MENTORING PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIR Ethan Annis
Dominican University of California, San Rafael ethan@ethanannis.com
President's Message
A Message from the President, Rachel Jaffe
Dear CARL members,
I’ll be candid – given the uncertainty of the times and uncertainty in my own life and career – I’m finding it difficult to craft a message that is inspired or uplifting. In fact, I’m having to dig deep to find any words at all.
That said, it’s my duty to keep you apprised of the activities of the CARL Executive Board. After a year of upheaval, 2021 is proving to be a year of transition, adaptation and good housekeeping.
In the works are an assessment of the CARL website as well as an effort to explore and expand use of our membership platform, YourMembership. In doing so, our goal is to create more channels for members to meet, greet, converse and connect online.
And in terms of mops and brooms, in the last couple months there’s been a lot of work behind the scenes to improve internal processes, create and update documentation, begin assessing the CARL website, and recruit new board members.While this work is low profile, it’s essential to the stability and wellbeing of our organization.
This year’s CARL executive team is fairly fresh; there are many new faces and familiar faces in new roles. As we (re)learn the ropes, I ask for your patience and invite you to be part of the conversation.
My e-door is always open to your feedback.
Warm regards,
Rachel
CARL Business
New Board Member Assignments
Congratulations and welcome to new CARL Board Members:
Newsletter Co-Editors: Kelli Hines and Yen Tran
Interest Group Coordinator & Director at Large for Community Colleges: Shamika Simpson
Awards Liaison & Director at Large for CSUs: Paizha Stoothoff
Website Assessment Project Co-Lead & Director at Large for UCs: Ken Lyons
Advocacy & Website Co-Lead & Director at Large for Private Colleges and Universities: Samanta Alfrey
Members of the Ilene Rockman Service Awards Committee
Interest Groups DIAL (Diversity in Academic Libraries) On Our Radar: April 2021 Events of Interest
Here are a few upcoming April 2021 events for anyone interested in diversity. Visit the DIAL website for more upcoming events that may be on interest to you!
April 14, 2021 at 4pm - Lecture Series: Black Scholars on Black Lives Lecture Series - "Consuming Your Imagination" with Dr. Aria Halliday
ALIGN (Academic Librarians' Interest Group North)
Visit the ALIGN Website or contact Ken Lyons at kbplyons@ucsc.edu for more information about this interest group.
SCORE (Scholarly Communication and Open Resources for Education)
SCORE meets virtually on a quarterly basis and meeting minutes are available. Subscribe to the SCORE listserv to find out when they're meeting next!
SCIL (Southern California Instruction Librarians) Save the date SCIL 2021 Spring Program – May 7th, 2021
Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed? Many librarians are struggling with burnout and some are left with questions like: Are there other librarians who feel this way? How can I try to prevent feelings of burnout? How can I overcome burnout while I still have to work?
The SCIL 2021 Spring Program mini-conference, is your opportunity to hear about interventions, preventions and engage in discussions regarding academic librarian burnout. We will hear from Ana Guimaraes and Christina Holm as they present their research in a presentation entitled: “Academic Librarian Burnout: Analysis of a Survey Using the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory”
The SCIL 2021 Spring Program will occur 100% online and will be limited to a half-day schedule, in an effort to battle burnout (of course).
We hope you’ll mark your calendars and we hope to see you there. More info and registration link coming soon!
CARLDIG-S (CARL Discussion Interest Group - South) Save the date for our Fall Program
CARLDIG-S is hosing our annual Fall Program on Friday, December 3, 2021. Titled “Learning Through Failure: Stories of Frustration, Setbacks, and Where We Go From There”, this year’s program will offer an opportunity for professionals to not only share their encounters with failure in reference work but also how they’ve learned from those experiences. We have not yet decided on a format for this year’s program (virtual, in-person, or hybrid). Call for feedback and input regarding format forthcoming. For additional information, please contact Meghan Kwast at kwast@callutheran.edu or visit http://carl-acrl.org/ig/carldigs/
SEAL (Science & Engineering Academic Librarians)
A group of librarians are working on re-starting the SEAL interest group. The pandemic initially delayed their work, but the team is eager to begin planning for virtual events soon. Please contact Sheree Fu to connect with SEAL.
Member Spotlight
Emily K. Chan
Where do you currently work, and what is your job title/role?
