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Messages - mtimmons

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PPC Report -

Committee chair update:  Heather Stalter, Associate Librarian at SUNY Oneonta, has volunteered to take over as chair.  She and I have met to discuss current initiatives, specifically the Stay Survey.  As Heather has been a long-standing member of the PPC, the transition should be smooth.  I will be staying on the committee. 

Mary Timmons (soon to be past chair)


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The PPC met at the SUNYLA Annual during the SIG timeslot.  Discussion:
•   Carry over discussion from the Annual Meeting...We concurred with the Council meeting discussion that a Stay Survey would be a better direction (than an Exit Survey) and would elicit more positive and / or more usable responses. 
•   The need to incorporate multiple text boxes for people to share concerns, issues, thoughts, ideas and solutions.  This will give people the opportunity to give input within their comfort level. 
We discussed various versions of questions that are more ‘positive’ based.
•   Adding to the SUNYLA website’s PPC overview description to include a line of reference to alternate sources of salary information.  Currently, the PPC is supposed to ‘…conducts, prints and distributes a SUNY Library Salary Survey…’  At this point it is a bit superfluous -  people can create IPEDS reports based on specific needs.  Questions – does adding this information change the charge of the committee and so needs to wait until the Annual Conference for a vote or can just information be added to this section of the website as an FYI.   

I have put out a call to our committee members to see if anybody would like to take over as PPC Chair. 


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!!  :) There is a PPC Special Interest Group (SIG) Meeting today at 4pm in Gleeson 123  :)  Everyone Welcome  !!

Exit Survey Project– a survey was open from March 21 to May 13 requesting community input and thoughts on revamping / implementing an Exit Survey.  There were 19 responses.  The overall responses mirrored the concerns of the PPC concerns: the possibility the data could be used against individuals, how to keep the data anonymized and confidential (and if it was even possible), and what would the survey ultimately accomplish. 
There are several thoughts regarding a Stay Survey.  It was expressed, in both the responses and by the PPC, that a Stay Survey could potentially lead to better outcomes (and it certainly sounds more positive).  Questions could be embedded that would be suggestions of improvements to environments rather than focusing on negatives generally associated with an Exit Survey. 

Salary Survey  - Before the pandemic, Bill Jones (Geneseo) and I worked on reviewing IPEDS reports for salary information, as a replacement for our formal Salary Survey.  After much review, and speaking with IPEDS personnel, we discovered that much of the salary information previously requested via our Salary Survey could be garnered with IPEDS reports.  IPEDS reports can be generated on an add-needed base, are authoritative, and do not involve our delegates gathering sensitive information.   

Action items: 
•   Archive the Salary Survey information
•   Switch focus to a Stay Survey
•   Think about changing the Personnel Policies Committee charge


The following members of the Personnel Policies Committee are working on the idea of an Exit / Stay Survey:

Danielle Apfelbaum
Caterina Reed
Heather Stalter
Mary Timmons

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As discussed at the previous Council meeting, the PPC would like to resurrect and refresh the previous iteration of the Exit Survey https://sunyla.org/forms/exitsurvey.htm.  Before we continue, however, we would like to know your thoughts on 1. The usefulness of exit surveys 2. The ultimate use and distribution of collected data.

We seek feedback on such questions as who would have access to the raw data, the analyzed data, how it would be stored and preserved, etc.   While the data would be anonymous, given that we are a small community, an exit survey by its nature would have identifiable indications of institution / job duties / location – and we need to be sensitive and respectful of privacy.

This feedback gathering survey was distributed via the SUNYLA listserv; The "SUNYLA Community Input Request on Exit Surveys" ( https://tinyurl.com/mr3xeufs ) will be open until May 13, 2022.

The following members of the Personnel Policies Committee are working on these surveys:

Danielle Apfelbaum
Caterina Reed
Heather Stalter
Mary Timmons

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The Committee met on December 6 (+e-mail exchanges) and discussed:
  Possible questions
  Survey format
  What might we want as the ultimate outcome / goal of the survey
  Suggestions from Jim Neal & logistics of the survey:
      Who anonymizes results?
      Where would info be housed?
      Who analyzes results? Jim Neal suggested a neutral 3rd party.
      Who receives results? Confidentiality. By request of library director for info on their library only? Open or not open data?
 
Questions the PPC has...

We need input from the Council before we proceed in earnest:
  The Personnel Policies Committee may have to change/expand our charge, based on what is decided
  What is our ultimate goal? This will determine our mission.
  Do we want to consider Exit survey and/or Stay survey?
  Stay survey might be a mass survey; Exit survey is more piecemeal.

Is the Council comfortable having our committee do this and be the caretakers of this information?

More topics we discussed:
Logistics of the survey:
  Who anonymizes results?
  Where would info be housed?
  Who analyzes results? Jim Neal suggested a neutral 3rd party.
  Who receives results? Confidentiality. By request of library director for info on their library only? Open or not open data?
 


