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INFORMATION/ACTION ITEMS OUT OF LIBRARY MANAGEMENT TEAM 8/14/14

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INFORMATION ITEM:  Jim Cogswell gave a report from the Council of Deans meeting and his recent meeting with Interim Provost Ken Dean.  Both meetings discussed MU’s unknown budget situation due to funds withheld from the University at the state level.  An end result of the situation will not be clear until the state general assembly’s veto session in September.

INFORMATION ITEM: MU Libraries All Staff Meeting.  Jim sent a note to the Chancellor thanking him for speaking at the All Staff Meeting on August 12th.  The Chancellor continues to enthusiastically support the idea of student fee for the Library and says he will help promote and communicate.

ACTION ITEM: LMT resolved to make the Student Library Fee Proposal the main topic of discussion for the next LMT meeting, Tuesday, August 19th. They also set a goal of having a completed proposal to give to the Chancellor by the end of August.  The most recent draft of the document was distributed and a short discussion ensued about possible revisions and strategies. 

INFORMATION ITEM:  A discussion ensued about how to lower library expenditures in light of the current tight budget and the dim prospects of large increases anytime soon.  Topics discussed included:

·         Asking Library employees to turn in travel request forms by October 1st of each year so that library Admin can consider requests in light of the annual budget. 

·         How to incentivize the use of work study students over Salary and Wage students.

·         How, if the need arises, to approach staff reassignments across divisions due to future personnel needs. 

·         How to identify which actions and decisions will have a large enough budget impact that they are worth pursuing despite time, complication and potential fallout from students, faculty, peers and employees.

INFORMATION ITEM: Friday, Jim will attend a quarterly TelePresence meeting of the four campus Chief Information Officers and UM Library Directors.  Jim expects MOBIUS and its relationship to the MERLIN cluster to be an agenda item and is not clear of this group’s awareness of the various issues.  He will report back at next week’s LMT.