LFA Annual Report - Fiscal Year 2018-2019
Library Governance Committee Final Report
Fiscal Year: 2018 - 2019
Committee Name: Library Faculty Assembly Executive Committee
Committee Chair: Lars Leon
Members (with terms): Betsaida Reyes (Vice Chair); Neal Axton (Secretary); Marcella Huggard (Member-at-large); Jill Becker (Assistant Librarian rep.); Angela Rathmel (Associate Librarian rep.); Scott McEathron (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 FY18 LFA Exec)
Ensure LFA’s proposed changes to the Faculty Evaluation Plan are voted on via ballot and, if approved, accepted by the dean.
Done. Revised June 21, 2018 by library faculty vote and approval by the Dean.
Ensure updated Faculty Evaluation Plan is updated on LFA website, LFA SharePoint site, and University Policy Library.
The updated plan is in the University Policy Library, the LFA website, and in SharePoint.
Work with LFSA’s Salaries and Benefits Committee to produce a report on pay equity.
The Salaries and Benefits Committee has worked to understand aspects of this issue to help identify how to best assess. They will finish FY19 with a survey to all faculty and staff to understand which areas to do specific analysis. LFSA Exec is on lead for working with this committee.
Continue to improve LFA secretary’s work flow for managing governance documentation.
Governance secretaries ~ Neal Axton, Sunita Gandhi, Marla Schleuder met with Matt Torres to talk about SharePoint. A decision was made to streamline the minute publishing process by posting to the lfa and lfsa websites directly.
Special Charges Progress/Accomplishment Summary:
Noted above after each special charge.
Other Activities or Accomplishments:
Upon request by an LFA member, we initiated a process which ultimately led to the body unanimously voting at our September 10, 2018 LFA General Meeting to support sending a letter in support of Academic Freedom for University of California Librarians. (See appendix 1 for the letter.)
LFSA Exec passed to LFA Exec for review the suggestion by a previous Nominating and Ballot Committee to reduce LFA Exec membership. We discussed, presented the idea in the fall, gathered input, and presented a ballot proposal at a spring meeting. We had a good discussion and the body voted to pass the proposal back to LFA Exec for further work. That resulted in current membership requirements being in place for FY20 elections.
We have had very few Budig, and Anschutz-Budig Award nominations in recent years. We had several discussions on this topic and explored ways to increase nominations.
Interim Provost Carl Lejuez formed focus groups of faculty to comment on his new budget model. Betsaida and Lars attended two sessions following recommendation by Cabinet as faculty representatives to this effort. They reported back via open meetings and via email to gather input. They kept LSA Exec leadership informed as well.
We tried use of Zoom for our LFA spring general meeting in Watson 455 where we could utilize the Polycom system. Great sound reported with the need to not pass the mics around next time. We just need to scatter them around.
Potential Charges for Future Committees/Recommendations:
Review how the Budig and Anschutz-Budig Awards nomination process went after increased emphasis.
FY19 governance secretaries, in conversation with Matt Torres, felt LFA website should serve as the central location for public governance information. Secretaries would send minutes to Archives by email. Consider doing a brief check-in on this process.
Review recommendations made by the body at our spring special meeting as to how to handle the Nomination and Ballot Committee recommendation to reduce the number of members on LFA Exec. Consider doing this in the fall to give plenty of time before the next cycle of elections IF a decision is made to, and voted on, to reduce the number.
We support SLPTR’s recommendation for future SLPTR to create a one-page best practices guide or checklist for creating post-tenure review files.
LFA Exec supports the recommendations made in the LCPT FY19 Annual Report. We appreciate all of their file review and taking the time to work up these recommendations that should help future candidates.
Please review the Committee’s portion of the Library Governance website and the Code. Does itneed updating/correcting?
- Only has LFA Exec Annual Reports from FY17 and FY18. Consider adding more years.
- We failed to add FY19 Special Charges. Consider adding FY20 when they are ready.
- None at this time.
Prepared by: LFA Exec
Appendix 1
September 10, 2018
President Janet Napolitano
University of California
1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor
Oakland, CA 94607
Dear President Napolitano:
The librarians represented by the Library Faculty Assembly of the University of Kansas Libraries write in support of academic freedom for librarians in solidarity with our colleagues in the University of California system. Academic freedom is vital to the successful functioning of academic librarianship.
We depend on it when we publish scholarship critical of for-profit academic publishing practices; when we collect, curate, exhibit and provide access to controversial content; when we highlight marginalized people and issues in teaching information literacy. Without the protection of academic freedom, these and many other vital functions are undermined, to the detriment of our students, faculty, staff, institution, profession, and society.
We therefore urge you to instruct UC negotiators to grant academic freedom to university librarians as they rightly deserve and have requested.
Sincerely,
Lars Leon, Chair
Library Faculty Assembly Executive Committee
University of Kansas Libraries
cc: UC Regents regentsoffice@ucop.edu