented, including the budget for the year 2020-2021 and the current balance.

C. Committee reports

  • Committee reports will be posted to the LAUC-B website
  • No in-person committee reports were presented, other than the Nominations & Elections Committee. 

D. LAUC-B Election (I. Wang)

  • Nominations to be accepted from the floor. There were no nominations.
  • The election slate was announced for the upcoming LAUC-B election. Biographies will be available on the LAUC-B website.

E. Chair’s report or “Reflections on an Extraordinary Year” (R. Collins)

Back in July of 2020, LAUC-B hosted a panel on Collection development and equity in COVID-19 times in response to the focus on collecting e-resources. We endorsed a resolution by the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials highlighting the importance of collecting print materials, especially in underrepresented topics and geographical areas. From there, the LAUC-B Committee on Diversity took on the issue and drafted its own statement specific to Berkeley. LAUC-B endorsed that statement as well. At the most recent Library Town Hall meeting, we heard from AUL for Scholarly Resources, Jo Anne Newyear Ramirez, whose remarks demonstrated that Library Administration has heard our concerns. 

In December of 2020 we honored three of our colleagues, Randy Brandt, Margaret Phillips and Corliss Lee, with the Distinguished Librarian Award. The online reception was masterfully organized by the DLA committee with the invaluable help of Amber Lawrence and the Library Events department.

The LAUC-B Fall Conference is coming up on October 5th and 6th. I want to thank the conference planning committee who’s working so hard to bring us an engaging online conference.

And my concluding remark -- which came to me at about 2:30 this morning as I lay awake -- is “Change is the only constant in life. Let's embrace the opportunities that come with it rather than living in fear of it.”

Many thanks to my extraordinary committee: Naomi Shiraishi, past chair, Susan McElrath, vice chair, Sherry Lochhaas, secretary, Jianye He, treasurer, Tim Vollmer and Anna Sackmann, library reps and Joe Cera, affiliated libraries rep. You’ve all made my job easier so far this year.