AJCU Library Deans and Directors Conference
Annual Business Meeting
April 13, 2011
Loyola Marymount University


PRESENT:  Kathleen Allen-O’Connor (Gonzaga), Margaret Auer (Detroit Mercy), Barbara Boehnke (Canisius), Kristine Brancolini (Loyola Marymount), Tyrone Cannon ( San Francisco), Amy Ensor (Xavier), Ivan Gaetz (Regis), Laurie Hathman ( Rockhurst), Gentry Holbert (Spring Hill), Charles Kratz (Scranton), Michael LaCroix (Creighton), Linda LoSchiavo (Fordham), John McGinty (Loyola Notre Dame), Evelyn Minick (Saint Joseph’s), Joan Overfield (Fairfield), Liz Salzer (Santa Clara), Jeanne Somers ( John Carroll), Gail Staines (Saint Louis)

Janice Welburn (Marquette) and Artemus Kirk (Georgetown) attended the conference but were not able to attend the business meeting.

GUESTS :   Anne Krakow (Saint Joseph’s), Tobylynn Birch ( Loyola Marymount)

RECORDER:  Evelyn Minick served as recorder, Margaret Auer and Jeanne Somers will be readers.

MINUTES:  Minutes of the previous meeting were approved as sent, Evelyn Minick moved, Liz Saltzer seconded, motion passed.

AJCU DIGITAL PROJECT UPDATE:  John McGinty reported the Content DM license Loyola Notre Dame has been sharing to host the AJCU digital project is running out of space. For a bit of history, John started the collaborative photo project with his library’s Content DM subscription as a way to get the project started quickly. We are now at the point where we either purchase additional software capacity, or move the project to another location with more space.

Several libraries reported that they have unlimited Content DM licenses (Gonzaga and SLU) but we suspect it is not legal to host a consortial repository on the license of a single institution. John has had discussions with AJCU headquarters to see if they could contribute to a larger license, and he will be also getting pricing for a hosted solution. AJCU is not an OCLC members so any new software would need to be ordered by a OCLC member institution.

The purpose of the project was to demonstrate the quality of Jesuit education. The Implementation Committee including Charles Lockwood (Loyola Notre Dame) Drew Kupsky (Saint Louis), Matt Blessing (Marquette), Carmen Mitchell (Loyola Marymount), Trish Nugent (Loyola New Orleans), and Russ Davidson (Detroit Mercy) developed metadata definitions and has offered a list of possible future steps, including University Histories, eminent scholars, etc. The Implementation Committee is now looking for direction from the Deans through the Steering Committee. John sees this site serving as a “collection of collections” at AJCU institutions.

ACTION STEPS:

POSSIBLE SERVICE PROJECT:  Bob Seal referenced Fr. Nikolas article which challenges Jesuit Higher education members today and asks how libraries could help in other parts of the world, such as could there be a portal to open access journals. Bob asked that we read the document and think about whether the libraries could get involved, and asked the topic to be put on the agenda for Boston meeting. Tyrone mentioned Jesuit Library Directors doing a mission trip, Bob would like to develop a mission based project to share what we have been blessed with. Jeanne suggested going a day early to Boston and do some mission related project with the IT folks.

ACTION STEP:   The group charged the Program Committee for the 2012 Conference in Boston to work with their IT counterparts and explore an opportunity for joint action. Margaret Auer asked Bob Seal to outline some possible things we could do.

Margaret sends Theology journals to Jesuit U. in Tanzania. John mentioned Chilean University, Alverto Heratao was supported with access for 2 years to business database. Gail, identified Phillipine librarians who come and pick from discards and sends back in shipping containers. Bob works with the Matteo Ricci center in China, funding a librarian to go and teach there, use archiving skills.

Loyola Chicago is beginning a campus in China; Beijing Center needs help in taking care of rare books.

AJCU VIRTUAL REFERENCE REPORT:   Syed Khan, Chair of the AJCU Virtual Reference Steering Committee provided a report on their activities which was delivered by Susan Gardner (Loyola Marymount). Seventeen AJCU colleges and universities are currently participating in the AJCU Virtual Reference Project and there is a designated service coordinator at each school. The service contracts with Tutor.com for use of software and for coverage from midnight to 9 AM, Eastern Standard Time, weekend and evening hours, summers, and holidays. Tutor.com answers approximately 40% of AJCU questions using service librarians with earned MLS degrees. The VR steering committee monitors question transcripts for quality control. The fee structure is as follows.

Large Libraries

$6053

8 hours of coverage

Medium, Libraries

$4035

6 hours of coverage

Small Libraries

$2018

4 hours of coverage

Each school also pays $12 per year for scheduling software.

The most popular chat hours are weekday afternoons between 2 – 5 pm, and 9 – 10PM. 25% of questions come in during the night hours and on Sundays. The average chat session lasts 21 minutes long.
There is an optional satisfaction survey at the end of each interaction. 5,710 individuals took the survey with 95+% recommending the service to a friend; 434 of survey respondents were using service from off campus.

The Steering Committee has the following concerns:

Despite these concerns however, they are recommending that AJCU stay with Tutor.com for the coming year.  Question Point, the only viable alternative, has better features, but costs more and does not offer summer and holiday coverage.  They are very pleased with the Tutor.com customer service, but the 24/7 coverage is number one priority.

Questions:   Laurie asked if it is acceptable for a staff member to handle questions who has an MLS, but is not working as a librarian. Tyrone asked that we reconsider the rule that you have to have an MLS to answer questions; he feels he has paraprofessionals who would do an excellent job. Syed responded that the MLS is a key feature for marketing the program. Gail suggested we consider marketing the Virtual Reference service to Study Abroad programs and particularly university programs on other continents.

ACTION STEP:  Charles Kratz asked that the Steering Committee survey the AJCU institutions again as some schools may want to re-enter the project. Susan will also make her Power Point report available to the group.

CONSORTIAL PRICING PROGRAMS:   Joan will be surveying the group about participation in the WorldCat Collection Analysis program and Jeanne distributed a list of those participating in the purchase of the Catholic Literature and Periodical Index and the Old Testament Abstracts. Jeanne needs to hear by the end of May if institutions want to continue to participate in this group purchase. Ruth Connell at John Carroll is coordinator of this group purchase.

EMERGENCY PLAN:   Evelyn reported that she has added a link for “emergency plans” on the AJCU web site at Scranton and she will post one from Georgetown and one from Saint Joseph’s by the end of the week. The web address of the AJCU Library site is http://academic.uofs.edu/organization/ajcu/ldc.html

FUTURE CONFERENCES:  Bob Seal confirmed that Boston College is happy to host a joint Library /IT
Conference in 2012, and Evelyn Minick invited the group to Philadelphia in 2013.

SUCCESSION PLANNING:   John McGinty reviewed the process he is going through to position his library for the future. Over half of John’s staff are 60 years old or over. He hired a consultant to help target staff and develop an early retirement package. John will retire at the end of next year, and his assistant director has agreed to stay on one year longer for some continuity. The group shared strategies to deal with odd distributions of the ages of staff. Many of us have lots of older staff and some very young staff and no one in the middle. Many of us have very limited career paths for librarians, some offer promotional ladders with increases in salaries attached to each step. Kris talked about the struggle to impart the institutional values in newer staff. Bob talked about our responsibility as leaders to develop people and move them up and out to other libraries.

Program Planning for 2012
The Program Planning Committee will be the Dean at Boston, John McGinty, Jeanne Somers, and Evelyn Minick. The Steering Committee consists of Kris Brancolini (Past Chairperson), Boston Dean (Current Chairperson), and Future Chairperson (location still to be determined.

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