SCOPA Meeting Minutes

SCOPA Minutes: 08/05/99

Present: Suzanne Eggleston (recorder), Thomas Hyry, Jennifer Kostelnik, James Shetler (chair), and Diane Turner

Absent: Erika Heinen, Xin Li, and Dajin Sun

Jim Shetler called the meeting to order.

A. Mentoring Program:

The group discussed the future plans for a mentoring program. Jennifer suggested another informal forum, open to all staff, to gather ideas from potential mentors regarding their expectations and what they could provide. Diane stated that concerns she had been given included that mentors want to be successful and consistent with other mentors; they would like guidance to know what they should do. There are also LIIIs and LIVs interested in having mentors. The forum in May brought out the following points: the most successful mentoring programs were informal rather than formal; mentees would like to be provided with a list of names to choose from; there should be a call from the administration, to reassure everyone that the program has administrative support; many mentees were interested in mentors in areas outside of their main area of the library. There was concern that one or two people might be receiving many requests. One suggestion was that SCOPA could collect names of potential mentors to provide to interested mentees; a mentor could take his/her name off the list at any time (and thus limit the number of mentees he/she would accept). SCOPA's role would be only to maintain a list of potential mentors and to send it to potential mentees when requested. Another plan would be for the administration to assign a mentor to each incoming librarian, upon arrival. It was suggested that AULs might want to consider lunches or meetings with small groups of new librarians, which would allow for more discussion than a meeting with a large group but also be less of a burden on the AUL than individual meetings with many people.

Jim will choose a date for an informal forum.

B. Web Pages:

Erika is on vacation, but the pages are nearly complete. Everyone should encourage people in their area to contribute information. Jim would like for the pages to be on the web before the forum.

C. Forums:

1. Forums with Scott: SCOPA will set 2 or 3 forums per year for Scott or the next director to address the library community on topics of interest to the group or for less formal question an answer sessions. Potential topics: The library as a learning organization; Phase II of renovation plans and issues; The State of the Library (this was given a couple of years ago and well-received). Jim will look into this for first week of October.

2. SCOPA grant recipients: meeting on facilitating the grant-writing process -- last week September.

3. Sept. 20: Jean Hirons, Head of CONSER, L. C. Serial Record Division--Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program (SCCTP) (Jim).

4. October 18, 2:30, John Ryden, Director, Yale University Press--changes in the publishing industry (Xin).

5. Tom suggested a program on the Tercentennial Project for late fall--what the University Archives is and does; innovative strategies for archives that have been developed by the project team.

6. Tom also suggested asking Audrey Novak to give a presentation on project management, in light of the Crossplex project.

The next meeting will be August 19 at 11:30.

Respectfully Submitted,

Suzanne Eggleston

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