2012 CTLC Inaugural Planning Meeting

The Inaugural CTLC Planning Meeting was held on August 23, 2012 at the Unversity of North Texas.

The meeting summary notes were originally distributed on the CTLC Listserv.

  1. Review of agenda and introductory discussion of the need for this consortium, what will differentiate it from other groups, what it can accomplish.  This is an introductory brainstorming conversation, with decisions differed until the relevant points later in the day.
    1. Areas of commonality among the representatives
      1. Assessment
      2. Facilities renovations
      3. Collaborative purchasing/vendor negotiation
      4. Strategic planning initiatives
      5. Staff swaps, internships and other creative staff works
      6. New databases
      7. How to work with clientele
      8. Needs for education—retraining and new curriculum
      9. Events of joint interest
  2. Update on TCAL Texshare task force developments (Bobbie Long), discussion of CTLC member institution stances on the future of Texshare, and opportunities for collaboration on cost sharing of Texshare and other purchased or licensed materials.’
    1. Issues
      1. We’re okay through the next year, but after that there will be severe budget and funding issues
      2. Amigos
        1. They are looking to provide discounts, but they can’t give prices without having definite numbers of institutions using them, and institutions can’t say for sure if they will use Amigos until they know the costs.
        2. They seem to be coming in second to other consortia in providing sizeable discounts.
        3. There is also a disincentive when looking at the Texshare task force’s pie chart and seeing that they would be paying for overhead, membership, etc.
      3. Community Colleges
        1. They are gaining more attention, but receiving even less support and funding.
      4. Lobbying
        1. There may be an issue using University resources to lobby, but the university should be able to mobilize communities. Universities can educate others on what the issue is and maybe we can get someone to lobby on our behalf. Raising awareness isn’t the same as politicking; we have to do something.
        2. TLA has a direct lobbying committee that could contribute to the conversation.
        3. Language for the TLA lobbying is changing some.
      5. Moving forward
        1. We shouldn’t think of this as a contingency plan, but just a plan.
        2. If we can create a non-profit or a consortium to control the governance of all of this, we can become a group with a general consensus to dramatically drop prices by narrowing the options and spreading the costs.
  1. Opportunities for leveraging staff training and education events, staff development series, and other jointly organized events.
    1. What makes this group different from the Phoenix group?
      1. Drivability and diversity of library and institution types
      2. Phoenix hasn’t meets too sparsely and hasn’t had a large meeting in quite some time—we need to figure something out now and execute it over the next year.
      3. But Phoenix already has some of the structure and tactics we are looking for. We just need a revamped, more efficient version.
        1. Could we evolve Phoenix into CTLC?
        2. We could:
          1. Meet multiple times a year and have 2-3 larger meetings
            1. For example, we could have a mix of everybody on one day and the affinity groups meet at different times
          2. Get on the same software and programs as each other so that we are on the same page, can help improve each other’s forward movement, and foster/share more knowledge and resources

**The special interest group seemed more beneficial as far as improving efficiency and a basis for standard procedures

  1. The biggest advantage of this group is not just for the faculty, but also for the students and staff (along with members of the communities surrounding non-university libraries).
    1. Everything being said in this meeting (and subsequent meetings) needs to be shared with other faculty and staff so they know that challenges are being recognized and we do have options and opportunities for growth and success. We just need some standardization to build upon and innovate from.
  2. Assessment and ACRL
    1. We could look into providing a collaborative session on assessment with Megan Oakleaf.
    2. We could have smaller discussion with a larger discussion on what we need from assessment.
    3. There are a few assessment groups that we could either work with or model ourselves after.
  3. How could we leverage investments?
    1. Facility renovations, events, etc.
    2. Have a conference focused on Academic Library Space Planning and use other projects as a model
  4. Sharing benchmarking data
    1. The Community colleges shared data among 3 systems.
      1. It was optional to report the data to the ACRL study.
  5. The need for continuing education
    1. We should think about doing 2-3 weeks job swaps to learn more and further build knowledge.
      1. Similar to the “Senior Fellows” at UCLA
    2. There is growing turnover due to overqualified applicants coming in and moving on.
      1. This could be a problem if these overqualified workers are not invested enough in cultivating the knowledge and improvement of the libraries.
      2. But this could also be something to be grateful for—the turnover allows for fresh minds to continuously add something new to the conversations and invigorate work efforts.
    3. We need models in place to provide upward mobility, classes and education opportunities, etc. to encourage all of our workers (short-term and long-term).
    4. We also need to look at the initial education
      1. Our students need to be able to package, and REPACKAGE,  themselves constantly
        1. This requires basic soft skills, reasoning, problem solving, etc.
      2. We need to build more mechanisms to train our students to become worthy applicants. And then we need more mechanisms to train applicants to more aptly take on the work.
    5. As with everything, HR needs to be considered when talking about hiring/training practices.
  1. Next steps, conclusion, etc.
    1. We need to have this figured out by January to plan for the next fiscal year.
    2. Every institution interested in continuing CTLC should appoint a coordinator.
    3. The next meeting will be at some point in the Fall, after Open Access week.
      1. UT Arlington will host and dispense the Doodle Poll.
      2. UNT will develop the contact list (Sian) and the website (Spencer).