I currently work as the Associate Dean, Research & Scholarship for the San José State University Library. In this role, I oversee key programmatic functions, including reference & research services, information literacy, collection development, and special collections & archives. Some scholarly communication activities also fall within my purview.
Why did you join CARL? What do you most enjoy about being a CARL member?
I initially joined CARL for professional development opportunities. I wanted to grow and develop my skills as a new librarian. I also wanted to network with librarians. CARL has helped me to accomplish both -- and I have become aware of the variety of academic libraries across California. CARL has been a great professional organization!
Are you working on anything special right now or in the near future you'd like to share with other CARL members?
I'm working on an IMLS grant (LG-35-19-0066-19) with Nicole Lawson, Sacramento State University's Associate Dean for Academic Services; Daina Dickman, Sacramento State University's Scholarly Communication Librarian; and Suzanna Conrad, Towson University's Dean of University Libraries (formerly the Associate Dean for Digital Technologies & Resource Management at Sacramento State).
Sacramento State University and San José State University were awarded an IMLS National Forum grant to assess scholarly communication programs at M1 Carnegie classified public institutions. Given new technologies and paradigms for creating and sharing work, scholars across all fields have seen changes in research output, dissemination and preservation of the scholarly record, emergent publishing models, and the measurement of scholarly impact. Library leaders have recognized these changes and have consequently invested in personnel, software, tools, and other resources to support researchers. Despite these commitments, quantifying the actual outcome or impact of these activities has remained elusive, beyond output measures such as simple counts of consultations, workshop attendance, or repository downloads and growth. The grant's purpose was to investigate best practices and make recommendations for improved assessment of academic libraries’ engagement in supporting the research lifecycle. We hosted the Scholarly Communication Assessment Forum in May 2020 and convened library practitioners, campus stakeholders, and assessment experts to discuss potential quantitative and qualitative measures for scholarly communication assessment.
What new approaches to your work (e.g., instruction, coll dev, reference, outreach, etc.) have you tried recently? Have any of them been particularly successful or challenging?
I just recently discovered the Q&A feature under Audience Tools in Google Slides. When in Presenter mode, you can enable live Q&A with your audience. Audience members may submit a question to the Q&A (both using one's name or anonymously) and upvote others' questions. Presenters see the Q&A in the window with their notes. When a presenter is ready to answer a question, one simply clicks on "Present" and the question appears on the screen for everyone to read. As a visual learner, I think this is a fantastic way to concretize the discussion and its finer points.
I haven't tried it yet in any presentations, but I will! I can see this being used in information literacy sessions. SJSU librarians have been successfully delivering instruction via Zoom, but it's difficult to monitor the chat when presenting. I'm hopeful that this will mitigate some of those challenges.
What’s something you recently read/watched/listened to that you can’t stop thinking about or is helping you process recent events? Anything else you'd like to share with CARL members about librarianship, science librarianship, or otherwise?
I have been reading about the University of California's recent deal with Elsevier with great interest. There will be many implications on future transformative agreements (financial, implementation/workflows), the general landscape of what's available to read, and how repository managers approach their work. It will be interesting to see how this shakes up the scholarly communication landscape!
Do you have a colleague you'd like to recommend for the Member Spotlight column? Email the Editors for more information at carlnewsletter@gmail.com
People and Places News
Appointments
On March 2021, Ray Pun joined Stanford University's Hoover Institution Library & Archives as the Education/Outreach Manager. In this new role, he supports primary source literacy programs and outreach services for faculty and students.
Publications, Presentations, & Awards
CARL members Ray Pun and Melissa Cardenas-Dow (Sacramento State University) collaborated with Kenya S. Flash (Yale University) to give a presentation entitled, "Exploring the Connections Between Ethnic Studies and Librarianship" at the Bridging the Spectrum 2021 Conference on February 19, 2021.
Ray Pun also organized and moderated a webinar discussion on "The Lived Experiences of Library Workers of Color Pursuing Doctoral Degrees" for the We Here Community School featuring panelists Regina Gong (Michigan State University), kYmberly Keeton (Austin History Center, Austin Public Library), Oscar Lanza-Galindo (Bunker Hill Community College), LeRoy LaFleur (Harvard University) on March 5, 2021.
Ray Pun's research article entitled, "Understanding the Roles of Public Libraries and Digital Exclusion Through Critical Race Theory: An Exploratory Study of People of Color in California Affected by the Digital Divide and the Pandemic" was recently published in the Urban Library Journal, 26(2), 1. The qualitative study explores the impact of digital inequity on select public library users of color before and during COVID-19.
