**DRAFT** LAUC-I General Membership Meeting, November 9, 1998, SL 104 Present: Palmer, Kaufman, Broidy, Wilson, Bube, Munoff, Eichhorn, Clark, McAdam, Yu, Tseng, Womack, Lucas, Bube, Kjaer, Dooley, Shahid, Sisson, Tanji (notetaker) 1. Agenda Review 2. Announcement - Fall Assembly - Dec 11th at UCSF. Yvonne Wilson will represent LAUC-I at the systemwide Executive Board meeting. Website with registration form (Nov 25 deadline) at: http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~laucsf/laucce.html 3. Cynthia Clark recommends looking at CDL pre-release website: http://www2.cdlib.org/ 4. Librarian Recruitment at UCI - Judy Kaufman (AUL Personnel & Administration) facilitated the discussion on: -Librarian Recruitment Manual -Librarian Recruitment Process Since "manual" implies a document "in-hand", she prefers to use the term "guidelines. Judy Kaufman's student has been working to put the guidelines up on the web: http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~paypers/guidelinesrecruit/guidelinesrecruit.html A. Kaufman asked if there were any comments re the guidelines. There were several positive comments: -S. Tseng, who recently served on some search committees, thanked Judy & her office for providing such detailed, step-by-step guidelines. J. Dooley concurred. -C. Womack commented that the guidelines for internal candidates were helpful for a search committee that she was on recently. -There was a question on whether the sun3.lib.uci.edu/~vacancy website would be linked from the public homepage. JK responded that this could be considered in the future; presently there are links going the other way from the ~vacancy website to the UCI Libraries and UCI campus websites. -Dooley thought the checklists were useful; they helped assure that no step was left out and helped clarify what needed to be done. Lydia Shahid agreed the checklists were useful for keeping on track, and could always be modified. Kaufman concurred and said that the guidelines are continually being updated. B. There were some questions and suggestions for additions to the guidelines: i. What is the role of LRC? Perhaps add a sentence or two more about this. ii. Is this qualification ^ÓGraduate degree library science from an ALA-accredited institution" always necessary? Kaufman responded that the requirement of a professional degree is the basis on which librarians are exempt employees; also, the term "or equivalent degree" is extremely hard to interpret or apply. iii. Add some elaboration or general criteria for how people are selected/appointed to search committees? iv. Add "on-site interviews" and "soliciting input/comments after the interviews" to the checklist in order to fully document the search process. v. Add pagination to fuller explanation to the checklist. However, JK mentioned that everything in the checklist has fuller explanation and that this might be confusing. vi. Is a format for submission of search committee recommendations needed? JK said that this needs to be flexible and will vary with each committee. Someone suggested that this could be part of the letter charging the search committee. If an AUL or dept head would like something specifically addressed in the search committee's recommendation, that this should be included in the charge to search committees. vii. "Memo to Search Committee" is repeated twice on page 2. The first mention of this should be deleted; the second mention of this should have the same wording as the first entry. C. G. Munoff mentioned two concerns. Our searches take approximately 9 months to a year to complete. He would be interested in finding a way to conduct searches more quickly so that we can be more competitive in making offers to the pool of applicants. A secondary concern is the amount of effort put into the searches. Are there ways to speed it up and control/shape/reduce the amount of time that is spent on the process? Specifically in terms of the period when we appoint a search committee to the time an offer is made. Here are some comments from the membership re what delays happen and what can be done to make searches occur more expeditiously: -Schedules for interviews may conflict with schedules of those that need to be there, sometimes delays occur for this reason. -There may be things that we should look at: How customized do the questions for each position need to be? Can we reuse position descriptions (tinker with past descriptions rather than reinvent the wheel)? Where does this happen--within the department or within the search committee? -Search committee members - does everyone need to be there for every meeting? Search committee members' time availability need to be factored into the process. -If there were set time schedules and time limits then people could give more priority to serving on a search committee. It is also the responsibility of individuals to turn down appointments if they know they cannot be there. -The large number of people on a search committee can slow it down; perhaps limit the number of people serving on a committee. -Specify meeting times & setting dates/times can expedite the search process^Ö easier to cancel meetings than to schedule new ones. -Unscheduled problems can cause delays. -For junior positions we still need to post in national publications ^Ö there is a long lead time needed to post these advertisement. -For filling vacancies in general, use previous job descriptions tinker with descriptions rather than starting from scratch. -Send out a brief ad to get into the national publications pipeline with a longer online description following later.