Executive Committee meeting summaries (3/6 & 3/13/14)

Executive Committee 3/6/14
No meeting

Executive Committee 3/13/14 meeting summary

Facilities, Engineering and Planning is reviewing the proposed budget for the basement renovations. Possible savings may be found in areas such as ceiling and duct work, floor work, and asbestos abatement. A design architect must be selected. There may be a slight delay in beginning construction. Timelines for the project are under discussion.

Microfilm transfer/withdrawal project: Spiro, Flannery and Keck will coordinate to get Lowman a new estimate on when Kelley Center collections will have been reduced by 40%. Staying as close as possible to the original target date of April 15 is a goal.

Finals support for students: The group supports the C-MACS (Committee on Marketing and Customer Service) recommendation not to alter building hours again during finals, based on data collected by CMACS/GDC last semester. We will likely repeat providing extra seating in the KMR for finals. C-MACS is also considering how best to help students find all the study spaces we do have available (e.g. floor maps).

Horizon Group: The Horizon Group is interested in new research topics; we will discuss in two weeks.

SHARE initiative (http://bit.ly/Oqu325) readiness: Spiro reported that an internal committee readying Rice for participation in this ARL/AAU/APLU-sponsored project to increase public access to federally-funded research will complete its recommendations within about a month. The DSpace community is also working on SHARE. Spiro is conferring with colleagues in Rice’s Office of Sponsored Research and Office of Research about the project, the White House directive that led to it and data management plans.

Several recent reports and documents from committees have not been distributed as intended. Group members will review a list provided by Keck and the documents will go up on Fondranet.

Lowman asked for ideas for Staff Association meeting reporting. The work of the University Committee on the Library in seeking Faculty Senate support for Fondren’s materials budget will be covered.

Recent talks with the Budget Office make clear that we need to code carefully expenditures taken from funds other than regular operating funds, so that Sirsi and Banner expenditures stay as much in synch as possible. Refining current coding practices will be a summer project.