FROM JULIE NILSON, SECRETARY, BLF

Report on Peer Committee activities, 1999-2000
May 1, 2000

Members: Marion Frank-Wilson (co-chair), Anne Haynes (co-chair), Jian Liu, Jo McClamroch

Contents

• Introduction
• Ratings
• Recommendations

Introduction

The committee read and evaluated the 1999 annual reports of 65 librarians. We used as our guidelines the procedures and criteria found in the document Revised Peer Committee for Annual Merit Review (approved by BLFC 8/4/99). We kept in mind the general principles of the document, "Peer Committee for Annual Merit Review," which tell us to "focus on the librarian's position description in defining the arena for judging the accomplishment and the nature of the contribution." We did not have any information about last year's ratings for any librarians and kept in mind that we were making our judgements based on one year's work. We also did not have any supervisors' evaluations.

We want to thank Libraries' Human Resources, especially Betty Bell and Suzann Easter, for their work in making four copies of all the annual reviews at our request, preparing the letters to the librarians and other associated work. Most of this work had to be done on a tight schedule. We also want to thank members of last year's Peer Committee for sharing their observations from last year with us.

Ratings

We stayed with the language used in the guidelines because we wanted to avoid using subjective language as much as possible. We did have to distinguish between the two levels of achievement which were above meeting expectations. We used the terms "noteworthy" to describe a rating of level III, and "distinctive" for level IV.

Our results were as follows:

IV (Distinctive) = 3
(2 Assistant Librarians, 1 Associate Librarian)

III (Noteworthy) = 37
(4 Assistant Librarians, 21 Associate Librarians, 12 Librarians)

II (Met expectations for rank) = 23
(15 Associate Librarians, 8 Librarians)

I (Did not meet expectations for rank) =2
(both Associate Librarians)


The expected standards, taken from the Peer Review guidelines, are:

• "In order to achieve a Level II rating in performance the following standard must be met. Assistant librarians: good, meets the requirements of operational standards. Associate/Full librarians: excellent, exceeding the requirements of operational standards."
• "In order to achieve a Level II rating in professional development the following standard must be met. Assistant librarians: promising beginning; Associate/Full librarians: satisfactory, demonstrating responsiveness to the demands of the profession."
• "In order to achieve a Level II rating in service, the following standard must be met: Assistant librarians: promising beginning; Associate/Full librarians: satisfactory, reflecting favorably on the University and the Libraries."

Recommendations

Some of the difficulties encountered by last year's committee were not present this year due to modifications in the process last summer. However, a few areas still need to be reconsidered. We recommend the BLFC consider the following changes:

1. Workshops should be given each year so that librarians are presented with a more uniform way in which to write a position description and categorize their activities. These workshops should be coordinated with the Promotion and Tenure workshops so that librarians are hearing the same information about preparing their annual reviews. Position descriptions varied greatly this year in terms of detail and scope, and so did annual reviews. Here are some specific issues we feel need to be addressed:
   1. Part-time temporary appointments: Should the librarian include these as part of the position description (in other words, as part of the regular assignment)?
   2. Supporting documentation: should this be attached to the review? (some included quite a bit)
   3. Teaching: what kinds of teaching go in the position description and where the different kinds of teaching should be placed in the annual review (specifically what kinds of teaching should go in each of the categories of performance, professional development, and service)
   4. Whether or not the librarian should specify secondary and tertiary areas for professional development and service (which is addressed in P&T but not Peer Review guidelines).
2. It would be most helpful if librarians would be clear about any circumstances which affected their work during the year. Examples of this would be sabbaticals or other leaves.
3. The weighting for performance is skewing the overall rating to the extent that it can determine the overall rating alone in most cases. For example, if one receives a rating of 2 in performance, one's overall rating will be a II, even if one receives a 4 in professional development and 4 in service. We'd like to see performance get less weight for the Peer Review process.
4. Calendar: We found that the current calendar for the Peer Review Process is too short, and we recommend that the annual reviews be submitted by February 1 instead of March 1. With the amount of reading we had to do and the many hours of meeting time, we devoted most of our time in March to this review.

We all found this to be a very interesting and educational process, and we learned a great deal about what our colleagues are doing in all areas of their work. We have benefited from not being the first committee to go through this process, since some changes were made in the process as a result of last year's committee's recommendations.