Ray Pun and Hiromi Kubo (Fresno State) were invited to give a guest lecture for an LIS course on "Social Responsibility and Social Justice" in University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) School of Information Sciences on April 19, 2021.
Ngoc-Yen Tran and Emily K. Chan (San Jose State University) participated in a panel presentation, "Supporting scholarly research: perspectives from Europe and America" for SLA Europe on March 24, 2021.
Other News Passing of UC Riverside librarian Christina Cicchetti
It is with deep sadness that we announce that UC Riverside (UCR) librarian Christina Cicchetti passed away on Sunday, February 21, 2021.
Christina received her BA in Humanities from Walla Walla University in Washington State, MS in Information Studies from Drexel University, and Educational Specialist (EdS) Certificate in Curriculum and Instruction from La Sierra University. A librarian and educator with over 30 years of experience, Christina began her career as a Media Center Director and English teacher at the Portland Adventist Academy in Portland, Oregon, followed by over 15 years as a librarian at La Sierra University in Riverside. At La Sierra Christina served as the librarian for the Curriculum Resource Center and then as Chair of Public Services. She then moved to University of La Verne as an Education Librarian before joining the UCR Library as an Education / Reference Librarian in June 2007.
At UCR, Christina was primarily responsible for the outreach, instruction, research services and collection development for the Graduate School of Education faculty and students, and oversight of the Learning Resources Display Center. She also developed innovative outreach services to inland-area educators on college readiness. This led her to be invited to become a founding member of a regional group of K-12 and academic librarians to create a library bridge to college. In 2019 her librarian position expanded to focus more on teaching and faculty liaison with all social science disciplines. Christina possessed great flexibility and equanimity, and rose to the challenge. At every institution at which she worked Christina fostered fruitful and warm partnerships between the faculty and the library. She consistently enhanced the usability and profile of the library with book fairs, dynamic displays, professional development events, and faculty orientation sessions. Christina was well-known as a supportive and caring colleague. She valued her collegial connections and was always active in professional organizations such as the American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, California Library Association, and Association of Seventh-day Adventist Librarians. She displayed a strong commitment to service, serving on the California Teacher Librarian Services Credential Advisory Panel, a California Department of Education committee to recommend K-12 titles, and many national-level library award committees. Christina will be deeply missed.
Please send news about your library, you colleagues, or yourself to carlnewsletter@gmail.com Deadlines for submissions: March 15, June 15, September 15, and December 15.
Executive Board Meeting Notes
CARL Board Meeting #5 Minutes
Friday, March 5, 2021, 11:00am Pacific Time
Present: Rachel Jaffe (President)
Mario Macías (Vice President)
Lalitha Nataraj (Secretary)
Jennifer Silverman (Treasurer)
Andrew Carlos (Membership Director)
Lucy Bellamy (ACRL Chapters Council delegate)
Shamika Simpson (Director-at-Large, Community Colleges)
Paizha Stoothoff (Director-At-Large, CSU)
Samantha Alfrey (Director-At-Large-Private)
Kelli Hines (Co-Newsletter Editor)
Yen Tran (Co-Newsletter Editor)
Ethan Annis (Mentorship Comm)
David Drexler (Web Coordinator)
Kelly Janousek (Past President)
Absent:
Ken Lyons (Director-At-Large, UC)
Meeting Agenda
Items
Discussion
Action Items
1. Welcome & Introductions
11:04
Intros (Name, role on CARL Board, and favorite snack food ;))
Advocacy Liaison role not clearly defined; we may possibly convene a small group to work with Sam on coming up with some ideas;
Kelly J.: In order to keep our 501(c)3 status we have to be careful about advocacy methods; something sent via email from CARL may get more attention than emails from ALA (because of locality).
Mario: Are we able to endorse people running for ALA/ACRL?
Kelly J.: Something politically-oriented would be a problem for 501(c)3 organizations, but unlikely for ALA/ACRL related. (Yen agrees)
Rachel: Will follow up with an email re: appointing an EI coordinator.
5. Revisions to Standing Rules
DAL appointment to liaison roles
11:22
Rachel: Proposing revisions to how DAL appointments are made.
Revisions approved.
ACTION: Lalitha will make sure most updated CARL rules are in the CARL Drive.
