Minutes

Present: Ben Franckowiak, Board Liaison; Lyn Condron, Tufts; Mark Alpert, Brandeis; Margaret Manion, UMass Lowell.

Because the previously chosen date, May 28, is the Tuesday right after Memorial Day weekend, it was decided not to hold the Project Management program on that date. Lyn agreed to consult the speaker, and arrange an another date, probably during he previous week or the week after. [Date has been since set for May 7, Tuesday at Tisch Library at Tufts]. This program will take approximately four hours, and it was decided not to serve lunch, but to have light refreshments instead. Since attendance is limited to eighteen, the program may repeated at a later date. Lyn will work out the date and time with the speaker and inform the task force, and Mark will make up the flyer, which will be emailed to the consortium list. Because the majority of people in Consortium libraries are not on blc-l, we will ask the BLC office to duplicate and distribute paper flyers for posting at the member libraries.

Lyn distributed a model for the Tufts University Libraries staff development website. At the next meeting we will work out a prototype plan for the staff development webpage, which will be mounted on the BLC Portal and decide on which links should be included. Rather than direct links to specific events and conferences, ours will have links to the organizations sponsoring them, since that would make the site easier to maintain. For some large and important organizations, e. g. ALA, there will be links to divisions or chapters. It was decided that some links to commercial sites may be included, but there will be a general disclaimer to the effect that inclusion does not constitute an endorsement. We plan to prepare this prototype in Word to send to the board and understand that the BLC Office will put it up on the Web or hire someone to do it. We might circulate the prototype to the Staff Development Community of Interest for suggestions and comments.

A discussion of our relationships to the Communities of Interest , especially the Staff Development Community of Interest followed. We might utilize this Community of Interest, in particular, as a focus group and sounding board, and expect to work with the other Communities of Interest as well in developing programs. Members brought up problems related to not having representatives from all the consortium institutions on this task force. It may be difficult to arrange for teleconferencing and holding programs at institutions without a staff member on the task force, since we might lack familiarity with the facilities and contact people at these institutions. We could also be may seen as outsiders at these institutions and thus charged higher rates or given less cooperation by people outside the libraries. Also, task force members may not be knowledgeable about the staff development needs or potential speakers at other institutions. We welcome the support of the communities of interest and hope that they will be able to help us in addressing some of these problems. There was some discussion as to whether the task force would continue after June, and if so, in what form. Planning work for fall programs should begin no later than the summer.

Margaret distributed copies of the results of the survey and will email them to the task force.

Some ideas for potential programs are Information Literacy, Faculty/Librarian interaction.

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, April 17, at Tufts. The alternative date is Friday, April 19.

1. We will send changes to minutes via e-mail.

2. Ben discussed his participation and views of the reorganization of the BLC teams.

3. Survey-"best practices" was a consistent (if you count all 4!) theme, as was sticking the BLC goals first. We never finalized if we'll resend the e-mail soon or wait till later. Many BLC task forces are sending surveys, so we may wait till later, or just glean information from what we have.

4. We can be a clearinghouse for all staff development.

5. Lyn discussed Tufts' staff development website, and will keep the TF updated. We might consider requesting somewhat more sophisticated technology than what Tufts can invest right now-e.g., indexing metadata of the annotations, as well as the site names.

6. We might consider doing an inventory of video conferencing capabilities at all BLC institutions.

7. Ben discussed LibQual and its growing importance. Tufts is doing LibQual and may be willing to participate in a program later about how to do it. Ben will check with the Tufts Library Director on LibQual.

8. Ben will check with BLC to see if task forces can have a shared drive or secure portion of the BLC website. In the meantime, all master documents should be sent to Mark and he will keep them.

9. Lyn will update the "Possible Program Topics" list with ideas we discussed, as well as those from the (4!) survey responses.

10. We will consider asking each director to tell us a contact person for staff development at his/her libraries. There is no Staff Development Community of Interest yet, but it has been requested.

11. Pam will do an outline for the report due 3/1/02; we will revise it via e-mail.

12. Lyn will ask Christine Kittle (Tufts) about doing a program on project management. We are unclear if BLC is taking on the responsibility of making all arrangements (location, catering, name tags, etc.). I don't remember anyone saying they'd check on this-Joan, could you?

13. We will not meet on 2/25/02 unless something urgent comes up. Next meeting will be 3/19/02 from 1:30-3:30 at Tufts. Lyn will do the agenda; Margaret will do the minutes.

Mark reported on what he heard from Barbara Preece regarding the Management Council's answers to our list of assumptions presented at their meeting of 1/15/02.
There were comments from individual members of the Council. All of our questions were answered "yes." The comments on the first issue, concerning actual programs for the period through July, included suggestions for getting programming ideas. These were: other task forces, communities of interest, staff members of libraries, and cooperative programming with groups outside the BLC. As yet there has been no roster of Task Force members, so would be difficult at this moment to be in touch with them. The issue of quality control came up in reference to soliciting programming from unknown sources.
Barbara also asked Mark who would be presenting the 5-minute Task Force comments at the BLC celebration on 1/30/02 and that discussion was continued online.

Mark reported on what he heard from Barbara Preece regarding the Management Council's answers to our list of assumptions presented at their meeting of 1/15/02.
There were comments from individual members of the Council. All of our questions were answered "yes." The comments on the first issue, concerning actual programs for the period through July, included suggestions for getting programming ideas. These were: other task forces, communities of interest, staff members of libraries, and cooperative programming with groups outside the BLC. As yet there has been no roster of Task Force members, so would be difficult at this moment to be in touch with them. The issue of quality control came up in reference to soliciting programming from unknown sources.
Barbara also asked Mark who would be presenting the 5-minute Task Force comments at the BLC celebration on 1/30/02 and that discussion was continued online.

Mark suggested that for the next meeting we think about programming in reference to the BLC goals (handout).

Lyn asked that we hold more structured meetings with a tighter agenda. The solution to the agenda is tied in to a rotating schedule for recorders. Pam Perry took minutes today and will be sending those out along with an agenda for the next meeting. Recorders will rotate alphabetically by last name and will be responsible for the agenda for the next scheduled meeting.