To:          UC Libraries Advisory Structure (via Marlo Young for information)

                Users Council (via Jayne Dickson for information & distribution)

                LAUC (via Matt Conner for information & distribution)

From:     Diane Bisom, Chair, Strategic Action Group 3: Collection Building & Management (SAG 3)

Date:      17 November 2014

 

UC Libraries Colleagues,

 

In August the UC Libraries Advisory Structure’s Strategic Action Group 3: Collection Building & Management (SAG 3) shared a “concept proposal” for a new vision of the UC bibliographer groups, requesting comments during September 2014.  We received 19 responses from individuals, as well as groups that include Bibliographer Groups, divisional LAUC groups, and CDL. 

 

Many responses acknowledged that the description of the current campus environments and evolution of responsibilities of UC librarians is accurate.  There was support for improving elements of the current system, though equal concern that the proposed changes might dismantle relationships and processes that are perceived to be working well at least for some groups.  Questions were raised about roles and reporting lines, scope of activities and authority, organizational alignments, size and nature of the groups, leadership responsibilities and prospects, and communication effectiveness.  The points raised by respondents resonated with SAG 3, leading us to a major revision of the proposed next steps.

 

In place of the organizational plans suggested in the ‘concept proposal,’ over the next several months SAG 3 will:

 

  1. Update the Guidelines for UC Bibliographer Groups, outlining expectations for roles, responsibilities, activities, and participation to ensure they remain vital and effective.
  2. Work with current UC Bibliographer Groups to self-identify appropriate groupings such as mergers, separation, dissolutions or creations aligned with the academic needs and staffing across the UC Libraries. 
  3. Recommend support from CoUL to provide a common suite of resources and tools for use by all UC Bibliographer Group members as a building block to encouraging deeper collaboration between campuses (e.g. central hosting of wikis, web sites, rosters, listservs; collaboration tools for calls, collaborative documents and project sites).
  4. Develop a toolkit to aid UC Bibliographer Groups’ function and communication with other UC collection-related groups.
  5. Encourage continued clarification and communication about the roles, responsibilities, and activities of UC collection-related groups to determine where modifications and new approaches are beneficial.

 

Thank you for your dedication to the UC Libraries and the feedback that helped determine what we believe are positive next steps.  Further information will be provided by SAG 3 as progress is made. 

 

Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

Thank you,

Diane

Chair, SAG 3

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Diane Bisom

Associate University Librarian

     Information Technology and Systems

University of California, Riverside Libraries

P.O. Box 5900

Riverside, CA 92517-5900

 

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951-827-2080