The University Record, December 12, 1995
LS&A faculty suspend nominations to Library Committee, urged to continue dialogue with Regents on search
By Rebecca A. Doyle
While it was not the shortest meeting on record, there was no time wasted at the LS&A faculty meeting last week. Dean Edie N. Goldenberg began the meeting at 4:10 p.m. and adjourned it at 4:25 after commenting on the Regents’ open forum for faculty earlier that afternoon and briskly working through the agenda.
Goldenberg said that the Regents will have received letters from all the deans at the University and from the college’s executive committees, as well as from chairs and directors in humanities departments, emphasizing the viewpoint of the faculty about the presidential search process and the kind of candidates for which faculty think Regents should look.
She noted that there had been a good turnout at the forum and that “LS&A was well represented. The issues raised today should be raised early in the process.”
It is also important to continue the process, Goldenberg said, and encouraged faculty members to tell their colleagues that ongoing communication with the Regents is important.
The faculty voted to “suspend nominations of the LS&A Library Committee for one year only, 1996-97, and to establish an appointed faculty committee to determine potentially more effective links between the University Library and LS&A.”
Faculty who spoke to the issue included Margaret Root, chair of the Department of History of Art, who said that “we must remember that the library is the research laboratory for humanists.”
Martha Vicinus, chair of the Department of English Language and Literature, urged restructuring of the committee so that it could have more input in policy decisions, since the library system is vital to LS&A.
The faculty also accepted reports from Philip Hanlon on the LS&A Executive Committee and from Ratindranath Akhoury on Senate Assembly.
