LAUC-B Spring Assembly
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
8:30 - 10:00 a.m.
Morrison Library
Handouts: Spring Assembly agenda; committee reports
I. Welcome from University Librarian, Tom Leonard
Update 6 weeks after the Early Bird on Budget and Collections:
o Nothing has happened since that meeting that has had a negative impact on the
collections budget.
o Discussions are ongoing with the Committee on Library including a strategic
meeting with the Academic Senate and CAPRA (Committee on Academic
Planning and Resource Allocation).
o There is a general interest in the library budget across the campuses.
o A "budget lunch" was held with the provost. The budget has been well-received
across the board. The library budget sets priories and is well explained. The
positive reception is encouraging, and all the work that went into it is appreciated.
Google has scanned 236,000 volumes for the Google Book Project, mostly Berkeley.
The Open Content Alliance has scanned 59,000. We're getting close to having 8 million
dollars of digitized assets that will belong to all the campuses. Library staff has really
pitched in to make these things happen.
Thursday's Early Bird will focus on the construction in Doe Annex.
The shroud covering the East Asian Library is scheduled to come down this week.
II. Introductions of New LAUC Members (L. Diamond)
I-Wei Wang, Reference Librarian, Law Library
Teresa Stanton, Reference Librarian for Foreign and Comparative Law, Law Library
Claude Potts, Librarian for Romance Language Collections, Doe Library
III. Announcements and Recognition of Retired Members (L. Diamond)
LAUC-B will be sending certificates to recognize the service of Dan Krummes and
Maryly Snow.
Randal Brandt is "retiring" from being webmaster at the end of this year. A call will be
sent out for new webmaster soon. Ideas for new website could include functionality that
would enable updates by individual committees instead of funneling everything through
one person, wikis, blogs, images, etc.
IV. ARL Know Your Copy Rights (K. Munro)
http://www.knowyourcopyrights.org/
The Association Research Libraries has produced a brochure, aimed at faculty and teaching
assistants, to guide people through questions about using licensed, copyrighted materials.
Among the topics covered are fair use, the advantage of linking to instead of copying works, and
special provisions for displaying or performing works in classes (source:
http://www.knowyourcopyrights.org/resourcesfac/kycrbrochure.shtml). Pamphlets are available at
the Main Library, and also from the ARL website (see link above). There will also soon be a link
to the downloadable .pdf from the library website. Having these pamphlets available to faculty,
teaching assistants and librarians is part of an ongoing conversation within the library about how
best to give guidance to patrons without being in the position of giving legal advice.
V. Elections and Call for Nominations (L. Vida)
The slate of candidates for the 2007-2008 LAUC-B Executive Committee positions is as
follows:
o Chair-Elect: Corliss Lee
o Secretary: Jesse Silva, Jean Dickinson
o Treasurer: Jennifer Nelson, David Sullivan
o Library Representative: Evelyn Kuo, Adnan Malik
o Library Representative: Sarah McDaniel, Theresa Salazar
o Alternate Affil Rep: Seyem Petrites
Ballots will be sent out to all LAUC-B members around May 16th with a due date of no
later than June 6th. Election results will be sent to LAUC statewide by June 13th and
officially announced soon after.
Thanks to fellow Nominations & Elections Committee members, and thanks for everyone
agreeing to run.
VI. Distinguished Librarian Award Nominations and Procedures (L. Castillo-Speed)
Reminder that the closing of the nomination period for the Distinguished Librarian Award is May
15th. There is an instant nomination form (it's pink!) that you can use to nominate someone.
Write his/her name on that short form and put in the nominations box. After that, you have until
September 14th to submit a packet, which must include a cover letter and at least three letters of
recommendation. All LAUC-B members are eligible, and there are many ways for librarians to
distinguish themselves. See Distinguished Librarian Award Guidelines.
