UVA President Reinstated

In a surprise reversal in the face of strong opposition from faculty and students, the University of Virginia Board of Visitors has reinstated ousted president Teresa Sullivan. 

Politics swirled around this issue,and, as the New York Times noted, the board didn't have any good options after having taken this high-handed and divisive action. The Times quoted well known media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan (Media Studies Chair at UVA) as saying "I think they understand that they would have an incredibly hard time getting anyone else to take the job after what’s gone on."

For more coverage of this issue, including a slide show, check out IHE's excellent article.

University of Virginia, AAUP & Shared Governance

In the wake of the ouster of UVA president Teresa Sulllivan by the university's Board of Visitors, there has been a lot of reflection on the state of shared governance. There has also been discussion about the trend of college and university governing boards applying the ideology and practices of business management to the running of academic institutions. 

The AAUP, at its recent meeting, authorized a governance investigation of the University of Virginia over the Sullivan case, expressing "deep concern" over the board's actions. AAUP currently has six colleges and universities on its "Sanctioned Institutions" list, and is planning workshops on shared governance in the fall. 

In a related essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, William Keep, dean of the School of Business at the College of New Jersey, worries about the "short term orientation" of business discipline as applied to higher education.

The European Library

The European Library is going live (see YouTube video below). Financed by the Conference of European National Libraries (CENL), the European Library allows access to the resources of 48 European National Libraries. Its portal is maintained at the Dutch Royal Library in The Hague.

The European Library provided much of the organization and support to launch Europeana, a digital initiative of the European Commission, which makes digital objects from European libraries, museums and archives available to the public on its website.

The European Library is the digital content aggregator for Europeana and delivers digital content monthly from European national libraries.

SPARC webinar June 19, 2012

SPARC has announced that this year's theme for Open Access week (Oct. 22 - 28, 2012) will be "Set the Default to Open Access." There will be a kick-off webinar on Tuesday, June 19.

The Amazon Effect

Is Amazon evil? You decide: http://www.thenation.com/article/168125/amazon-effect?page=full

They’re Baaack!

In the aftermath of the recent ruling by District Court Judge Orinda Evans in the Georgia State University e-reserves copyright case between the American Association of Publishers and Georgia State University, the plaintiffs have filed an injunction to prohibit Georgia State professors from making unauthorized copies that are not “narrowly tailored to accomplish the instructor’s educational objectives” and do not “constitute the ‘heart of the work’ ” Read more in this story from IHE

2012 State Assessment Meeting

Tomorrow, I'm going to the State Assessment meeting being held at
Valencia College in Orlando. This will be the first assessment meeting / conference that I've attended, so I'm very interested to see what it will be like. As a librarian, I use assessment for information literacy instruction, but I've not been involved much with those for whom it is a major professional responsibility. It should be very interesting.

The end of 23 Things, and a new start

After trying the 23 Things for Professional Development program for a while, I decided to stop. It just wasn't all that interesting, and seemed more geared towards new librarians and those still in graduate school. It was interesting to see the ways in which Internet applications and media are being used to develop the networking skills of new librarians, but beyond that, it was a bit thin. 

It has gotten me back into using the blog, though, so I suppose that is one constructive development. From here on, I hope to use this as a forum for bringing together ideas, news, research, etc. related to academic libraries. Of course, I'll add some thoughts of my own as well, from time to time.

Reprise

I've finally picked up this blog after ten months of doing nothing with it. I liked the open-ended nature of the Ranganathan quote and hoped it would allow me to go in many different directions. I still think it can. The problem, as always, with blogs is finding the time to write something worth reading. I'm hoping that producing entries for my other blog connected to the 23 Things project will help me to select some topics to explore in this one. That's the plan anyway - we'll see what comes of it.