By Dan Crump, American River College, CCL Liaison to the ASCCC

The ASCCC held its Spring Plenary Session this last week (April 20-22) in Orange.  The theme of the Session was “Making Space for Connection and Belonging as We Center Authentic Voices and Lived Experiences in the 10+1.” It was held in a hybrid model, both virtual and in-person.  There were seven general sessions, all hybrid, and three blocks of breakout sessions, each with four fully in-person sessions and two fully online sessions.  

In the first two days of the Session consisted of breakouts and general sessions on a variety of topics of interest to faculty, focusing on academic freedom, equity, anti-racism and inclusion, and ZTC/OER.  I want to include part of the message that ASCCC President Ginni sent to attendees---"As faculty are engaged with many task forces and work groups, busily implementing recent legislation and making improvements to educational and student support opportunities, everyone must work to make space for connection and belonging. All voices must be heard. The people behind those voices, especially the faculty and students that have been traditionally underrepresented, need to be welcomed into the circle to share their experiences and tell their stories…Changes abound. From a new Chancellor of the California Community Colleges system to implementation of recent legislative directives, faculty leadership and voice are critical as community colleges actualize a student-facing common course numbering system, a singular lower division general education transfer pathway, new baccalaureate programs, increased low-cost and zero-cost course materials, new student placement and enrollment mandates, supervised tutoring for degree applicable and transfer-level courses, and a common understanding of academic freedom. Faculty should continue to lead this work to meet the educational needs of the students in the largest and most diverse public system of higher education in the country. The next three days are your time to engage in discussion and debate regarding these issues and more. By working together, making space for connection and belonging, and using the collective voice of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, faculty can ensure outstanding educational opportunities and support for the students they serve.”

On the last day of Session, delegates voted on resolutions that will shape the positions and actions of the ASCCC.  The full text of the resolutions is on the ASCCC website. 

It is always great to see fellow librarians at ASCCC events and I saw several at Session---Stephanie Curry (Reedley College), Celia Huston (San Bernardino Valley College), Matt Magnuson (West Hills College-Coalinga), Natalie Lopez (Crafton Hills College), and Nancy Persons (Santa Rosa Junior College). Apologies in advance if you were there and I haven’t acknowledged you. I will blame it on my senioritis and my being the “absent-minded professor!” 

I have the honor and privilege of being the CCL Liaison to the ASCCC and therefore attend their meetings to present the library faculty perspective.  I can attest that they are a hard-working and fantastic group of faculty leaders.  

I also wish to acknowledge the strong and continued support of the ASCCC for the Library Services Platform (LSP). They have been great in every step of the way!

And one last thing---the ASCCC held their elections for the Executive Committee for the upcoming year.

I wish to thank Ginni May, the outgoing President, for all her leadership and support of libraries, and welcome Cheryl Aschenbach as the incoming President.  I have had the privilege of working with Cheryl on a number of issues (especially OER) and look forward to working with her this coming year. 

ASCCC Executive Committee, 2022-2023

By Amy Beadle, Director

Hello and happy spring! I am so excited that the sun has come out and it feels like summer is finally on its way. I hope that you all have been able to enjoy some sunshine as well.

Fiscal Year Renewals/New Resources

A few important upcoming deadlines for your attention:

• May 10: All Renewals Due/Invoices Sent
• June 9: All NEW Resources Due/Invoices Sent

The default invoice date will be July 1, 2023 and those invoices will be generated and sent on May 15th unless you request something different prior to that. To request an alternative date, please email Marissa (mjackson@ccleague.org).

Please remember to use the drop-down options under “Billing Cycles” to request any invoice groupings. FYI, you MUST click the checkmark to have your selection entered. Invoices may not be changed after they are issued and the ONLY way for us to see your request is via the dropdown as shown below:

Please also remember that you need to add JSTOR as a new subscription as of July 1. There are no JSTOR “renewals” in the system due to their model change. Search “JSTOR” in the catalog and you should find the following options:

All of their journals are now included in their new collections and you have the option to subscribe or purchase. Please let us know if you have any questions.

