Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Enrique Lavernia and Academic Senate Chair Robert Powell this week announced their creation of the Task Force on the Future of the University Library.

The joint administration-senate task force is in response to “significant challenges and opportunities” for the library at this time, Lavernia and Powell said in a message to the campus community.

In other news regarding the library, a recruitment advisory committee reminded the campus community of open forums with candidates for the position of university librarian, and announced the name of the third and final candidate. See more information below.

Lavernia and Powell identified the library task force co-chairs as Ken Burtis, dean of the College of Biological Sciences, and Randall Siverson, professor emeritus, political science.

The charge letter to the task force calls on it to do the following:

• Assess the current status of the library, providing a baseline for consideration of improvements and a useful orientation for the new university librarian to be selected through the national search that is now under way.

• Recommend to the new librarian a long-term vision of the future of the library.

• Make high-priority recommendations for improving services and collections that should be immediately considered and reviewed by the new librarian.

• Serve as a sounding board for the acting co-librarians and the new librarian as they consider short-term changes in operations and priorities demanded in the current difficult financial environment.

Recommendations from the task force are due to go to the chancellor and provost, the senate chair and the university librarian. In turn, the senate chair is due to convey the recommendations to the Academic Senate’s Library Committee and other appropriate committees for consideration and comment.

The task force charge letter is available online.

Open forums with candidates for university librarian

Open forums with candidates for university librarian are scheduled to continue June 1 and 3.

The recruitment advisory committee hosted its first forum on May 26, for Denise Stephens of the University of Kansas. And, as previously announced, the committee is hosting a June 1 forum for Steven Gass of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The committee had indicated that it might be interviewing one or two more candidates, and set aside forum dates without saying who the candidates might be. This week the committee announced that there will be one more forum, June 3, for the third and final candidate: John Leslie King of the University of Michigan.

The time and place is the same for all of the forums: 4:10 to 5:30 p.m. in the Shields Library courtyard.

The forums are open to all members of the campus community. Each forum comprises a brief presentation and a question-and-answer session, followed by a reception.

People wishing to submit confidential comments may do so in writing, by e-mail to Chancellor Linda Katehi, chancellor@ucdavis.edu, and the provost, lavernia@ucdavis.edu. The deadline for comments is 5 p.m. June 7.

About the candidates:

• Steven Gass — Associate director for Public Services, MIT Libraries, since 2002. He has been with MIT Libraries altogether for more than 20 years and also worked in the Stanford library system. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from MIT in 1972, and Master of Library Science degree from the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science in 1978.

• John Leslie King — Vice provost for Academic Information, University of Michigan, since 2006. He has been a professor in Michigan’s School of Information since 2000 and served as dean from 2000 to 2006. He was interim university librarian at UC Irvine from October 1991 to July 1992. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from UC Irvine in 1972, and a master’s degree and doctorate in administration from UC Irvine’s Graduate School of Administration in 1974 and 1977, respectively.

• Denise Stephens — Vice provost for Information Services and chief information officer, University of Kansas, since 2005. Previously she worked in the Syracuse University Library as acting university librarian and associate university librarian for Public Services, as head of Anschutz Library at Kansas, and in the libraries at the universities of Virginia and Oklahoma. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Oklahoma in 1987 and a Master of Library and Information Science from Oklahoma in 1993.

More information, including the candidates’ curriculum vitae: chancellor.ucdavis.edu (click on “Executive Recruitments 2010”).