6. 2022 CARL Conference
Rachel: Planning committee has not been formally convened; Allie Carr and Talitha Matlin are on board to help with the 2022 conference. They will also be reaching out to Lee Adams; we may also appoint an additional member.
We also need to think ahead to 2024; someone on the 2022 committee would ideally move on to 2024 committee. Andrew and Shamika are interested in serving on the 2022 committee.
Kelly J: We should put out a call to the general membership -- this is something critical for getting new leadership involved.
Rachel: Will reach out to the planning committee to see what is an ideal membership number.
Mario: Equity Coordinator role - reached out to DIAL members and didn’t get a lot of enthusiastic response.
Rachel: Would Mario be willing to approach DIAL folks about recruitment for EC role.
Kelly: We should reach out to Liz Galoozis about the EC role, particularly because she was on the task force.
Rachel: Is there room to form a committee for outreach, to assist EC? Could we consider bringing on two co-coordinators, and potentially split the stipend?
We need to locate the position description for the EC position.
Timeline/Tasklist
Once Rachel has access to the CARL Drive, she will link out to conference planning and newsletter timelines in this document.
YourMembership
Mario wants to spearhead the following:
How to utilize the platform;
How to set up events;
Mario: People are not aware we have YourMembership; we need to offer some training and consider how we communicate through the listserv (which isn’t synced to the listserv).
Mario: How do we want to communicate with our members? The listservs are open and anyone can sign up for those (that doesn’t need to be limited to official members). Perhaps “official” communication could be dispersed within YM.
We need to revamp how we ask members to be in tune with CARL.
Yen: If we want to do more with YM, we have to be aware that there will be additional costs; this might be something to explore.
Andrew: We should be promoting connections available through YM platform and the PD opportunities--not the listserv. We need to define our value propositions to members; access to a listserv is not enough.
Kelli H: We could potentially highlight features in YM in the newsletter - maybe include links to short demos, etc.
Mario: How do we make the newsletter more appealing to the general public? More images and more videos?
Yen: There are a lot of considerations for cancelling YM, and we don’t want to take this decision lightly.
Programming
Summer Retreat
Kelly: Motion to appoint Mario, Kelli, Shamika, and Andrew (already on this committee) to the Membership Committee (can be up to 10 members) to put something together to discuss at the summer retreat - doing some visioning/exploration of the value we bring to our membership (so perhaps a better venue for committee to present its findings).
Committee should prioritize ideas that would engage membership; President can create those guidelines for the committee once the group is convened.
Andrew: We would need to have a more fleshed-out charge; Membership Committee will be working on a report related to membership engagement and communication. Rachel can expand on this more.
Rachel: Expand Summer Retreat to include the IG chairs (and offer the report to that group).
Rachel: Should there be two motions? One to convene the committee and another to have a specific task (report) assigned?
Kelly: Just one motion for the time being.
(Calls for motion)
Votes: 9 Y (Convene committee)
Rachel: Do people have a preference for the Summer Retreat date? July might be a good date.
Kelly: We would have an abbreviated Summer Board Meeting or we could hold it directly after the Retreat (to discuss any issues that come up during the Retreat).
ACTION: Mario will look up documentation on EC stipend and position description.
ACTION: Andrew will investigate YM’s robust features merited.
ACTION: Lucy will investigate what engagement is like on ALA Connect (as a proportion of membership) and report back to CARL Board.
ACTION: Motion passed: Rachel will appoint Mario, Kelli, and Shamika to the Membership Committee (to serve with Andrew).
ACTION: Andrew will draft a call and send out to the Board for approval; Rachel will send out to the CARL membership.
Jennifer: Needs clarification on whether or not elected members of the Board can receive compensation. Proposing removing membership stipend.
Would also like to switch QuickBooks from monthly to annual payment.
Rachel: Are we going to renew SurveyMonkey?
Mario: We don’t really use SurveyMonkey so why pay again? We should investigate survey options in YM.
Kelly: Recommends discontinuing SurveyMonkey and apply those funds for additional modules in YM.
Rachel: I wonder if we should consider in the future reducing some of the award amounts. Those budget items currently benefit a few folks and they might be better spent to benefit more members.
Yen: I don’t know if I agree with reducing the award amounts since reducing it may barely cover costs.
Jennifer: Motion to approve 2021 CARL budget introduced.
Votes: 8 Y 1 N 1 abstention
9. Renewing SurveyMonkey
Motion: Cancel SurveyMonkey and apply funds to YM.
