UCLA University Librarian

 As I mentioned in my earlier post about the University Librarian’s Undergraduate Fellowship, I want to share excerpts from the personal statements fellowship recipients made in their applications to give you a sense of what they see as the spirit, potential, and promise of this new program. 

First up is Michael Benitez, a senior in the English honors program, whose faculty research mentor is Arthur Little. 

“I was fortunate enough to gain some exposure to the craft of research at the Charles E. Young Research Library with my Honors Research Seminar, with a few assignments requiring me to complete practice research and to create an annotated bibliography of academic sources for my senior thesis. … While the research I have done as an undergraduate has not been as extensive as what is required for my senior thesis, I have had some opportunities to present my various findings to classmates in the past.  Whether I have received acknowledgement and praise from them or from my professors, I have always gained such a feeling of accomplishment in knowing that I have taught someone something new and I want to continue sharing my work with as many people as I can.” 

Thank you, Michael.  We look forward to helping you develop and share your work!

The James and Sylvia Thayer Short-Term Reesearch Fellowships (http://www.2.library.ucla.edu/special/thayer.cfm ) support the use of special collections materials by visiting scholars and UCLA graduate students.  Collectiosn that are administered by the UCLA Lbirary Special Collections and available for Thayer fellowship-supported research include materials in the humaniteis and social sciences; medicine, life and physical sciences; visual and performing arts; and UCLA history.

Research residencies may last up to three months between March 1 and December 17, 2010. Recipients receive stipends ranging from $500 to $2,500.  Those receiving fellowships are expected to provide a report on the results of their research that can be mounted on the UCLA Library Web site.

United States citizens and permanent residents with the legal right to work in the U.S. who are engaged in graduate-level, post-doctoral, or independent research are invited to apply.

Applications are due December 11, 2009, and should include:

•  Cover letter
•  Curriculum vitae
•  Outline of research and special collections to be used (two pages maximum)
• Brief budget for travel, living, and research expenses
• Dates to be spent in residence
• Two letters of recommendation from faculty or other scholars familiar with the research project

Mail applications to:

James and Sylvia Thayer Fellowship Program

c/o Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, UCLA Library, A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA  90095-1575.

Questions about the fellowships may be mailed to the address above or emailed to: lib_thayer@library.ucla.edu

Designed to develop excellent independent researchers, the University Librarian’s Undergraduate Fellowship is a new program targeted at students working on Departmental Honors projects or other comprehensive research projects in art history, classics, comparative literature, and English. Jointly sponsored by the University Librarian and the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, the program is funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources. Twenty $500 stipends will be given in the 2009/10 academic year:  ten at the beginning of the fall quarter and ten at mid-quarter.  

The first ten recipients represent a diverse group of undergraduates with majors ranging from comparative literature to creative writing to English. Their research interests include:

• Victorian and American travel narratives with emphasis on the establishment of cultural identity in an increasingly globalized world
• Severe bullying in teenagers
• Negative posthumous images of Elizabeth I through the plays Henry VIII and The Revenger’s Tragedy
• An exploration of the core concepts of Romanticism
• Chicano theater
• An examination of how visual and literary representations of the Zapotec third-gender identity muxe interrogate and/or reinforce heteronormativity
• Artists’ expressions in literature and the cultural production of writers
• Pulp fiction in American gay and lesbian literature
• Stereopsis and the divisional and unitive possibilities of the human mind 

Each recipient will work closely with a faculty member who serves as an advisor and with a librarian mentor to use research library resources, including special collections and archives, to complete his or her project.  Conversant with research methodologies, information resources, and information technologies associated with specific disciplines, librarian mentors are ideally positioned to collaborate with faculty to meet the information, reference, and research needs of these students.  

Each student’s research project will be presented in a Library program, deposited in the Library’s institutional repository, and made available through the Library’s Web site.  

In the coming weeks, I’ll share excerpts from the personal statements the students made in their applications to give you a sense of what they see as the spirit, potential, and promise of this new program.  I hope you’ll find them as touching and inspiring as I have!   

Harry Brant Chandler kicked off the Library Associates Author series for the current academic year last night to a full house at the Research Library. Chandler’s new book, Dreamers in Dream City is a stunning collection of portraits and biographies of some of the most colorful and accomplished people the City of Angels has ever produced.

