Somehow we have made it to the middle of the semester! That in itself is a cause worth celebrating.
I have a few things to report:
1) The SUNYLA Midwinter Conference 2016 will be held on February 5, 2016 from 10am-3pm. The call for papers is currently out. Submissions are due by December 7th. We're hoping to build upon last year's conference and have another successful one.
2) SCLD (SUNY Council of Library Directors) has developed a new strategic plan to guide their organization. Bill and I attended the SCLD Fall meeting in Rochester last month and the strategic plan was a big topic of discussion. They would like to work with SUNYLA in several areas spread over the next few years. Some of these areas include increasing librarian participation on SUNY-wide committees and task forces, coming up with an elevator speech and advocacy materials to promote libraries SUNY-wide, and looking at the topics of assessment, OERs, and shared expertise system-wide. The SCLD Spring meeting will be held in Albany in April.
3) To that end, I would like to propose forming a Library Advocacy Ad-Hoc Committee to work in conjunction with the group in SCLD that will be working on coming up with ways to promote what our libraries are doing on our own campuses and SUNY-wide. I've asked that we put a discussion in New Business.
4) Following the last round of Elsevier negotiations, there was a desire to form a team that would talk to Elsevier on a more ongoing basis about business models and partnerships. Right now we are looking for someone to represent SUNYLA on the team, which includes several library directors and representatives from System. The meetings with Elsevier would likely be held at their offices in Manhattan. If anyone is interested please let me know.
5) I'd like to start planting the seeds early for SUNYLA 2017. If you think you might like your library to host in 2017, please also let me know. We will be looking to hold our 2017 conference in the downstate region.
