Volume 2, Issue 7

Holiday Pay- July 3rd
Holiday pay is being given for Friday, July 3rd this year as July 4th falls on a Saturday. For those of you who normally work on Saturday, the Library will be closed, but no holiday pay will be granted for Saturday, only Friday. Please, work with your supervisor to adjust your schedule accordingly.


Budget Update
The MOU has been signed by all three chancellors! Shared Leadership Team members are now considering the criteria for determining allocations for student worker, staff development, and other general operating line items in the budget.

Reclassification Announcements
At the beginning of the Library reorganization a commitment was made to promote from within whenever possible. Many positions have increased in scope and responsibility as a natural outcome of the reorganization which also included several retirements. Due to these changes, and with the new knowledge of our FY10 budget, a package requesting needed reclassifications and two retiree rehires was recently submitted to the Provost. It is a pleasure to announce that these requests have all been given Provost approval and the details of the reclassifications and retiree rehires are described below.

Technical Services:

Valerie Bordas Library Technician I position is recommended for reallocation to a Library Technician II. This recommendation comes as a result of Valerie taking on duties that were held by three higher classed positions including responsibility for all approval and firm monographic orders from YBP and standing orders. For details regarding this new position including more detailed responsibilities, minimum qualifications and application procedures, please see the official job posting which is located in the employee lounge and outside of the restrooms on both floors. This position will be posted for five business days, from June 29, 2009 through July 6, 2009.

Shelley Wendt With a tight learning materials budget, it is more important for us to assess the usage statistics of our resources. Shelley is responsible for generating this information for bibliographers and reporting our statistic to various agencies. Her position was upgraded without salary increase to a Library Technician III in January. We are compensating her at the appropriate level beginning July 1, 2009.

EllenNedzel started in Technical Services as a trainee and has been learning the acquisitions process of e-resources. In Nov./Dec. Ellen will have gained the one year of experience that is needed in order to be reallocated to an LTII, the correct classification of the position she is working in. The position announcement will be posted and shared with the Library in late November or early December.

Vicki Britto Although a majority of the learning materials budget is allocated to electronic resources, we still have print materials that require attention. Vicki will be returning part-time, 30 days after her retirement in order to address this need.

Education, Research and Information Services:

Tobey Stein will return to Auraria part-time following her retirement June 30. She will return sometime in August, when her slightly less than half time employment will be concentrated during those times of the semester when we need her most for classroom library
Instruction and research consultation, so probably during the first half of fall and spring semesters.

Cindy Martinez and Meghan Walker: With the merger of Reserves/Media and ILL and looking forward to the Combined Service Desks, the roles of Cindy M and Meghan Walker have evolved and will continue to do so; therefore, we will be submitting job descriptions detailing their new responsibilities to human resources and envision an upgrade to their current classifications. Provost approval was sought in advance, however approval will still be needed from the UCD HR panel which determines classifications. A job posting announcement and further details will be given after that process is completed.

Administration:

Marical Farner is assuming new responsibilities as Associate Director of Administrative Services, which includes fiscal/budget, facilities, and human resources management, to advance strategic alignment of the library's human and financial resources. In addition to coordinating these functions, she will further workplace learning initiatives.

Mike Furuli In order to allow Marical's role to expand, it was necessary that Mike assume many of the duties that were part of her position including travel, workman's comp tracking and performance management duties. This position has therefore been recommended for reclassification to a Technician IV. For details regarding this new position including more detailed responsibilities, minimum qualifications and application procedures, please see the official job posting which is located in the employee lounge and outside of the restrooms on both floors. This position will be posted for five business days, from June 29, 2009 through July 6, 2009.

Special Projects Team:

Farhad Vakilitabar's position is being recommended for reclassification to a General Professional II. The new responsibilities of this position support the mission of the University of Colorado Denver's Center for Colorado and the West at the Auraria Library, which aims to enhance availability, access, and usage of unique regional research materials. In addition, this position will assume responsibility for the Auraria Library gallery. For details regarding this new position including more detailed responsibilities, minimum qualifications and application procedures, please see the official job posting which is located in the employee lounge and outside of the restrooms on both floors. This position will be posted for five business days, from June 29, 2009 through July 6, 2009.

Thanks to all who have agreed to take on new and different responsibilities as the vision of the Library develops to meet the expanding needs of our users.

Aur Things - Learning 2.0 Program available July 20th
The Auraria Library's version of the 23 Things, Learning 2.0 program originally created by Helene Blowers will be available starting July 20th. This will be a 10 week, self-led, online program which will include introduction to many Internet and web technologies including blogs, facebook, wikis, podcasts,Skillsoft and more. The link for this program will be sent out to the Library list on July 20th. Instructions for how to complete the program will be on the first page of that link. This program is not mandatory, but we hope we have made it exciting and interesting and encourage everyone to participate.

R&R Committee

Please, support the R&R Committee’s Event Fund for birthdays, potlucks and special events. You can give your contribution to Geraldine Archuleta, Nicole Toovey, Marical Farner or Mary Dodge.

July Birthdays will be celebrated on Wednesday, July 1st, 2 pm in the Staff Lounge.

Sabbatical Announcement
I just wanted to let everyone know that I will be on a half-year sabbatical starting on July 1st. I’ll be working on my book on LGBTIQ (that’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer/questioning) librarianship.

I want to thank the folks who’ll be filling in for me while I’m gone. Rosemary Evetts will be working on our part of the IMLS “Creating Communities” grant to digitize Denver neighborhoods. And Meg Brown-Sica and Jeffrey Beall will be handling ADR (Alliance Digital Repository) related issues/business while I’m gone. I know how busy everyone is and truly appreciate their generosity in keeping things running while I’m away.

