October 27, 2004 Science & Engineering Library

Volume 39, no. 1 Room 090

Council on Libraries and Information Technology

Minutes

Present: Nikki Conklin, Gideon Fraenkel, David Jacobs, Akhila Ramnarayan, Ilee Rhimes, Lewis Ulman

Absent: Kim Boyer, Joe Branin, Susan Huntington, Ethan Knapp, Dimitris Tatakis

Guests: Tom Cetwinski, William Clark, Joanne Dehoney, Alan Escovitz, Bob Kalal, Pat McCandless, Susan Metros, Betty Sawyers, Eric Schnell

1. Election of Chair. Nikki Conklin was nominated and elected to serve as Chair of the Council for the current academic year.

2. Past Chair. Louie Ulman was presented with a plaque in appreciation for his performance as Chair of the Council for the first two years of its existence.

3. Update on Library Renovation (Wes Boomgaarden). Schematic Design for the renovation of the Thompson Memorial Library has been completed, and Detailed Design is underway. The building will be vacated for three years during construction, and the people and collections currently housed in the building will be moved to two primary temporary locations-- warehouse and office space located at 650 Ackerman Road and the portion of Sullivant Hall current occupied by the Education, Human Ecology, Psychology, and Social Work Library (EHS). Sullivant Hall will be the temporary home for the majority of the information services collections and staff currently found on the first and second floor of the Library. Language and Area Studies will move to 650, as will microforms (except for ERIC documents, which will stay in Sullivant Hall), the general collection from the book stacks, and the personnel who acquire, catalog, and preserve the Libraries' collections. The collections in Rare Books and Manuscripts require special handling and will be moved to the Book Depository.

The renovation is a $99 million project; $30 million of which is to be acquired through private funds. $14 million has been raised to date, and the Kickoff for the major campaign was held on October 25. President Holbrook participated in that event, as did Jim and Ellen Tressel, who are serving as honorary chairs of the campaign. The Renovation Project and Campaign are to be featured at Saturday's Penn State/OSU football game. $69 million will be requested in capital budgets over the next few biennia; approval for the next biennium has not yet been received.

The renovated library will hold ca. 1.5 million volumes. The collections and personnel from the Journalism, Theatre Research Institute, and EHS Libraries will be brought into the renovated building, and Technical Services, Information Technology, and Preservation departments currently housed in the building will be moved to Sullivant Hall.

On Tuesday, November 23 there will be two open meetings for the University community to obtain input concerning the use of the internal spaces of the building, much as there had been open discussion about the external envelope of the building this past winter. In addition there are regularly scheduled open meetings on the third Thursday of each month at 1:00 p.m., where interested campus personnel can hear the latest information and express their opinions and/or concerns. Subcommittees composed of representatives from appropriate campus units, the architects, and the Libraries are also being set up to deal with the internal details, including hours of opening. Input is wanted from as many sources as possible.

4. Learning Spaces (Tom Cetwinski). This past winter, two library consultants--Scott Bennett, Yale Librarian Emeritus, and Sarah Thomas, Director of the Cornell University Library--were brought in as part of the decision-making process for determining whether or not the stacks tower should be retained. Scott Bennett had also recently completed a study for the Council on Libraries and Information Resources (CLIR), the results of which had been published by CLIR in a report titled "Libraries Designed for Learning." Following their visit, Joe Branin put out a call for volunteers to work with Scott on identifying ways in which teaching and learning could be incorporated into the design for the renovated library. The Learning Group, consisting of eight Faculty and Staff members from the Libraries plus Scott Bennett as a consultant, interviewed individuals involved with teaching and/or learning on campus and reviewed the literature. Their final report was issued in mid-November. Among the recommendations of the Group were that the first and second levels of the renovated library should be designed together and that undergraduates should be considered in the design, although not at the expense of graduate students and faculty. National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII) is also addressing learning spaces in its national meetings.

5. Knowledge Bank (Tom Cetwinski). The Knowledge Bank went live this summer. Glenn Institute has become a partner and is planning their first publication. The Knowledge Bank Advisory Committee will be meeting in late January, and any interested Council members are welcome to attend; notice of the meeting will be sent to the Council listserv. They have begun working with ACCAD (Advanced Computing Center for the Arts & Design) on motion study. A pilot program to add honors theses to the Knowledge Bank is underway, and they are also experimenting with streaming videos in DSpace. The CIC is having a meeting on scholarly communications the end of this week, and institutional repositories are on the agenda. Louie Ulman will be attending that meeting from OSU and will report at the next Council meeting. The question of peer review and publishing possibilities need that type of consortial discussion. Publication in institutional repositories and other open access media can only be successful if the review process mirrors what is done for print.

