Instructional Support Committee

Attending: Karen Shuman, Rebecca Stuhr, Richard Fyffe, Leslie Gregg-Jolly, Matt Kluber, Bill Francis, David Cook-Martin, Terri Phipps

Minutes of 24 February 2010 approved with modest revision

The FOC has not yet named a replacement for Jenny on ISC. Karen is continuing to pursue finding a replacement for Jenny.

Update on funding request votes:

from meeting of 24 February voted on via email

• Minutes of Feb 10 approved
• "The Concept of Power" workshop has been approved.
• Quintero field trip has been approved
• Mease field trip has been approved. ISC will fund mileage and up to $25 per student for tickets. Total $363.
• Leslie will recommend that the Department of Theatre and Dance carefully weigh fieldtrips compared to other departmental needs and possibly include future requests in their departmental budget request.

Fast track approval:

• Kelly Herold (Swedish Language group) ................................................................. $800

Update on staffing for academic technology support

Applications are due March 22. The Associate Deans Office will pre-screen applications to remove unqualified applicants. A Ph.D. is not required. High-level technical skills will be viewed more favorably. One member raised the issue of salary and asked if we were competitive in the field. Salary will be addressed when the job is offered.

Standard practice for CTS searches has been for a subcommittee of ISC to be involved in the hiring process, including screening applicants, participating in phone interviews, on-campus interviews, and possibly checking reference. Matt Kluber and Rebecca Stuhr have agreed to serve on the subcommittee.

Review of the Libraries’ response to the External Review report

Richard will submit a report to Executive Council in mid-April and asks for feedback to the External Review report.

Discussion topics included

• Networking with other libraries and commercial services: The Libraries have several arrangements in place for sharing collections and access. Traditional interlibrary loan is one example, and a consortium of Iowa private academic libraries is another. The Libraries also outsource some services to commercial vendors (for example, the Journal Finder and the A-Z list of databases). The external reviewers recommended that the Libraries encourage more cooperation among Iowa libraries (or libraries in contiguous states) for sharing physical collections (e.g., books) and access to databases. ISC members asked if a consortium of libraries is possible, such as with the University of Iowa, Iowa State, and UNI? The Libraries have encouraged such initiatives in the past (without much success) and we will try again, but creating a network with state institutions is difficult on many levels and may take several years to bear fruit.
• Staffing: The reviewers recommend increased development of library technology, increased collaboration with IT, and digitization of selected parts of the Libraries’ collection.
• An Academic Technology Development Team has been initiated to develop services, coordinating Library, Curricular Technology, IT, and College Web Services.
• The reviewers suggest shifting the focus of staff duties from print to digital collections. Librarians are also encouraged to intensify their partnership with faculty.  The cataloging process is more efficient, allowing staff to devote more time elsewhere.
• The Library has its own webserver, so the Libraries’ Web site has not yet been converted to Drupal. Plans are to migrate to Drupal over the summer. Some library services are integrated in Pioneerweb, but the Libraries would like to have an increased presence there.

Key points from the Review that will impact student learning:

Three-year time frame

• Increased attention to upper-level information literacy in majors, along with continued attention to Tutorial-level information literacy.
• Faster migration of some materials (like journals) to digital format
• Offer more primary sources
• Development of improved search tools that would bring search-results for different kinds of material together more effectively
• Greater contribution to the international network of shared resources through more digitization of important materials in our collections and improvements to the systems through which those digital resources can be discovered and used. Priority of digitization will depend on several factors, such as usefulness to the Grinnell curriculum, copyright status, quantity, and technical requirements.

Faculty should send feedback to Richard by March 19.

Respectfully submitted,
Terri Phipps