VII. CAPA Report (J. Gallwey)
CAPA Members in 2006/07 are:
Myrtis Cochran (to November 2008)
James Eason (to November 2008)
Elizabeth Edinger (left UCB, January 2007)
Manuel Erviti (to November l 2009)
John Gallwey (to November 2007)
Susan Koskinen, Chair (to November 2007)
Linda Kawaguchi McLane* (left UCB, March 2007)
Gary Peete (to November 2009)
Christina Tarr** (to November 2008)
*Linda Kawaguchi McLane was mid-year replacement for Elizabeth Edinger as of January 9,
2007.
**Christina Tarr was mid-year replacement for Linda Kawaguchi McLane as of March 1, 2007.
Below are some highlights of CAPA's activities in 2006-2007 (for a full report, please see
commreportsspring2007.pdf)
Peer-Review Workshop held October 3rd, 2006.
Review of position descriptions is ongoing, as are candidate interviews.
57 merit/promotion review dossiers have been received (including 17 from affiliated
librarians) and CAPA has completed review of 34 of these.
VIII. Townsend Library Fellow (L. Diamond, D. Rowan)
No Townsend Library Fellow was selected this year. Lucia to meet with the Director and
Associate Director to discuss this.
Dean Rowan encouraged people to apply for a Townsend Fellowship. Benefits of being a
Townsend Fellow include a sense of collegiality; a glimpse into the process of
scholarship; a chance to see people's projects as they develop; the interdisciplinary
environment. It is a time-commitment and potentially a burden, but if you plan ahead it is
certainly possible to fit it in. Important for librarians to have exposure to the faculty and
graduate students, and it's an opportunity to observe a unique aspect of their work. Your
proposal needn't necessarily be about libraries, it can be about any topic you are interested
in researching. Please do submit a proposal - it is well worth it.
Paul Hamburg thanked the LAUC-B Research Committee for keeping committee
responsibilities on task while he was on leave. He also strongly encouraged colleagues to
apply for research opportunities such as the LAUC Research Grants and the Townsend
Fellowship. He is disappointed that no Townsend Fellow was selected this year, but
stressed the importance of having a librarian in the mix.
This year there were two applicants from Berkeley for the LAUC Research Grant, one of
which was funded.
IX. LAUC-B November 2 conference (A. Urbanic)
Conference Planning Committee members are Allan Urbanic (Chair), Jean McKenzie,
Karen Munro, Dean Rowan, and Jim Ronningen.
For the full report of the Conference Planning Committee's activities, please see
commreportsspring2007.pdf
X. Issues for LAUC May 30 Spring Assembly (L. Diamond)
Statewide LAUC conference bylaws will be discussed.
The feeling is that LAUC bylaws have too much information in them, which makes it
difficult to be a flexible organization. Changes in bylaws appear to be focused on getting
rid of committees that haven't had much to do, or expanding committee charges to give
them more responsibility (e.g. proposal to expand the Diversity Committee's charge to
include recruitment and retention).
As for bylaws themselves, they are proposing getting rid of little rules that belong in rules and regulations and making it simpler.
Linda Kennedy did a great job on making the proposed changes clear, and the purpose
now is not to debate about every little thing, but to approve the general direction towards
making things simpler and clearer. Once that general direction is approved, then the
organization can move to discuss specifics.
XI. Peter Brantley, Executive Director of the Digital Library Federation
DLF website here: http://www.diglib.org/
Peter Brantley's blog here: http://peterbrantley.com/
There is a rapid move towards a new kind of viewing of digital texts that relies on
XHTML. Adobe has been pushing something flash-like similar to the look-inside
feature of Amazon and the Harper Collins page turning feature). Using Google Book
Search you can flip through book using an Ajax-ish feature that makes things more user-
friendly.
Google has agreements with major libraries to make out-of-print books publicly available,
and with publishers to in-copyright materials available via licensing agreements.
Google and Amazon all have huge repositories of digitized books. The issue that we will
face is providing readers/users access to these digitized books.
