“I am the faculty senate
liaison for the library committee. Basically, they have me classified as a
voting member, I have the ability to agree and disagree with anything that the library
sets forth to present to the faculty senate. I usually abstain from voting as a
liaison because I don’t feel that being a member of faculty senate that has a
position should be able to influence that decision anymore than I already do. I
will present unbiased opinion to faculty senate when I give the committee
report. Typically I tell what this committee discusses, what they voted on, and
I always mentioned that I excluded myself from voting because I don’t think
that’s right personally. But liaisons do have voting rights on all the
committees that they are on. Some choose to do it, some choose not. I choose
not to. Basically we have meetings, we are kind of slack this semester because
we haven’t had our first meeting yet, usually we have it once a month where we
discuss everything that entails that has to do with the library, essentially.
Budgeting, cuts, student involvement, student use of the library, those kinds
of things. This year has been mainly been focused on budget cuts, and how we
are going to handle the state cutting academic budgets on all college campuses,
varying ranges of 2.5 to 5 percent. Every year that this happens, the library
submits a letter of request to be exempt from those cuts, because we are
already running on a shoestring budget. Some of the things that happen with
library budgeting is that the databases and journals usually go up every year
based upon inflation, the cost of printing that kind of thing. So their prices
go up and that price comes to us, and of course with those prices going up our
budget is going down something ends up having to happen. And we end up loosing
things. Typically what the library committee does is that they become aware of
what’s going to be lost and they will go back to their respective departments
and tell them what is happening. Usually, a letter of petition is written by the
department head to request that those things not be cut. Aside from that,
that’s really what the library committee does, are the day-to-day operations of
the library, business meetings, that kind of stuff. Those are usually given to
us by Dr. Monica Garcia Brooks, who is the VP of the Library, and she keeps the
budgets and numbering. Other members come and basically voice their opinions,
to mainly get the idea of what’s happening in the library and what’s going to
affect the department that each chair of the department comes from. What’s supposed
to happen we’re suppose to have members delegated to the library committee from
every department on campus.”
No comments:
Post a Comment