^Ö JK mentioned that we already do this. -Search committees are given draft job descriptions and often spend a long time editing them. JK mentioned that often there are issues about the position, and the job ad becomes the stage on which these issues get argued. The qualifications are often discussed at length, because they serve as the legal criteria for who gets interviewed and how qualifications are weighed. -It was suggested that we should have a common understanding of certain phrases that are used like: ^Óreading knowledge^Ô, "recent experience", etc. -It was suggested that we send out job description quickly and then decide later how to define the criteria. -It was suggested that we attach timelines to the different activities on the checklist. -Many of the recent successful recruitments were people already here in the area. How useful is it to advertise nationally vs. locally? This generated some comments about there being sufficient announcements locally via listservs, and that one hopes that even local people are reading the national advertisements. JK noted that it is clear that people are frequently responding to job positions posted on listservs. -How far into the interview do you know when a person is good for the interview? We are so pressed for time and we also wear the candidates out with long interviews. -What about national conventions in the recruitment process? Manual/Guidelines - p. 17 #9 addressed this, but we do not talk to them at the conference; in the past, this has not been fruitful and not worth the time. -AP can slow up the process. Recommendation are sent to AP, then to LRC for recommendation, then the EVC office decides on the appointment rank/salary ^Ö this can take a long time. -Since some promotions are being signed off at the UL level, perhaps new job appointments could be signed off by the UL too (instead of going on to AP). JK noted that at other campuses, where the UL has final signatory power, this already occurs. -Can we get on more regular schedule for recruitments? -L. Shahid recommended that we focus on the person. We do not give the person sufficient information about the system and what is involved in the position. Instead of a long series of interview meetings, we should devote some time afternoon devoted to sit down and talk to them about the position--give them a better feel for what they will be doing. -Sally mentioned that she did a Powerpoint presentation to some recent candidates and demonstrated some online records, but that there was not enough time to cover everything. -Dooley seconded Wilson's suggestion of limiting the number of questions during interviews, because the candidate's comments and questions are quite informative. -JK mentioned that both the Engineering/ICS and Serials Cataloger search committees tried a new way of interviewing the candidates. They decided ahead of time what questions they wanted to address, but they didn't list them out--instead they had a dialogue with the candidates. Each search committee member was assigned to make sure that the issues were covered in this discussion. Search committee members also met between their two sessions with each candidate and agreed what issues still needed to get covered. Both search committees found this useful. Someone not on either the Engineering/ICS or Serials Cataloger search committee wondered if there might not be some disadvantages. Sometimes it might be difficult to compare candidates' answers, especially if their responses are anecdotal; some candidates do better having questions laid out for them. -For entry-level positions, the group agreed that people not be required to give a formal presentation on a set topic. For other, more senior recruitments, it was suggested that rather than assign a topic, the candidate should be permitted to talk about something they are passionate about that was job-related and reflected their professional interests. For example, John Sisson was asked to do a bibliographic instruction session on a topic of his choice. Use the faculty model for doing presentations on the person's area of interest. -It was suggested that we assign a volunteer mentor for each newly hired librarian. -Some search committees did not receive very much input. There was some discussion about the various reasons for the lack of input. -J. Sisson asked whether we could make the search committee questions open e.g. can the questions that the search committee ask be known or shared? Apparently, search committees used to gather questions from all groups involved in the on-site interviews and would try to minimize the duplication of questions. -It was noted that the corporate culture is way too rigid about everything involved in search committees. The guidelines really help in laying out the relationship and responsibilities of the search committee vis-à- vis the supervisor. It is importance for both the candidates and the supervisor to spend more time together to get a better sense of the job at hand. -For entry-level positions^Ö how important is it to have an open forum meeting? Currently, there is always a presentation or question-and-answer session that is open to all library employees. There was some discussion about whether these open sessions were necessary given that: -some of the recent library-wide sessions have had low attendance -we want to make the interview process less grueling -we want to provide the candidates with more time to get a sense of the job they will be doing; perhaps spend more time talking to the immediate supervisor -be more welcoming; limit the number of repetitive questions It was recommended that we empower the search committee to make a decision about whether library-wide sessions are necessary, and to have faith and trust in the search committees judgment. Since there was exactly a quorum ^Ö LAUC-I agreed to make an informal proposal that Judy Kaufman & Cynthia Clark can take to AdTeam. Judy summarized the informal proposal: -Change the present guideline, so that library-wide meetings with the candidate are not mandatory for every recruitment. For some positions, an open forum or library-wide question-and-answer session is not necessary. Search committee should be trusted to determine when this is appropriate (e.g. department head position). Library-wide presentations or question-and-answer forums should be an option left to the discretion of the search committee. There was a unanimous positive vote by the quorum of members present at this meeting. 5. Approval of minutes & adjournment. Sisson made a motion to approve the minutes. Palmer seconded. Last meeting's minutes approved. Meeting adjourned 3pm.