SCOPA

Minutes, February 24, 2003

Present: Mary Caldera (chair), Huei-Ju (Polly) Chang, Eric Friede (recording), Stephen Jones, Nancy Kuhl, Cecile Mandour, Shawn Steidinger, Absent: Daniel Dollar.

Announcements

Names of potential non-Yale speakers are to be run by Diane Turner before planning a forum.

Mary reported that there are at least five new librarians since the last orientation and it is time to plan another orientation. Shawn will contact Diane about scheduling the orientation.

Mary asked SCOPA if SCOPA wanted to create and maintain a web page containing information about scheduling meeting space at Yale. Erika Heinen, as a member of SCOPA, had created such a web page in the past but that page was no longer on the SCOPA website. SCOPA decided that such a page was beyond the scope of SCOPA, but that if such a page were maintained by library administration, SCOPA would link to that page.

Eric announced that Daniel has updated the grants website with the final reports of the 2002 grants and with the proposals for the 2003 grants.

Mary announced that SCOPA agendas are now being posted on the SCOPA website.

YUL Values

There was a discussion of the Mission-Vision-Values document distributed to YUL staff by Alice Prochaska, specifically how SCOPA is exhibiting the values and how SCOPA might do better. Mary pointed out that adding the agendas to the website is an effort at increasing open communication. There was discussion of how SCOPA might be more creative and risk taking in planning forums.

There was also discussion of how to be more inclusive. One idea was to open the committee membership to Clerical & Technical staff. Another idea was to encourage C&T staff to attend forums by either (1) dropping the now standard note when announcing forums of: "SCOPA forums are open to all library staff, pending supervisor approval" or (2) changing the note to put the onus on the supervisor, e.g. "SCOPA forums are open to all library staff. Supervisors please encourage your staff to attend." Nancy will look into the history of the inclusion of this note, and SCOPA will take this issue up at a future meeting. It was pointed out that forums are part of continuing education and all staff should be able to receive the benefit of them.

SCOPA discussed ways to open communication with YUL staff, specifically to get ideas for forums of interest to a wide variety of staff. The professional interests of individual SCOPA members do not necessarily well represent the interests of YUL staff in general. Mary will gather ideas from the goal group reports. Steve and Nancy will draft an email for future distribution on YULLIB-L encouraging all staff to send ideas to SCOPA.

Forums

The Kevin Glick forum has been rescheduled to April 10th, 2-3pm.

Eric will contact the 2002 grants recipients to schedule the annual grants forum for May.

Judy Schiff has been scheduled to speak about the history of YUL on April 30th at 3 pm.

The University Librarian's report has been scheduled for September 18th.

Shawn will contact Fred Martz and/or Audrey Novak about a possible forum on large project management.

Nancy will investigate a forum relating to librarians and politics, likely something related to the current international situation in Iraq, and the activism of librarians as exhibited by the Progressive Librarian journal or the ALA Social Responsibilities Roundtable.

Steve will contact Susan Cirillo about scheduling a forum which has been in the works for quite some time.

Steve and Nancy will investigate the possibility of having the New England library school programs come for a 'job fair' forum.

Shawn announced that there will probably be a Voyager users group meeting at Yale the first week of June. Since SCOPA was interested in having a forum in conjunction with that meeting, Shawn will investigate possible topics for a forum.

The next Librarians without Borders forum is still in the works. Eric will ask Paul Stuehrenberg if he would be willing to join the other two librarians in the next LBO forum.

Eric reported that Paul Stuehrenberg and Martha Smalley have agreed to discuss having a forum on the renovation of the Divinity Library. A forum could possibly be scheduled for May or early June, and Eric will pursue this topic further.

There was discussion of a forum on copyright, but SCOPA wasn't sure what aspect of copyright would be interesting to staff. SCOPA will contact YUL staff who have a knowledge of copyright about this.

Next Meeting

The March 3rd meeting has been cancelled. The next meeting will be March 17th at 2 pm.