Discussion summary

UW Library Strategic Directions Planning Committee

April 17, 2001 (WISLINE teleconference)

 

Present: Paul Moriarty, Ken Frazier, Tony Galt, Lorie Docken, Christopher Goss, Glenda Morgan, Peter Watson-Boone, Jim Bredeson, Ed Meachen, Anita Evans (chair).

 

 

Ed Meachen joined the group for the first part of the meeting and said that this is a fortunate moment with the attention the Board of Regents have paid to Libraries with including them in two rounds of funding.  This is an opportunity to look at how library services are provided with a fresh perspective.

 

Chair Anita Evans introduced participants and briefly reviewed the charge of the committee and a rough timetable.  The timetable includes: an update for the April CUWL meeting in Platteville; a summer of gathering input and writing; and a final report ready for Fall 2001.  Documents will be posted on the Web for discussion and feedback throughout the process.  She indicated that the final product would cover two phases: one, of specific goals for the next biennium and the second, of specific links to UWS budget for those goals.  The planning document is intended to cover initiatives primarily for the next two years.

 

After discussing how to proceed, the group began with the Strategic Directions for 2000-2005 for UW Libraries document, approved by CUWL in February 2000.  Frazier, the primary author of that document, quickly stated that  the 2000-2005 report was a revision of an earlier document and he feels no great ownership of it.  He says it is somewhat out of date already and would need line-by-line revisions.  Evans suggested it might be best to keep it on the back burner for the present and refer back to it as needed, and instead proceed on an information gathering phase, the “buoyant” stage perhaps?

 

Frazier stated that the group needed to move along quickly and not dig too deeply in gathering information as background.  Moriarty agreed and said he likes the 2000-2005 report and the overall visions that it encompasses.  Watson-Boone and Docken both added that they thought it was still a valuable document to work from, but we do need to add mostly specifics to fulfill those visions and see how they would line up with biennial budget emphases.

 

The group next floated ideas on assessing the overall changes in the UW environment(s) and how to get a handle on trends and expectations.  Frazier said that it is vital to make a current assessment of what’s changing and what’s new across UWS.  Watson-Boone provided an example, from the digitization committee he chairs, that those digitizing prototypes are becoming a reality in a permanent collection sense.  Docken asked about student changes in population/demographics; the rapidly changing delivery services; electronic reserves.   Morgan and Frazier both wondered about the extent of electronic reserves and the scale at which it is being used.  Is it tied to courseware?  How many campuses are actually using it very much?  Docken pointed out that the  Academic Library Survey results, although not current-year numbers, could already help with some of that background; she will review that and other information that may already be currently compiled.  Moriarty said that courseware utilities (e.g., Blackboard & WebCT) could be useful in gathering data quickly.  Evans asked if diversity issues are something we want to specifically address, for example.  Or are there some issues that are best left to other parts of UWS?  Galt asked if copyright issues need to be clarified and perhaps addressed centrally?  Watson-Boone asked that the group primarily focus on the role of libraries and not spread ourselves too thinly.

 

 

The majority of the remaining discussion centered on how various pedagogical issues relate to the role of libraries.  The function of courseware utilities, Web portals, e-reserves, authentication of users, and information literacy were each discussed at length. Frazier asked about instructional services broadly and information literacy, specifically, and how things like information literacy standards translate into educational outcomes?   Is this an opportunity to create models across UWS undergraduate education?  Evans said that it is a challenge to explain to university administration the difference between critical thinking and what is encompassed in information literacy; they agreed that the issues are mostly terminology issues, but much the same.  Galt stated a specific example from his students lately, simply, reading and the lack of students’ desire and ability to read.  But he asked if that was too far off-focus for libraries to deal with?  Frazier said that it was not irrelevant at all; libraries have always been hooked to the culture of readership and it is at the core of liberal education values.  How libraries help articulate the goals of higher education, through reading and information literacy, is all a part of the collective enterprise in liberal education.  Watson-Boone argued that he didn’t see libraries, but rather faculty, as the leading agents in this process.  Frazier said that it would be desirable to have libraries play a more extended role in this collaborative effort to achieve the instructional outcomes we’d all like to see.

 

Morgan asked about the role of external influences, e.g., Questia, and other information providers, and how they fit in to the library model.  Docken mentioned for-profit educational institutions. Evans asked if there weren’t more and more partnerships that are blurring the roles in the overall delivery of information.  This also linked into funding issues for UWS.  Frazier said that we all need to do a better job of marketing our services, but overall, we provide information and services much more efficiently than anyone else.  Galt, as a faculty member, praised the recent speed of interloan deliveries.  Frazier noted that faculty/students don’t really care so much where material comes from as long as it’s what they want and arrives in a reasonable time frame.  He mentioned their Library Express service and article delivery to the faculty desktop.  Moriarty added that the “just in time” model is better than “just in case,” at least for funding questions of who owns what in an era of flat budgets.

 

In summarizing, Evans asked what the next steps for the group should be; gathering literature?  Talking to external groups?  CIO’s?  Provosts?  Focus groups?  Citing his experience as a sociologist, Galt said that it might be wiser to define the problem first, then gather the relevant information. Frazier asked if we could identify a small group of peer consortia, which may have similar planning documents that they would be willing to share.  Evans said she would work with Docken on identifying potential peers.

 

Evans asked for a meeting of the committee at the CUWL meeting in Platteville on April 27.  Moriarty said he would set up a 7:30 a.m. breakfast meeting that day before the regular meeting.

 

                                                            Notes by Bredeson