SCOPA Meeting Minutes
22 January 2001
Present: Ellen Doon (chair), Richard Boursy, Cindy Crooker, Calvin Hsu, Michelle Light, Rochelle Smith, Diane Turner, Jae WilliamsEllen summarized SCOPA's financial arrangements. SCOPA receives $5,000 per year from Library Administrative Services for grants. The unused portion of last year's allocation ($1,870) will be the working budget for this year's forums. There is no official contingency fund, but LAS may choose to provide additional funding if the entire $5,000 is used on grants. (Ellen noted that the $5,000 is allocated specifically for grants, so we should not hesitate to spend the full amount if we have enough good applications.) A smaller amount of money will be left over from a speaker who cancelled, and perhaps also from grant recipients. Diane checked with the Business Office and confirmed that unspent money from forums and grants will roll over from one fiscal year into the next.
The position of Website Manager, currently held by Step Schmitt, is available. A few details of the web site were discussed. It was agreed that the calendar of forums is redundant and can be dropped, as long as the list of upcoming forums is kept current. Two aspects of the administrative schedule are obsolete and can be deleted: requesting money for grants (this is now allocated automatically) and soliciting nominations for new SCOPA members (they are appointed by the University Librarian, so nominations are not necessary). It was mentioned that the site includes a page of information resources for new librarians, but that there is no link to this from the other pages. Step was unable to attend this meeting because of the Orbis2 demo, so further web discussion (including the possible appointment of a new site manager) was deferred to the next meeting.
Cindy spoke on behalf of the Grants Subcommittee. Michelle and Richard volunteered to serve on the Subcommittee. Cindy stated that grant recipients are expected to produce mid-year and final reports on their projects, and also to appear at a forum. She emphasized that it is important to remind the recipients of this requirement; in the absence of a reminder, none of them provided a mid-year report.
Jae volunteered to maintain the list of publications by Yale librarians. It was agreed that the publications list should be publicized on YULIB-L on a quarterly basis. Calvin suggested that we also include basic information about our programmatic activities, together with relevant URLs, in a .sig file that we could use when announcing forums to YULIB-L.
Rochelle volunteered to become the liaison for the mentoring program.
Ellen reviewed the list of future forums that have been tentatively arranged already:
Ann Okerson, Jim O'Donnell, and Jim Blackaby, discussing the report of the Committee on Information Technology Strategy for the Library of Congress, and its implications for Yale. February 12
Scott Bennett, repeating his ALA talk on "A Golden Age for Libraries." Date to be scheduled
SCOPA grant recipients. April The following forum ideas were suggested:
Scott Bennett, prior to his retirement.
Barbara Shailor, the new Beinecke director.
Grant-writing workshop.
Wendy Lougee, Associate Director for Digital Initiatives, University of Michigan Library. She was slated to speak in last year's series on Scholarly Electronic Publishing in the 21st Century, but had to cancel.
Kris Hammond, of the Intelligent Information Laboratory at the University of Chicago. He may come in March.
Further Orbis2 updates with Scott Bennett and Audrey Novak.
Max Marmor on Imaging America.
The Librarian in Residence program. The first occupant of this position is now writing a book on librarian in residence programs.
Mary Brown, chair of the Library Science Department at Southern Connecticut State University.
Department heads and other specialists surveying the state of a group of related disciplines. This could be done in the summer.
YELMO, a prototype for a centralized database of electronic resources at Yale.
The new University Librarian, sometime in the fall semester. Ellen urged the members of SCOPA to think of additional forum ideas.
The next meeting will be held on Monday, February 5 at 2 PM.
Minutes submitted by Richard Boursy.