Harry is a fifth-generation Angeleno and a member of the Chandler family of The Los Angeles Times.  A graduate of the presstigious Phillips Andover Academy, he is a graduate of Stanford University.  For almost 30 years, Harry was a media executive who worked with companies such as 20th Century Fox, Showtime, and CBS.  Recently, he has begun to devote his talents to art and photograhy.  His distinctive portrait of Los Angeles in Dreamers is a result of his experiences in media blended with his passion for photography.

He hightlighted four of the “dreamers” drawn from the fifty-six women and men included in the book ranging from immigrants to billionaires, unknowns to the world famous, surfers to moviemakers, and quacks to rocket scientists.

As always there was a lively question and answer session at the conclusion of his remarks.

Harry Brant Chandler with Gary Strong during the reception following the program.

The Program is now available on at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW7ZcI7JWlY

Now that the academic year is about to begin, I want to update you on the difficult decisions the UCLA Library is making to implement our 2009-10 budget. 

The Library depends on state funding for almost ninety percent of our budget.  Our non-salary allocation for 09-10 has been cut by five percent, or $1.8 million.  In addition, we must come up with just over $1 million this fiscal year to cover charges for energy, deferred maintenance, increases in fringe benefits costs, and employer contributions to retirement.  Thus, the total reduction we must plan for comes to nearly $3 million, or about eight percent of our overall budget. Note that these figures do not reflect the salary reductions mandated by the UC Office of the President, which are being taken centrally. 

In making these reductions, our primary concern is to sustain the excellence of the Library’s collections, services, and staff in support of UCLA’s students, faculty, and staff, and we are determined to ensure that the Library emerges from this crisis strong, relevant, and sustainable.  The following actions are being taken with those goals in mind. 

Collections:  I am holding back twenty-five percent of the acquisitions allocation from state funds, for a potential savings of nearly $2 million.  The reductions are being applied differentially across collections and disciplines to preserve our ability to provide resources essential for teaching and research and to address the immediate needs of faculty, researchers, and graduate students.  We will also attempt to sustain all joint purchases and licenses we are committed to with other UC libraries to retain access to many highly used electronic resources.  While this is a significant cut and the first such reduction in the Library’s history, our liaison librarians will work closely with you to respond to your requests for essential items and to acquire them and made them available as quickly as possible. 

Hours:  Though reduced, hours have been set to ensure broad access to collections, services, and research and study spaces and to correspond with instructional schedules and usage patterns.  The four largest libraries will be open Monday through Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Saturday, and open Sunday from 1 to 6 p.m.  Night Powell, the College Library’s extended-hours reading room, will open for tenth and final weeks during the fall quarter.  Hours for the Eugene and Maxine Rosenfeld Management Library will remain unchanged from last year. All print reserves will be housed in one of the large libraries in order to remain accessible to all students, and electronic reserves will be available 24/7, as always, as will electronic resources, online reference assistance, and user self-services. 

Campus Libraries:  To address current reductions and plan for possible future cuts, we have begun to examine how the Library can meet its campus commitments with fewer physical locations.  Internal study teams have begun to examine the service and collection issues associated with shifting the collections, services, and staff of the Arts and SEL/Chemistry libraries to one of the large libraries.  The process will also include consultation with affected constituencies and discussion of the options. 

Staffing:  We have not filled vacancies for some time and have limited recruitments to a very few critical positions; that will continue. 

I will post updates on major developments, and further information is available on the Library budget Web page at http://www.library.ucla.edu/about/budget.cfm . 

Progress is being made toward meeting our goal of having this new space available for students when Fall term begins this month. 

The Henry J. Bruman Map Collection has been moved into its new home from various locations.

Microforms are being located near the map collection.  The daylight washes over these new spaces.

Installation of lighting over study table is nearly complete.

Lounge seating and lighted tables give options for relaxed, quiet study spaces.  The lighting levels help the project achieve its LEED goals.

Handrails in the stairwells have now been refinished and hung to meet ADA standards, a part of bringing these spaces into compliance.

I very much appreciate your expression of support for the UCLA Arts Library. 

The UCLA Library depends on state funding for almost ninety percent of its budget.  The allocation for 2009-10 has been cut by five percent, or $1.8 million.  In addition, the Library must come up with just over $1 million this fiscal year to cover charges for energy, deferred maintenance, increases in fringe benefits costs, and employer contributions to retirement.  Thus, the total permanent reduction the Library must plan for comes to nearly $3 million, or about eight percent of our overall budget. Note that these figures do not reflect the salary reductions mandated by the UC Office of the President; those reductions are an additional $1,100,000.   