Jennifer: Who has access to the SurveyMonkey account?
Rachel: We may need to reach out to Lee Adams re: access to SM
Vote: 9 Y
ACTION: Jennifer will get in touch with Lee Adams about cancelling SurveyMonkey.
10. IG Event Planning: Budgets & Honoria
Discuss current process
DIAL/IG Symposium (Mario)
Summit/UnConf (M&S)
Mario: DIAL has been planning an IG symposium for the first week of June, including at least 3 speakers (appx. $600 per person). They also want to purchase books related to anti-racist topics for members who register.
What is the protocol for assessing how much money we can provide for programming?
Mario: IG budget - requesting $5000.
Kelly: IGs have to charge for programs in order for CARL to recoup some expenses and not run at a deficit.
Shamika: Is it possible to make events free for CARL members and charge non-members?
Yen: There is a form that the IG or anyone else doing an event has to submit to the Treasurer; the Board may have to vote on the event if the costs are exorbitant.
Shamika: Recommends tabling the discussion on IG program funding and figuring out, as a board, how we can meet the needs of membership and still recoup funding.
Event motion tabled.
ACTION: CARL Board Members review the DIAL budget.
11. Alternative strategies for managing CARLEX documents (Lali/Rachel)
Rachel: Could not get access to CARL Drive account due to MFA feature.
An alternative strategy is to create a Google Group with all of the current members subscribed and each year the list would be updated.
A Google Drive can belong to a Google Group; everyone who is a member of the group can access the drive.
ACTION: Lali and Rachel will work together to establish the CARL Google Group (transferring documents and adding members)
12. Membership Report (Andrew)
Members - 302
ALIGN - 75
CARLDIG - 151
DIAL - 126
SCIL - 144
SCORE - 94
SEAL - 45
NorCal - 87
SoCal - 214
Community College - 74
Consortium - 2
CSU - 83
Private - 46
School - 0
UC - 37
Vendor - 1
13. Treasurer Report (Jennifer)
(see Appendix A below)
14. Mentorship Committee Update
(Ethan)
The mentorship program is going well.
There are no action items.
15. Interest Group Coordinator (Shamika)
12:52
IGs would appreciate more guidance, support and transparency.
IGs note low attendance at events; would appreciate CARL Board’s support with communication
IGs note that forms and documents are difficult to access
IGs would appreciate help with cross-posting and sharing information about events.
IG chairs have noted that they have not met with CARL Board members.
IG chairs want to know how they fit into the larger organization of CARL? How does CARL fit into ACRL?
IG chairs would like access to an annual report every year.
Shamika: We need to schedule a meet-and-greet with IG Chairs and CARL Board
Create a master spreadsheet with all social media accounts;
16. Website Assessment Project (Ken)
1:06
ACTION: Rachel will appoint a website assessment committee.
17. Awards Liaison (Paizha)
ACTION: Rachel will work with Paizha to populate the Gayatri Singh Awards Committee.
Reached out to Allie Carr re: forming a conference planning committee for 2022
Working with Mario on getting access to and figuring out what we can/cannot do with YM
Ongoing firefighting of various issues: Quickbooks, etc.
Vice President
Past President
Provided background on CARLALL- listserv and Interest Groups (SEAL) to newer board members
Provided background on annual items budgeted i.e. stipends, services
Tried to help with documentation for change bank, PCI and accessing Quicken books
Received the CARL 2020 Conference Report and shared
Recognize CARL awardees outside of CARL. Julia M. Gelfand, UC-Irvine, 2021 ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year and Dr. Leslie Farmer, CSULB recognized with the ALA Ken Haycock Promoting Librarianship award with virtual flowers
Confirmed appointments, Yen Tran and Kellie Hines, CARL Newsletter co-editors
Will work on creating membership committee to handle issues like CARLALL question, connecting to new members, etc
To appoint Gayatri Singh Awards Committee
Secretary
Continued to move / organize documents within Google Drive; these documents will be migrated over to a Google Group.
Deadlines for submissions: March 15, June 15, September 15, and December 15. Newsletter submissions, corrections, questions, and comments should be sent to carlnewsletter@gmail.com.
Our mailing address is: |carlall@listserv.carl-acrl.org|
April 14, 2021 at 4pm - Lecture Series: Black Scholars on Black Lives Lecture Series - "
Save the date SCIL 2021 Spring Program – May 7th, 2021
Passing of UC Riverside librarian Christina Cicchetti