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KU Library Support Staff (KULSS) Exec
Meeting Minutes
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Engineering Library – 10-11:30am

PRESENT: Monica Claassen-Wilson (FY06 Chair), Rebecca Claassen (FY06 Vice-Chair), Angie Rathmel (Secretary), Jill Becker (Group 3), Kevin Fussell (Group 2), Denise Swartz (Group 1), Robert Szabo (Group 4)

ABSENT:

Approval of Dec. 1, 2005 Meeting Minutes

Approval of Dec. 1, 2005 Meeting Action Items

WHO? BY WHEN? WHAT?
1. Monica: Next meeting - Find out who to contact about KULSS Exec providing input on Dean candidates DONE (see Dean Search below)
2. Angie: Friday, 12/2 - Send edits of Classified Employee of the Year Award (CEYA) to Monica for updating web DONE
3. Angie: Next meeting - Send draft of email to University HR re: supervisor/search committee policies. (see new action item)

Committee Reports

Diversity Committee
N/A

University Support Staff (USS) Senate
N/A

Minutes from Meeting with Stella and Donna (Dec. 21, 2005).

1. KULSS Exec has been reviewing the guidelines for the Support Staff Employee of the Year Award (SSEYA) and discovered that the selection committee members for SSEYA are recommended by KULSS Exec and chosen by the Dean. We have prepared a list of possible members and would like to provide Donna with information about the role the person in her position has had in previous years.

Purpose / Responsibilities: The Selection Committee for the KU Libraries Support Staff Employee of the Year Award (KULSSEYA) recommends a recipient of the award by considering nomination forms and conducting interviews with the nominators as well as the nominees' supervisors and colleagues.
Membership: The Committee is composed of the Human Resources Officer (non-voting), a representative from KULSS-Exec (non-voting), 4 KULSS employees to include the previous year’s winner, and 1 member of Library Faculty Assembly (LFA).
The 2003-04 committee members are: Kurt Blythe, Billie Conway, Eleanora Drury (Ex Officio), Doug Hatton (last year's winner), Mark Lasnier, Malgorzata Stamm, Sharon Bullard (Ex Officio), and (LFA).
Frequency of meetings: The Committee has meetings for 1-2 months, depending on the number of nominations.

Response:
Stella and Donna would like to coordinate the schedules of all upcoming awards (SSEYA, Distinguished Librarian, Mary Rosenbloom Instructor of the Year) so they would be in sync. The would put our nomination deadline at around Feb 1. An announcement for all of the awards will be sent out in the first week of January. We agreed to send our list of committee nominees to Donna, and to have the KULSS-SSEYA web information up to date by the first week of January.


2. We would like to follow up on our discussion in our last meeting about communication within the libraries:
a. Where are we at with holding focus groups about library internal communication?
b. We would like to see information sent out in a standard format (FYI), even if it is subject to change in the very near future. Possibly under a heading such as “Library Updates”.

Response:
Donna spoke with Bill regarding the focus group on library internal communication, but they decided to wait a couple of months after the IS-wide newsletter comes out to see what the gaps are before pursuing anything library-specific. It was noted that people can contact Allison Lopez regarding with questions and comments about InfoMatters (see the email announcement from Denise Stephens). InfoMatters will contain news information that would have previously been included in FYI.

Updates

Dean Search
- Judith sent email to chair, Steve Hedden re: Library Faculty Assembly (LFA) meeting with him and with the candidates. Monica will copy text and send an email for KULSS-Exec as well. Monica also talked with Barbara Gorman about this.
- No applicants yet. Recruiting will happen at ALA. Robert will also ask at their next meeting for lib-wide meeting and 30 min. KULSS-Exec meeting with the candidate.
- When is Stella’s last day?

SSEYA (Support Staff Employee of the Year)
- COMMITTEE: Becca Claassen (non-voting), Channette Kirby, Eleanora Drury, Mark Lasnier, (Kevin to ask Jennifer Johnson), (Judith Emde to submit name from LFA)
- Management Council announced the change in nomination due date to April 15th. Means we need to have a late meeting in Spring. Monica will forward SSEYA Outline to Donna to give a better idea of what’s involved.

Budget meeting w/ PRC & LFA Exec (3-5pm 05Jan12)
Monica and Kevin will attend. Coming up with the 6 greatest accomplishments and 3 biggest goals. Document will be sent to Provost who then sets priorities for spending. This year the10 page document will be combined Libraries and IS. Provost said tuition enhancement has already been pledged. No new increased money for collections. But, new provost may reallocate money.

Notes from Management Council (1/11/06)

FASAR deadlines and USS evaluation dates (Donna)
Handouts were provided detailing evaluation deadlines. Support staff evaluations are to be returned to the Library HR office by Feb. 22, 2006. The rating period is the day after the end date of the most recent performance evaluation through December 31, 2005.
Donna noted that she is available to provide assistance for supervisors who anticipate difficulties with any of their evaluations.