LSP Reimbursements and Systemwide Purchases

The CCCCO sent a memo on March 28, 2023 regarding LSP reimbursement and additions to the statewide program, specifically LibKey, OCLC Cataloging & Metadata and hosted EZProxy. We’re grateful that they accepted the recommendations of the LSP Governance Committee to include those as a part of the funded program and are looking forward to transitioning those to agreements to cover all 110 participating colleges.

LibKey is mostly implemented everywhere. There are a handful of colleges that have not finalized that addition. Pawel will reach out again in the fall to see if anyone needs support to complete the implementation.

The CCCCO is still reviewing the proposed agreements from OCLC for Cataloging & Metadata and hosted EZProxy. The timing is becoming challenging but still expected to be in place prior to July 1. Thank you for your patience and thank you also for completing the hosted EZProxy questionnaire that was distributed last week. Having that information will be very helpful for the vendor to plan implementation. More information to come as soon as we receive it.

Per the CCCCO memo, the Chancellor’s Office in cooperation with the California Community Colleges Technology Center will reimburse colleges directly for the Ex Libris subscription service fees for the billing period of July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2023. The Ex Libris Subscription Request for Reimbursement Form is due no later than May 31, 2023. More information about the submission process can be found on the CCC Technology Center website. The amount you submit will be half of the 2022 12-month invoice plus the entire January-June 2023 amount billed.

We are staying in contact with the Foundation for California Community Colleges and the vendor as they move through their contract negotiations. We are trying to avoid billing colleges for the July-December 2023 time period, but if it doesn’t look like they will come to an agreement soon, we may have to. Again, more information to come, as soon as we have something to share.

ELUNA and eCAUG (so many acronyms, so little time!)

We're hoping to see many of you at the upcoming ELUNA meeting in Los Angeles. Pawel, Caroline and myself will be there and are looking forward to all of the great sessions, as well as spending time with our colleagues who are also attending.

We're really excited to announce another opportunity to come together with Ex Libris users - this time limited to our California colleges. Please mark your calendars for August 30-31 in Oakland for a ELUNA California Users Group meet-up. We don’t know much more than the date/location, so keep an eye on the listservs for more details to follow.

And with that, get out and enjoy this fabulous weather! But please make note of these important dates:

• May 5: LSP Governance Committee Meeting (Online)
• May 8-12: Developers' Day and Annual ELUNA Meeting (Los Angeles)
• May 10: All Renewals Due/Invoices Sent
• May 10: Final 2022-23 Wednesday Webinar
• May 31: LSP Reimbursement Request Deadline
• June 9: All NEW Resources Due/Invoices Sent
• June 12-25: NERS Alma Round 2
• August 1-2: CCL Board Retreat (Sacramento)
• August 2-3: LSP Governance Committee Retreat (Sacramento)
• August 30-31: eCAUG (Oakland)
• September 6: Wednesday Webinar Resumes

The CCL-EAR committee has been busy this spring semester working on a new process for reviewing and weeding the shared NetLibrary collection. The new process allows us to consider titles for removal on a more frequent and ongoing basis from the shared titles in the collection. The CCL-EAR committee previously completed two deselection projects of the shared EBSCO NetLibrary e-book collection with the collective expertise of our community college librarian colleagues in 2015 and 2021. The good news is that Pawel Szponar, our network zone manager, is now able to delete outdated titles at the network level, and then communicate directly with EBSCO to have them removed from the EBSCO database as well.

A common reason for suggesting that an e-book should be weeded from the collection might be if the book contains outdated information or terminology. The form to suggest a title for deletion is located on the CCL-EAR website.

Requests may be submitted at any time, and the CCL-EAR will review the suggested deletions at their regularly scheduled meetings. In order to give the CCL-EAR committee members time to review the suggestions, only titles received two weeks prior to the scheduled meeting will be considered at that meeting.  Before any titles are deleted from the shared collection, the CCL-EAR chair will send out a list of the titles through the CCL listserv to allow member libraries the chance to review and appeal any specific titles that they think should be kept in the shared collection.

