LFSA Exec - Minutes - May 14, 2026

LFSA Exec Meeting 

Thursday, May,14, 3:00 – 4:00PM, Teams   

  

In attendance:  

Exec Members: Josh Bolick, Rebecca Schroeder, Melissa Mayhew, Elspeth Healey, Sydney McFadden, Amanda Schlumpberger  

Faculty and Staff: Warren Lambert, Sara Outhier, MC Mack, April Friedl, E Durham

  

Absence: N/A   

   

Minutes 

 

  • Approve March Minutes [link] 
    • Syd motioned to approve
    • Rebecca seconded
    • Motion carried, minutes approved
  • Review state of charges from LFSA General Assembly (Fall 2025)
    • Salary & Benefits
      • Voted to resolve as LFSA because faculty has union and LSA will discuss bringing back 
      • Passed and Carol approved
      • With Committee on Code right now 
    • Nominating & Ballot 
      • Tracking faculty service approved 
      • LFSA voted to approve 
      • Carol approved
      • With the Committee on Code right now
  • Committee Reports    
    • CRSA: Elspeth 
      • CRSA met last month to discuss GRF applications. They received two and fully funded both: $7,650 to Jason Dean for a project titled Royal Greenwich Observatory Papers and Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis of 1712; and $7,190.40 to Whitney Baker for her project Chasing Rainbows: A Scientific Exploration of Colored Bookbinding Components. They sent those on to the KU Office of Research in mid-April. Assuming nobody sends another request between now and the beginning of the next fiscal year they will be able to fund in budget. They will probably meet just one more time this year, to finalize the annual report and discuss who’s taking over the committee next year.
    • N&B: Rebecca 
      • In midst of putting ballots together for governance. Most positions are filled at this point. The N and B committee is down to two members, so they will need some additional help
    • Code: Amanda 
      • See above notes on LFSA charges updates 
      • They are working on it 
      • Next year there is work that will need to be done to get the code cleaned up and fix formatting
  • Chairs meetings with Carol updates 
    • LSA Chairs
      • Went over Talent development fund and that is secured mostly for next year
      • Talked about student appreciation and how it needs a new home outside of LSA
      • Talked about the open forum with dean and how that went 
      • Talked about supervisor forum restarting in the fall because there has been discrepancy among supervisors, so this will help get consistency in the units/departments. It is supposed to be ongoing and intentional learning for supervisors 
      • Rich is creating a document for budget 101 in response to the funds we used and how to use them 
    • LFA Chairs 
      • Debriefed from the LFA Assembly 
      • Couple changes to code and other docs coming down the pipeline. They will go to ballot and faculty vote soon 
      • LFA will be doing a lot of policy alignment from the union
        • Workload policy that needs to be created
        • Promotion and tenure and PTTR
        • Post Tenure Review
        • Evaluations 
      • Touched base with Carol on how new faculty eval process went, and she said it worked 
      • Talked with some complexity with the bargaining unit of the union e.g. you don’t need to be in union to be represented by the union/contract. There is also a quirk where people with “Head” in title are union members despite them supervising faculty in the union. So, there is complexity there and they will need to figure out how that will all work 
      • Some discussion about stipends for chairs of LSA and LFA. Carol said she isn’t in favor of this. Josh and Elspeth discussed with Carol that staff should have some sort of incentive since service isn’t necessarily part of their job roles 
      • Union contract created new minimums, everyone else got 1%, and then there was a pool to support compression. They discussed how it was distributed. 20% across the board, 40% according to years of professional experience, 40% according to years in current rank with maximum caps 
      • Chairs resurfaced the conversation on identifying things to stop 
      • Briefly touched on climate survey: 
        • Relatively inconclusive 
        • 22 responses 
        • Things going well: appreciation for each other 
        • Things going not well: frustrations about transparency 
        • Provided raw data to Carol and shared with faculty and LSA chairs
  • General LFA and LSA updates 
    • Nothing additional to add outside of above updates from LFA
    • LSA has paused their own climate survey until summer for now to use it to help set fall 
    • The Bus trip is coming up in June 
    • Zine party: hasn’t been lost, but likely something coming up in the summer
    • Discussion occurred about the role of governance and communication with admin/leadership. Group discussed importance of referring to the code for scope of role and leaning on that 
  • Library Governance Committee Service Appreciation Lunch 
    • Funding to support governance work 
    • One way has been to use it for food at assembly meetings and the recruitment event 
      • Discussion on how to improve recruitment event for next time such as sign up sheet and info on screens, and having it earlier in the semester 
      • Elspeth will put on agenda for the next meeting with Carol finding a way to ensure LFSA funds are from endowment funds to ensure we can use it in ways that are most useful to the organization. Discussion on how to also work inside the parameters of the funds so not lose the funds occurred. 
    • All who served on a library committees or ad hoc committees are all invited to this appreciation lunch
    • Taco Zone is catering 
      • All is gluten free (minus dessert, we can pick up something that is gluten free dessert), and there is a vegan option
      • They need a final order by May 25th (memorial day), Josh will firm it up by the end of next week (Friday, May 22nd)
  • Final report/s upcoming 
    • Josh reminded everyone that we need to do final reports. There is a template that can be used for them found here: https://lfsa.ku.edu/libraries-governance-structure
    • Every governance committee needs to do a report 
      • Question was raised if this is only for elected committees?
      • It was clarified that a short report is requested for non-elected committees too 
  • New Business
    • Syd: working on a guide for newly elected governance folks (staff), and requested people send ideas and input to Syd 
    • Issue about leadership notes not updated on sharepoint; it on the next agenda with Carol to be addressed too
    • Transitional meetings: Amanda will add one for LFSA to the calendar
  • Conclude  
    • Meeting adjourned at 3:59pm