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Personnel Policies Committee Report

Update on the Exit Survey
The PPC had a very successful SIG meeting at Annual. 
-We discussed including spaces for narratives.  We discussed the idea of capturing personal stories of the 'why' - why library workers leave their positions.
-Heather Stalter and I have been working on adding this preliminary feedback.
-Heather is making contact with James Neal, an expert on exit surveys
-We are getting a working group together to review the re-drafted survey

The areas we will be seeking feedback to expand / incorporate into the survey are:   Work environment, Compensation and benefits, Job duties, Personal reasons / factors.


Respectfully Submitted,
Mary Timmons
Chair PPC

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Personnel Policies Committee Report

Update on the Exit Survey
The PPC will be having a SIG meeting to discuss a draft of the revamped Exit Survey. Our discussion will focus on expanding the survey questions to include four categories of why library workers change their position.  We want to shift away from the Salary / Benefits / Tangibles to more Personal / Environment / Morale /Intangible reasons why library workers flee / leave their positions. 
The areas we will be seeking feedback to expand / incorporate into the survey are:   Work environment, Compensation and benefits, Job duties, Personal reasons / factors.

Respectfully Submitted,
Mary Timmons
Chair PPC

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Personnel Policies Committee Report

Update on the Exit Survey.
 - Heather Stalter, Oneonta, has volunteered to spearhead the revamp
 - We have a working group of 4 enthusiastic PPC members who will be developing a draft
 - Heather has started researching exit surveys
 - We also have received, and will be incorporating, suggestions from the SUNYLA community
 
Respectfully Submitted,
Mary Timmons
Chair PPC

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Personnel Policies Committee Report

We are working on updating the Exit Survey. 
At this point the draft survey is getting very long I try to incorporate the input I received. 
I am looking for a few volunteers to offer suggestions on ways to make the survey more user-friendly and / or perhaps change the platform (currently it is in Google Forms). 
If you, or someone you know, would like to be a part of this endeavor, please contact me mtimmons@monroecc.edu
Respectfully Submitted,
Mary Timmons
Chair PPC

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Personnel Policies Committee Sept 18 Report
We have 4 new members that have recently joined our committee:

Lauren Puzier
University of Albany

Danielle S. Apfelbaum
Thomas D. Greenley Library, SUNY Farmingdale

Rebecca Hewitt
Peter J. Cayan Library, SUNY Poly, Utica

Jacquie Keleher
Schenectady County Community College

They will be joining Dana Tomlin from Old Westbury and Christian Poehlmann from U Albany and myself - that makes a total of 7 members!!

Mary Timmons,
Chair PPC

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Personnel Policies Committee

No official report. 

At some point, however, we do need to discuss Exit Surveys (one of PPC's charges).

Mary Timmons,
Chair PPC

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Personnel Policies Committee Report - No report.

Plans to work with IPEDS data kind of fell apart.....

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Bill Jones and I have been exploring the IPEDS database to gather Library personnel stats.  We are looking at different geographical areas (outside NYS) as well as trying to find/pull historical data.  (This is an extension of the SUNY Librarian personnel info posted at the last meeting.)

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Still following up on SUNY Librarians and Student FTE system wide data...

I have been pulling reports from IPEDS and created an Excel data sheet with Student FTE to Librarian Ratio – the original request to Personnel Policies Committee.  This sheet is just FTE Students to FTE Librarians. See uploaded sheet.
(Note: I counted PT Librarians as 50% for calculations.  I also kept in CUNY as it was a part of the original data set)

Bill Jones and I have been in discussion on what types of data would be useful.  Further progress:
 
There is the Academic Library Survey (ALS) has similar material back 1996, biannual, in separate yearly files.

IPEDS has data on Librarian (FT and PT) as well as library technicians; student FTE; library expenditures; salary and wages.  Fall 2012 to Fall 2017. 

Preliminary reports and working files in housed in Google Docs at this point; Bill secured storage space on the SUNYLA server as a permanent home for data.

Next Steps –pull usable historical data on librarian staffing and budgets from ALS. Pull reports for wages and expenditures – what will it reveal?

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Follow up from the SUNY Onondaga meeting regarding Librarians and Student FTE system wide data...

I have been in contact with Dave Lamphere, Associate for Institutional Research Institutional Research and Data Analytics SUNY, and obtained two reports:
SUNY Enrollment 2017:  https://www.sunyla.org/sunyla_docs/committees/ppc/SUNYEnrollment2017.xlsm
Historical Librarian Counts: https://www.sunyla.org/sunyla_docs/committees/ppc/SUNYLibrarianCount-FromSUNY.xlsx

Please note:  I obtained these files a while ago and the data is a bit dated.  We can get updated information (current data was still being compiled and churned when I spoke to him last); we just need to request.  Dave was also interested in knowing how we could use the data, what other data might be useful, the need for the data, etc.  He was interested in knowing that this data was being used and had a purpose. 

SO - What do we want to do next?   What do we want as a collective? 

Mary Timmons
Chair, PPC

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