Traditionally the role of libraries has been to buy books and make them available to
people.
However, even though libraries buy books, they don't own the content of the books, just
the physical book. Before the advent of digitized materials this distinction wasn't so
critical, as there was a limited range of things one can do with a book.
Now we're about to move into the realm of books that are born digital and put out by
publishers. A digital book will likely not simply be the physical manifestation of the paper
book, but will contain embedded links, images or other things that will add value to the
book to make it a richer information source. This added, integrated content will be
consumed in different ways than information in paper books is consumed.
The digital book will be more than just a physical book translated into bytes; it will be a
media commons.Every reader will have a different kind of reading experiences. Books
will become communities.
For libraries it's easier to deal with a physical than a digital item. How do we ensure
access to digital works? Publishers will want to license access to born-digital materials.
However, it is not good to have book content exclusively in the hands of publishers or
Google's repositories. Libraries have to obtain and maintain all of the digital content so
we can ensure access to that item for generations to come and preserve our collective
intellectual history. Publishers and Google can't do that for us. A couple of things are at
the forefront:
Libraries hold wealth of culture, it's one of the reasons we exist.
As we prepare for the move to an environment where we will have to negotiate any kind
of persistent access to materials, we must work to ensure access to the intellectual
production of our society, and to provide that access for free to those who are can't afford
to buy access. The same kind of things publishers are doing for third world countries, we
have to provide the same thing for disadvantaged communities here in the U.S. This
struggle is critical to our mission.
Libraries and publishers must work together to transform publishing and engage each
other with our mutual skills. Libraries and publishers must seize that opportunity. If
publishers aren't willing to engage with libraries in this process, we librarians have to do it
ourselves.
Q & A
Q. It is logical to imagine that books in this new format will incorporate commercial aspects, but
the public rejects overt advertising. How does advertising fit into this?
A. The movement towards born-digital format doesn't presuppose embedding advertisements into
digital books, however there will be a struggle to define what level of advertising will be
acceptable to consumers. For example, in trade publications consumers seem to be open to
advertising other books in books, and not necessarily other projects. One model could be what's
going on with online videos or certain online publications: It could be a pre-ad before you view
the content. That will have to be negotiated in contracts.
Q. There are two kinds of scholarly publishing: textbooks that can sell, and more specialized,
journal publishing. Is there an opportunity for libraries and/or scholarly communities to take over
the more specialized, journal side of scholarly publication?
A. Must get faculty interested in this model. There is certainly an opportunity and it should be
explored.
Q. How do we influence this in a legislative way to favor free, democratic access?
A. There is an entry point for discussion in terms of preservation. If we take the point of view that
the library's job is to preserve the intellectual production of the nation in perpetuity, rather than
try and fight against the commercialization of content production, there are certainly in-roads to
be made. We have to have this sort of presence in D.C.
Q. How does reader behavior enter into this?
A. What will be the next great e-reader device? Multi-media, wireless/cellular networking?
Telecom Italia is developing a flexible scroll that can be unrolled. As those devices become more
prevalent and there is a generations shift in how people consume information, things will
certainly change. As we move towards a more fragmented model of information consumption,
and the expectation becomes that one can comment on a text or engage with an author, that will
force a change as well. Also e-reading devices need to enable more interaction and not be passive.
Q. What sorts of embedded text, besides advertising, could there be? Blogs?
A. Blogs certainly. Google books also provides embedded maps, pie charts and other ways to
manipulate data sets.
Q. Where does the academy go or change as books become less persistent?
A. The academy has to change according to how and what kind of information is produced. How
do we do that? What's acceptable? There will certainly be loss as we make decisions along the
way, but we must adapt.
Q. Where will we find leverage to engage with publishers?
A. We must have people who act as liaisons between libraries and publishers to advocate for
preservation and access. We must rethink what lending is, and how to do that with a digital work.
These are ongoing conversations in which librarians must be involved.
XII. Meeting Adjourned at 10:00 a.m.