InULA Program and Social Committee ⁽¹⁾: What's Behind Us/What's Ahead

The Program and Social(P&S) Committee has been focusing its attention on the program part of its mission. Except for hosting the May Business meeting, all of its activities have revolved around the planning for the 25^th anniversary of faculty status for librarians at Indiana University. During this past year the committee embarked on a path of self-education, discussion, and input in order to better plan a fitting celebration.

Archives:

Committee members sifted through files of university, library, and InULA archives that document the history of the faculty status approval process at IU. We wanted to ascertain the timeline, discussions, and issues of the process.

We learned that it took IU librarians more than five years of struggle, debate, committee reports, votes and more votes to achieve faculty status. IU trustees voted to grant librarians faculty status on July 1, 1973. But the tenure-track ranks were not instituted until July 1, 1974.

These files will be housed with the InULA archives in the IUB Main Library. As part of our celebration of the 25^th anniversary, our goal is to make some of the more interesting documents available to everyone. We will scan particularly relevant documents and post them on the InULA Website (http://www.indiana.edu/~inula/).

Luncheons:

P&S sponsored four "Collegial Luncheons" during the 1997-98 year: in Fort Wayne, Kokomo, Bloomington, and Indianapolis. In the past, InULA luncheons were primarily social events, but this past year we wanted to use the occasion to hear from the membership their views on the important issues. Since the luncheons were well attended and the feedback so positive, we plan to schedule another series of luncheons this year to further our discussions.

25^th Anniversary Celebration.

At the 1998 Librarians Day in Kokomo P&S hosted a session titled: "The Centrality of Librarianship to the Educational Mission of the University: Celebrating 25 Years of Library Faculty Status: Come to the Party!" The session was attended by fifteen librarians from five IU campuses.

The session began with a discussion about the benefits of library faculty status to the university and the library. How is the library/university better or worse today than 25 years ago? Among the interesting comments were "Librarians need to give more emphasis to the communication of their knowledge to the teaching faculty" and the questions: "What if we all disappeared tomorrow?" and the perplexing: "How do we find/make time for faculty research activities, given increasing demands of technology and reduced staff levels?"

After a lively discussion of these and other questions, we tossed around ideas for a fitting anniversary celebration. This discussion built on the ideas generated from the luncheons. A sketch of the envisioned event includes both scholarly and social elements: an afternoon conference in Bloomington with perhaps a plenary presentation by an invited speaker or a panel discussion, followed by concurrent breakout sessions. Suggested discussion topics for the latter were: "a re-commitment to faculty status," "exploration of research and creative activity," "exploration of local and national service," "faculty governance," "responsibilities of faculty status," "is faculty status in jeopardy?" "Is declining faculty status a national trend?"

The afternoon may be followed by an evening dinner with either an entertaining speaker or music. The Bloomington librarians will offer overnight accommodations to their visiting colleagues. The group at the Librarians' Day session clearly felt the whole event should be very positive and affirming throughout -- it's a celebration after all!

InULA President Larry Griffin has pulled together a large P&S Committee for 1998-99 needed to accomplish our goals. We invite all interested IU librarians to participate in or help shape the anniversary celebration. Please forward your comments and/or suggestions to any of the committee members.

Submitted by Charlotte Hess, chair
Program and Social Committee
October 10, 1998
email: hess@indiana.edu

Notes

¹1997-98 members: Edy Feazel, Julie Nilson, Pat Riesenmann, Mary Strow, Charlotte Hess, (chair)

1998-99 members: Dick Ardrey, Phil Bantin, Ann Bristow, Charlotte Hess (co-chair), Erla Heyns (co-chair), Cinda May, Mahnaz Moshfegh, Julie Nilson, Pat Riesenmann, Sylvia Turchyn, Gary Wiggins, Perry Willett

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