6. Organization of the CIO's Office (Ilee Rhimes) There are eight major areas in the CIO's Office: 1) e-learning and technology, including the Digital Union (Susan Metros); 2) operational aspects (OIT), including equipment in classrooms (Mike Veres); 3) IT policies and legal issues (Bob Kalal); 4) communication, marketing, and planning (Cathy Bindewald); 5) emerging technology (Bob Dixon,); 6) outreach (Alan Escovitz); 7) project management services; and 8) security. There are 320 Regular Staff and 150 student employees; many of the student employees end up working for them or other areas of the University.

7. Update on PlanIT (Ilee Rhimes). During the strategic planning process that led to PlanIT they looked at current state as well as where they wanted to be in the next three to five years. Information was gathered via interviews, open meetings, focus groups, etc., and consultants were brought in from around the country to expand the dialog. The final report identifies both strategic issues and critical success factors. The latter begin with engaged leadership, which moves on to an enabling infrastructure consisting of networks and information systems having seamless and secure access, and finally empowers the university community with appropriate training and a collaborative environment.

8. OSU Academic Support Unit Program Review (Bob Kalal). All academic support units will be subject to an extensive program review over the next six years under the auspices of the Senate Fiscal Committee. The CIO's Office and two other units have been included in the first year and there will be five additional units in each of the next five years, with the Libraries being scheduled for next year. There was general agreement that someone from the Council should be involved in the program reviews of the CIO's Office and the Libraries. Links to the OAA documentation on Program Review, and the PowerPoint concerning the CIO Program Review presented at the meeting have been provided.

9. Course Management System (Susan Metros and Joanne Dehoney). The Kickoff for Carmen, the new course management system for OSU, will be held later today. Following an exhaustive evaluation by faculty, students, and staff, Desire2Learn (D2L) out of Canada was chosen for use at OSU. It is currently being used by Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona, and Iowa. The WebCT system currently in use has multiple installations on campus; use of this new system will provide an opportunity to consolidate into a single system and take advantage of economy of scale. Authentication will be used with the new system to protect Web sites. D2L has better cognitive recall, is easier to use and allows more diversified use for things other than actual courses.

Following today's Kickoff, the system should be installed by early December, and testing will begin with versions 7.3 and 7.4. Focus will be on improving and streamlining how folks can receive help without having to go to 8help as well as the development of training materials. Piloting will begin in spring quarter, and in the summer faculty will be told to go directly to D2L rather than WebCT. Approximately 1,000 faculty are currently using WebCT; it is planned to convert 200 to D2L during the summer, 400 in the fall, and the remainder during Winter Quarter. There are plans to establish a product strategy board, as well as policy and user advisory boards.

One of the reasons that D2L was chosen was their openness to working with the University to integrate additional uses into their system, such as collaborative work groups. The possibility also exists of integrating E-portfolios in the system. D2L uses a relational database with more flexibility and security. It can also be used as a learning object repository, allowing a single learning object to be used for multiple classes, and can integrate with the Registrar and the Libraries, allowing a single sign-on to access all materials etc.

10. Purpose of the Council. As stated in Faculty Rule 5-482:

Duties and responsibilities.

(1) In collaboration with the director of libraries and the chief information officer, to formulate policies governing the educational and research activities and services of libraries and information technology.

(2) Assist the director of libraries and the chief information officer in the interpretation of library and information technology services to the university community.

(3) Assist in the presentation of major library and information technology needs to the university administration.

(4) Advise the executive vice president and provost on the appointment of a director of libraries or the chief information officer.

In order for the members to have a better understanding of the two organizations and the policy issues that are brought to the Council, Libraries and CIO's Office personnel will make presentations about their organization and operation. It is expected that agenda items will be generated by both the Council members, who represent the constituencies served by these two units, and by the Libraries and the CIO's office. The Chair will solicit agenda items from Council members prior to each meeting.

11. Meeting Times. A list of potential meeting times will be distributed to the membership to determine the time that will be acceptable to the largest number of potential attendees.

Future Agenda Items:

Report of the Libraries' Learning Group

Wireless networking

Report on the CIC Meeting on Scholarly Communication