Endeavor upgrade (Mary Roach)
Mary stated that the upgrade is still moving along. There had been problems with author/title display in the online catalog, but those have been resolved.

Budget process (Stella)
The notice/request for budget process documents came out later than usual, so there has been a rush to get them pulled together. PRC will meet Thursday, Jan. 12 with LFA Exec and KULSS Exec, with the intent of outlining the libraries’ 6 greatest accomplishments, 3 biggest goals, etc. The libraries won’t be submitting an individual document as in the past; it will be IS-wide this year, which creates some challenges, since the document is to be no more than 10 pages long. Stella welcomes any input on the budget by next Wednesday, when she will be meeting with the vice-persons to discuss the IS-wide document.
This year’s challenge is that the Provost has already pledged the enhancement dollars, so we will be writing the document for the future with the hope that the new Provost will actually read it and take action based on our suggestions. He/she may however implement his/her own system and dispense with reading the budget documents altogether. Stella said that our main focus will be on continued support for collections. The current Provost had said that there would be no new money coming in for collections, but didn’t mention that he was considering stepping down. A new Provost presents the opportunity for new money to possibly flow to the libraries, and had we known this would happen, we may not have undertaken the serials review process at this time.

Recognition programs (Scott, Donna)
The deadline for submitting nominations for Support Staff Employee of the Year, Budig Distinguished Librarian, and the Rosenbloom Teaching Award is April 15, 2006. Since this falls on a Saturday, nominations will be accepted until 5 pm, Monday, April 17. There will be links to the 3 awards on the staff intranet under Administration – Awards/Recognition.
All of the awards will focus on outstanding achievement in the past year, not lifetime achievement. Stella encouraged everyone to consider nominating folks for the awards, particularly the Budig award, since it has not been awarded in the past couple of years. She also noted that there are other opportunities to recognize staff, including the Support Staff and Unclassified Employee of the Month awards.
Discussion ensued regarding the difference in structure between the Budig and Rosenbloom awards, and it was pointed out that the Budig award requires a great deal of work on the part of the nominator, while the Rosenbloom award requires work by the nominatee. Scott explained that this parallels similar awards in the KU faculty realm, specifically the Kemper awards (similar to Budig) and the CTE award (similar to Rosenbloom). Donna will send out an email inviting library faculty to participate in streamlining the nomination form/process for the Budig award to make the nomination process less burdensome to the nominator.

USS update – positions (Donna)
KUHR is working on a broadband structure for job classifications for support staff. This will give us the ability to distinguish pay based on performance, both at the time of initial employment and at review time. Eight people will be at a focus group meeting next week to review the Library Assistant and Library Assistant Senior job summaries and provide feedback to KUHR. Everyone is invited to send questions, ideas, etc., to these folks:

Monica Claassen-Wilson
Sarah Couch
Susan Craig
Gaele Gillespie
Carol Jeffries
Miloche Kottman
Lars Leon
Shiela Orth

The same process will be applied to the administrative positions in the libraries. This change provides an opportunity to give a new name to Library Assistant unclassified professionals.
There is some concern that lumping LAI and LAII into one band would be psychologically demoralizing, and might feel like a demotion to LAIIs who have worked so hard for that title.

Other topics
John Stratton requested that items to be included in the latest edition of “What’s New in KU Libraries” be sent to him by January 17.
Alison Lopez is requesting articles for the first IS-wide newsletter, InfoMatters.

Group Reports

Grp1
  • Request from a staff member to address space and noise issues in 2nd floor area.
Grp2
  • N/a
Grp3
  • Amanda Harlan, LAII hired in ILL.
  • Holding a 2-day student training session that is required for student workers on Wed/Thurs before school starts back. Admin wants proof that students are trained.
  • Large temporary coffee cart to be moved to Watson before the start of classes.
Grp4
  • Permanent counter for coffee area expected next week. Writing Center will put in that space where temporary coffee cart was. Counter will be against the wall near the elevators to be near water source.
  • 2-3 trucks a week going out to the annex based on Cataloging getting to the 500 Dewey’s.

Agenda items for Meeting with Stella and Donna (Jan. 25)

  • Orientation Committee progress
  • Staffing of the annex?
  • What are future plans for space (touring with Denise and comments from Staff re: 2nd floor cramming)
  • When is Dean’s last day and will she be here for the award presentations?
  • Repeat announcements of info from Mgmt council
    - solicitations for articles/announcements to Alison Lopez for InfoMatters
    - nomination deadline for awards
    - invitations to send comments to focus group on job banding
Action Items for next meeting:

WHO? BY WHEN? WHAT?
Monica: Friday- Email Donna re: her email to all staff about search committee training. Readdress to USS.
Angie: Friday - Email HR re: search committee training for USS.
Kevin: Tuesday - Get a committee member for SSEYA and send name to Angie.
Angie: Upon above - Send list of names to Donna for SSEYA.
Monica: Friday - Email Donna the Outline for SSEYA.

The next meeting of KULSS-Exec will be January 26, 2005 in Watson.