LFA Annual Report - Fiscal Year 2019-2020

Library Governance Committee Final Report

Fiscal Year: 2019 - 2020

Committee Name: Library Faculty Assembly Executive Committee

Committee Chair: Betsaida M. Reyes

Members (with terms): Brian Rosenblum (Vice Chair); Erin Wolfe (Secretary); Carmen Orth- Alfie (Member-at-large); Josh Bolick (Assistant Librarian rep.); Sarah Goodwin Thiel (Associate Librarian rep.); Frances Devlin (Librarian rep.)

Standing Charges:

  • Ensures the orderly and effective operation of LFA
  • Is the first point of contact for any matters referred to the attention of LFA, save those which are specifically assigned to standing committees in the Code and, where appropriate, assigns such matters to standing or ad hoc committees
  • Brings governance issues concerning all faculty and staff to the LFSA Executive Committee
  • Designates a liaison to the Organizational Development Unit and an ex officio liaison to LSA to ensure communication and information sharing
  • Monitors KU governance issues that may affect LFA, including the Faculty Senate and the University Senate Committee on Libraries
  • Takes no action contrary to the desires of the LFA

 

Standing Charges Progress/Accomplishment Summary:

The LFA Executive Committee met regularly, held two general membership meetings, one special meeting, and met the spirit of the Standing Charges.

Special Charges: (As recommended by FY19 LFA Exec)

Reduce the number of LFA executive committee to ease the service burden on faculty

Done. On 11/21/19 LFA held a special meeting were we approved to reduce the number of members on LFA executive from seven to six members thus reducing the service load on all LFA members. The approved motion was sent to ballot were it was approved by majority vote.

Review how the Budig and Anschutz-Budig Awards nomination process went after increased emphasis.

Done. Supervisors were asked to write evaluations thinking of possibly nominating any eligible supervisees to make the process less onerous on their part. Since last fiscal year, we have had multiple nominations for each award.

Work with LFSA’s Salaries and Benefits Committee to produce a report on pay equity.

Not done. LFSA’s Salaries and Benefits Committee did not produce the report.

 

Special Charges Progress/Accomplishment Summary:

Other Activities or Accomplishments:

The coronavirus pandemic in March required LFA executive to be held via Zoom video platform. Business was conducted with relative ease and meetings had regular attendance.

Low morale in the libraries was a salient point of discussion at the fall general meeting. Supervisors were identified as an important resource to help alleviate that problem. The membership, however, felt that administration could facilitate those relationships. However, since the pandemic set in, there has been an increased in communication and engagement with administration thus lessening the issue of morale. LFA exec. praised the dean for his work keeping wellness at the center of discussion. We encouraged him to continue this work as it seems to be assists with the morale issue.

LFSA exec. created a task force to investigate the Library Governance website and SharePoint and inventory missing documentations (meeting minutes, reports, etc.). The task force found that the SharePoint site was created without input from either of the governance bodies. They created a list of recommendations (see attachment). The main recommendation is that SharePoint should be eliminated except for LCPT and SLPTR work.

LFA exec. Secretary, Erin Wolfe, worked diligently to upload all meeting minutes, reports to the Library Governance CMS site for this fiscal year.

Potential Charges for Future Committees/Recommendations:

LFA executive should work within LFSA to appoint a webmaster to handle the upload of documents produced by the various governance committees.

LFA executive chair should make sure that the incoming chair has all necessary documents (meeting minutes, reports, etc.) required to conduct general meetings, etc. in order to avoid delays in scheduling. This will require a change to the Code.

Please review the Committee’s portion of the Library Governance website and the Code. Does it need updating/correcting?

  • Not at this time.

Prepared by: LFA Exec