The Urbana-Champaign Senate met April 28 and discussed proposed changes in the structure of the University Library and the services it provides. Paula Kaufman, university librarian and dean of libraries, discussed some of the suggestions contained in a recent report and invited members of the Urbana campus community to provide input. Working groups are being formed to assist with planning and implementing recommendations contained in the report, but no final decisions have been made, Kaufman said.
For the past year, the library has been exploring ways to improve and expand its services, and gathered feedback from the campus community through surveys and three town hall meetings held this spring. In order to keep pace with patrons’ increasing demands for new things, “we must modernize or decline” and the library must retool to do things efficiently and effectively, Kaufman said. Among the factors influencing the library’s planning and budgeting efforts: the increasingly inter-disciplinary nature of academic inquiry; the “new generation of faculty members and students (who are) ‘digital natives’ …. and have higher expectations for access to digital services and content”; students’ continuing complaints about having to visit multiple libraries; and budgetary constraints.
The Library Services for the 21st Century final report, which was released April 21, included numerous proposals, including development of a retrospective reference collection in the main library by consolidating departmental reference materials; developing strategies for managing digital content creation, access and management; combining the collections and services of the City Planning and Landscape Architecture Library with those of the Funk Family College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences Library; and opening and improving user services in the main library stacks.
Senators Anna Maria Escobar, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, and Nils Jacobsen, history and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, expressed concern about plans to create a Languages and Linguistics Library that would combine certain collections and services of the Latin American and Caribbean Library with the English Library and the Modern Languages and Linguistics Library. Escobar and Jacobsen were concerned that splitting the Latin American and Caribbean Studies’ collections would not allow for central oversight of materials and “will accelerate the decline” of the Latin American Library, Jacobsen said.
Other senators also expressed concerns about the impact of proposed plans to integrate the service programs of the Government Documents Library into the broader library and to create a Media and Information Studies Library in Gregory Hall by combining the collections and services of the Communications Library with the Library and Information Sciences Library.
Senators were invited to review the final report online and submit feedback.
Nicholas Burbules, chair of the Senate Executive Committee, discussed concerns that were raised by some members of the campus community about a suggestion at a recent UI Board of Trustees meeting that the university combine all its online programs – including the Global Campus – under the purview of a single unit. “This caused a lot of consternation – some legitimate, some exaggerated – and I would like to offer some clarification,” Burbules said. He serves on the Global Campus Advisory Committee, which discussed the suggestion with Chester Gardner, special assistant to the president, and Mrinalini Rao, vice president for academic affairs.
“It is quite clear that Global Campus has no intention or desire to take over the management of all online programs, and they don’t have the capacity to do that even if they wanted to,” Burbules said. “They also know that many campus programs would strongly resist being incorporated within the Global Campus framework, and I don’t believe they have any interest in taking on that fight.”
However, Burbules said there would be “legitimate value” in creating a Web portal that would help potential students locate and explore all the online programs offered by Illinois. “The question is how to do it in such a way that it respects the integrity and independent identity of campus online efforts and keeps Global Campus and non-Global Campus programs identifiably distinct.”
The Council of Deans and the Campus Committee on E-learning has drafted a proposal with recommendations on these matters and submitted it to Chancellor Richard Herman and Provost Linda Katehi. Burbules said he shared the report with the SEC and that the SEC would discuss at its next meeting how the senate should proceed.
Other business
The senate approved amended procedures for appeals by academic staff members working under multi-year contracts who were dismissed for cause prior to the termination of their contracts. Under the procedures approved by the senate, the provost or the provost’s designee would review appeals and consult with the campus Faculty Advisory Committee in rendering decisions. The senate approved a proposal to establish multi-year contracts for eligible academic employees at its March 31 meeting, pending the SEC’s and Herman’s developing an appeals process that would be overseen by an administrative unit outside employees’ home units.