We have already received the first suggested titles through the new form, and the CCL-EAR committee reviewed these titles at our April meeting. I will be sending a list of the titles that are planned for deletion in May. If you have additional suggestions for books that should be considered for deselection from the shared collection of over 27,000 titles, we invite you to submit them through a brief form. Thank you helping us to keep our shared e-book collection current and useful!

Thank you to those who responded to our recent CCL-EAR survey. We are carefully reviewing your responses.  If you have any additional databases that you would like CCL-EAR to review, please let me know. 

We wish you are successful end to the semester!

Dr. Nancy Golz
CCL-EAR, Chair
Faculty Librarian
Merced College
nancy.golz@mccd.edu

RCC is so happy to have Lua Gregory join our RCC team as Public Services Librarian. We know we will benefit from her breadth of experience.

Lua Gregory graduated from University of California, Los Angeles, with a MLIS. For the last fifteen years she held various librarian roles in off-campus services, first-year experience, instruction and educational technologies, and most recently as collections coordinator and co-director at the University of Redlands. Her professional interests include social justice issues in libraries. She grew up in Southern California and enjoys sci-fi, gaming, coffee and cats.

By Monique Delatte, Fullerton College

The Ventriloquists explores the true story of a ragtag crew of resistors in Brussels, 1943, who successfully schemed to undermine the Nazi regime by printing a satirical newspaper edition with wide distribution, right under the noses of the occupiers.

The author of this well-reviewed title, E.R. Ramzipoor, spoke with Hornets via Zoom in late February. Students joined our Queer Book Group meeting remotely and in-person for a discussion of the ripped-from-the-headlines (pun intended) tragicomic tale.

The Queer Book Group was created upon student request at the college’s 2019 LGBTQ+ Student Forum. Our upcoming reads are The Sweetness of Water and Making Priscilla; the latter will be paired with a celebratory viewing of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. This reading club has discussed: 1) white fragility, 2) not being brown enough or queer enough, 3) Spanish language in popular American literature, 4) white feminism vs. brown feminism, 5) the hegemony of the canon, & 6) a space cat, of course.

Questions? Contact Monique Delatte: 714.992.7379, mdelatte@fullcoll.edu.

By Julie Cornett, Cerro Coso Community College

In our digital age, libraries have seen a precipitous decline in print book usage. The “Book Art” exhibit on display at Cerro Coso library speaks to this shift and re-imagines the transformational power of books. The Library department has a long and fruitful history of collaboration with the department of Visual and Perming Arts and has showcased student artwork, including large-scale pieces, prominently in the building for all to admire. The “Book Art” exhibit, however, took the collaboration to a new level. Students enrolled in the Sculpture course visited the book “morgue” over the course of several weeks to select titles for their sculptures. The library does its best to find new homes for weeded items but is not always successful and the morgue is the last stop before these dustiest of tomes get recycled. 

The students spent several weeks breathing new life into the old books and the magnificent sculptures that emerged are now on display in the library foyer through the end of the semester. The students used a variety of techniques to transform the books, including collage, paper folding, and origami. One student’s sculpture, titled “Escaped”, portrays a figure with curled hair made from book pages emerging from an open book and wearing a dress fabricated entirely out of the fabric of an old clothbound book. Another student painstakingly folded book pages to resemble the shape of a mouth in a sculpture titled “Unuttered Words”. The exhibit has garnered a lot of interest from library patrons and several students have inquired about taking the Sculpture class in the future. 

Río Hondo College Library and Instructional Support Dean Mike Garabedian co-authored a book about Whittier, California for Arcadia Press’s Postcard History Series. Released on April 10, this is his second publication about Whittier for the publisher. Also, in his capacity as President of the Whittier Public Library Foundation, on April 27 Mike interviewed Javier Zamora, author of Solito: A Memoir (2022), at a free public event that was the culmination of the Whittier Public Library’s 2023 “Whittier Reads” (i.e., one city, one book) program.