The wording in the August 4 announcement on my blog was very specific that “with the current reductions and potential reduction in funding in future years, we must now begin to examine how the Library can meet its campus commitments with fewer physical locations on the UCLA campus. Study teams will be appointed to examine the service and collection issues associated with the closing of the Arts and Chemistry Libraries.”  I have not decided, nor did I announce, that the Arts Library would close.  In fact, that library remains open and will remain open during this academic year. 

I have appointed an internal study team to examine the service and collection issues associated with closing the Arts Library.  Once this work is completed, we will begin a consultation process, which will hopefully engage a broad campus discussion of the options. Studying the situation is an action the UCLA Library must take in order to address this unprecedented crisis in the university’s state funding.  Regardless of the physical facilities, however, the Library’s primary goal remains to offer collections and services to support all of UCLA’s acclaimed academic programs. 

I am working in close collaboration with the deans of the Schools of Arts and Architecture; Theater, Film, and Television; and Humanities with the objective of keeping the Arts Library open in its current location and exploring the appropriate future for the collections and services that it deserves. A donor has stepped forward to assist with funding for the current academic year helping keep the Arts Library open in its present location.  I hope that others will join these efforts.  This combination of support is very encouraging. 

I want to reiterate that our primary concern remains to sustain the excellence of the Library’s collections, services, and staff in support of UCLA’s students, faculty, and staff.  However, difficult choices must be made, and there will unavoidably be pain for all UCLA Library users.  I hope that you will join us at the UCLA Library in voicing our concerns about the overall impact on our collections, staff, and services to the university. 

All Library staff are required to attend one of the information sessions concerning the implementation of the furlough/salary reduction program.  These sessions will cover the implementation within the UCLA Library.

In order to manage the one-year furlough/salary reduction plan, the Library Human Resources is coordinating the implementation of new timesheets for all library employees beginning this month – August 2009 – and making some changes to how time reporting will be handled. 

The Management Council met on August 26 and heard an overview of the new process and a presentation on the UC Systemwide furlough plan and new timesheets.  LHR has developed and two new standardized monthly timesheets for library staff – one for exempt employees and one for non-exempt employees.  The new timesheets are available on a new time reporting website on the Library Staff Intranet which is accessible at: http://staff.library.ucla.edu/hr/timereporting.asp  Beginning with the August timesheet, ALL library employees will be required to use these timesheets.   

To learn how to report time worked and leave (including use of furlough time), ALL library employees, whether or not they will be subject to the furlough program, are required to attend one of the one-hour information sessions on the Furlough Plan & New Timesheets. 

In addition to the 4 previously announced dates and times, two sessions have been added in late September.  The dates, times and locations for these sessions are:

• Friday, August 28               1:30 – 2:30 p.m.                              Biomedical Library Classroom        
•  Tuesday, September 1        1:30 – 2:30 p.m.                               West Electronic Classroom        
• Thursday, September 10          9:30 – 10:30 a.m.                  Biomedical Library Classroom        
• Monday, September 14               9:30 – 10:30      a.m.             Kinross South 194        
• Wednesday, September 23      3 – 4 p.m.                                        West Electronic Classroom        
• Monday, September 28            9:30 – 10:30 a.m.                             West Electronic Classroom 

This is mandatory for all library staff because new timesheets are being introduced, please RSVP to Pat Hawthorne (path@library.ucla.edu) and indicate which session you plan to attend.  Additional sessions will be scheduled as needed. 

Employees who have questions about the furlough program should contact Pat Hawthorne via email (path@library.ucla.edu) or via phone (310-825-4562).

This new reading room is a beehive of activity this morning as furniture and shelving begin to appear in this wonderful new space.

Unpacking began early this morning. Workmen begin to assemble all of the pieces, parts, and surfaces.  Let’s hope there aren’t left over parts!

Installation of shelving for unbound periodicals begins.  We will soon be able to move these materials to this level.

Many pieces to assemble.  Study chairs along the windows and stacks of chairs along with parts for the tables.  Note the hanging lamp fixtures.

Corner space is in place with round table under the hanging light fixture.  All study tables contain the electrical wiring within the pedestal away from prying hands.  The view out should be pretty nice when the plastic is removed from the windows.

The mixture of lounge chairs, round tables under hanging lamps, and rectangular study tables provides a variety of options for study and use.

The service desk at the back of the staircase will provide a center point of contact for assistance.

Please continue to respect that this is still a construction area and has not yet been turned over to the Library.  We expect to have that happen in the next couple of weeks and then come visit and enjoy.  We should be in place for students when the fall term opens.