- Ellen Greenblatt

Volume 2, Issue 6

From Payroll and Benefits:

Reminder: June Monthly Payroll paid on July 1, 2009
Per State of Colorado directive to all state agencies, the June end-of-month pay date will be moved forward to Wednesday, July 1, 2009. Employees should plan ahead for this shift in pay date, especially if any automatic banking bill payments will be affected. The university is not responsible for any financial hardship, includingany potential overdraft charges, created by this pay shift.

University Benefit Deduction Dates Shifting
The university is shifting the deduction date for benefits insurance premiums to post pay. Effective July 1, 2009, all benefits deductions will be taken at the end of the month. As a result, no monthly premiums for University of Colorado medical, dental, life, optional life insurance, AD&D coverage, short-term and long-term disability will be deducted from June paychecks. This change will not impact to coverage for these plans. Please, review their July 31,
2009 pay information carefully to verify that it reflects the correct benefits deductions. This will not affect state medical and dental plans as these are already deducted post pay.


Tobey Stein Retiring
After working in just about every department of the library during most of the years that the Auraria Library has been in existence, Tobey Stein has decided to retire effective June 30, 2009. Most of Tobey’s work has been in the former Architecture and Planning Library and in Reference, Instruction, and Government Publications, where she has provided reference service in person and online and taught many classes in library research, for which she has received many faculty and student commendations. She developed an innovative wiki web site to facilitate student learning and communication. She also works with disabled students on their library research. It was Tobey’s idea to designate computer groups for students and nonstudents during the area remodeling in the summer of 2006, which paved the way for implementing logon software for student and community user areas. In addition to her primary job, Tobey has greatly improved the library’s appearance through her work developing the courtyard plants, and in library displays to promote books and databases. She has contributed to several volunteer projects, such as the holiday mitten tree and food drive for local elementary schools. She also was instrumental in starting the first campus sorority, Sigma Sigma Sigma, a local chapter of the national organization for which she received the campus service award in 2004. She also received the Outstanding Staff Award from the Library in 2007 and the first UCD Chancellor’s Employee of the Month award in 2008 for her teaching and other activities. Tobey, we will miss you!

Louise Treff-Gangler


Technical Services Announcement
On July 6th, Holly Brown will be joining Technical Services in a 6-month temporary position. Holly brings to Auraria Library a wealth of serials experience. For the last nine years, she has been working as our customer service representative at EBSCO, our journal subscription vendor. Please welcome Holly to Auraria Library.


Announcement
The Police Desk at the front entrance/exit of the library will be removed. It is rarely used by the Campus Police and it has caused confusion when patrons sit there.

Evelyn



Technology Department News
General
First of all I would like to congratulate Doug Flint for passing the first of two exams for his A+ certification. Yay, Doug. Also, Niraj will be representing the library on a UCD Computing Standards Committee.

We are getting ready for the III server to move upstairs where it will have improved wiring. That will take place on 6/8. Rick will be supervising the move, but AHEC, ITS, Niraj and Doug will help as needed. There will be III downtime that day. The sign on system for the public computers will be disabled (it usually authenticates through III) that day.

Other projects:
· Hiring another student for the summer
· Computer installation
· Resolving Bugzilla tickets
· Working with Rick to set up an offline Millennium module
· Finalizing the network server move with ITS

Learning Commons Update
Erika Rogers, a consultant will be here between the dates of 6/8-6/19 to help us work on the Learning Commons research plan. You can find information about her company here. Her schedule will be published soon. Tentative information about the work she will do here is found here. We are fleshing out some of our sandbox ideas—ideas that can be tried out easily to see if our users like them-such as a writing center outpost, technology help desk and collaborative work areas. You can find information about these (a work on progress) on our wiki.


Technology Strategy Update
We are working on our first project, which is a Technology Plan for the library. Actually, there will probably be several plans. One might be an “Enterprise Plan” which would cover what software and hardware we have and who is responsible for specific applications, etc. There may also be a strategic plan. The plan we are starting with is general in nature and may cover such topics as are mentioned in this document. The Technology Strategy Committee has a wiki page and we have some sample plans there as well as a list of our members. We are lucky to have Jeff Beel from ITS serving on this committee to give us some outside input. Please feel free to give feedback, leave comments, etc.

-Meg


Congratulations to the Auraria Library faculty whose scholarly articles were published recently:

Beck, T. (2009, January). Encyclopedia of Islam. Charleston Advisor, 10(3), 39-41.

Brown-Sica, Margaret. 2008. "Playing Tag in the Dark: Diagnosing Slowness in Library Response Time." Information Technology & Libraries 27, no. 4: 29-32.

Brown-Sica, Margaret, Karen Sobel, and Denise Pan. 2009. "Learning for All: Teaching Students, Faculty, and Staff with Screencasting." Public Services Quarterly 5, no. 2: 81-97.

Evans, Lorrie, Nina McHale, and Karen Sobel. 2009. "LibGuides." Charleston Advisor 10, no. 3: 47-49.

Ferrer-Vinent, Ignacio J., and Christy A. Carello. 2008. "Embedded Library Instruction in a First-Year Biology Laboratory Course." Science & Technology Libraries 28, no. 4: 325-351.

Somerville, Mary M., and Lydia Collins. 2008. "Collaborative design: a learner-centered library planning approach." Electronic Library 26, no. 6: 803-820.

Somerville, Mary M., and Zaana Howard. 2008. "Systems thinking: an approach for advancing workplace information literacy." Australian Library Journal 57, no. 3: 257-273.