As you are aware, the University of California Board of Regents approved a one-year furlough/salary reduction plan in July for UC employees to achieve savings systemwide.  The UCLA Library is expected to save $1,129,000 from the furlough/salary reduction plan which will run from September 1, 2009 to August 31, 2010. The savings from the furlough program is only one aspect of the library’s cuts.  The UCLA Library must also cut $1,011,051 from its budget to pay for energy costs, deferred maintenance, and to cover benefits costs and employer contributions to the retirement program which are slated to begin in April 2010.  In addition, the Library must make a 5 percent cut which represents $1,830,201.  These three amounts together represent a total budgetary reduction of $3,970,252 from the UCLA Library budget. 

Library Human Resources and Library Business Services staff are working collaboratively to facilitate the implementation of the furlough program and to track the savings the UCLA Library will realize from the program.  It is important to note that the program is subject to collective bargaining for library employees who are represented by AFT, AFSCME, CUE, and UPTE. 

The UC System and UCLA’s Campus Human Resources have been providing additional information on the specifics of the program to Library Administration and Library Human Resources (LHR).  LHR is developing an internal implementation plan to facilitate management of the program and to communicate policies and procedures to employees and to answer questions and address concerns of employees.  Some aspects of the program will be managed at the system and campus levels.  Other aspects of the program such as tracking of usage of furlough days by employees will be done locally by LHR. 

In order to manage this program, LHR will be making changes to some internal procedures and will communicate additional details over the next few weeks.  In addition, information sessions for Management Council and for library employees will be offered beginning in August. 

In terms of internal procedural changes, here are some specifics: 

• LHR has developed and will introduce two new standardized monthly timesheets for library staff – one for exempt employees and one for non-exempt employees.  All library employees in all units reporting to the University Librarian will be expected to use these new timesheets beginning this month (August 2009).  These new standardized timesheets will be available on the LHR Staff Intranet site.  The new timesheets will include a place to record furlough days taken – this will allow LHR to track and report usage by each employee on a monthly basis and ensure the furlough days are taken during the course of the program.  LHR staff will provide updates on usage of furlough days to employees and managers during the year that the program is in place. (I want to note that the Law Library, an affiliated unit, will also be using the new timesheets since LHR processes timesheets and leave accruals for Law Library staff; however, it is important to note that Law Library staff will be required to follow directives regarding the furlough program as issued by the Dean of the School of Law.)
• LHR staff and departmental administrative staff will no longer provide vacation or sick leave balances on timesheets.  Vacation and sick leave balances are provided to each employee on the paycheck stub.  More information and training on understanding and tracking leave balances will be provided to employees.
• Administrative staff who collect timesheets and provide LHR with Summary Leave Usage Reports each month will now be expected to submit all timesheets along with the summary leave usage reports to LHR on a monthly basis beginning with the August timesheets.

As we prepare to implement this program, we are aware that many staff members have questions and concerns and that there are multiple issues that will emerge during the next year.  This is an evolving program and we will address questions, issues, and concerns as they are brought to our attention. 

LHR will offer a series of one-hour informational sessions on the furlough program beginning in late August. 

The first information session will be offered to the Management Council at the August Management Council Meeting on Wednesday, August 26, from 10 a.m. to Noon in the Library Conference Center—Presentation Room.   

The same presentation will then be offered to all staff in a series of information sessions that will be offered during August and September. The dates, times and locations for these sessions are:·        

• Friday, August 28    1:30 – 2:30 pm       Biomedical Library Classroom·        
• Tuesday, September 1         1:30 – 2:30 p.m.          West Electronic Classroom·        
• Thursday, September 10       9:30 – 10:30 a.m.        Biomedical Library Classroom·        
• Monday, September 14          9:30 – 10:30 a.m.        Kinross South 194

If you would like to attend one of these sessions, please RSVP to Pat Hawthorne (path@library.ucla.edu) and indicate which session you plan to attend.  Additional sessions will be scheduled as needed. 

Pat Hawthorne, Director of Library Human Resources, and the Deputy University Librarian (Susan Parker) or Supervisory Associate University Librarians (Judy Consales, Sharon Farb, Kevin Mulroy, and Sarah Watstein) are also available to do this presentation at departmental meetings and to answer questions related to the furlough program.  If you would like to have this presentation made at a departmental staff meeting, please contact Pat to make arrangements. 

Employees who have questions about the furlough program should contact Pat Hawthorne via email (path@library.ucla.edu) or via phone (310-825-4562).