Letter from the President

Hi all,

Thanks to the team that made the Deans and Directors meeting in Sacramento in March go so well. We had a great time coming together after missing several years and it was great to see so many friends and colleagues in one place. I look forward already to next year’s event. I hope everyone thought it worth their time to come and had safe travel to and from.

The CCL continues to work toward the full implementation of sufficient software to automate all the libraries’ primary functions from the $4 million annual allocation. We made serious steps toward that this year with the now complete implementation of LibKey digital linking software inside Primo that makes it easier for our students to link to digital content that we subscribe to. We are currently working through the massive details of implementing OCLC Cataloging and Metadata for all LSP libraries, which will take some time, but we intend to begin paying the bill from the allotment by July 1, 2023. We have also sent out a questionnaire to all libraries asking those who did not previously have a hosted EZ Proxy account to respond in order to move all our libraries to hosted (and paid) EZ Proxy authentication an linking software by July 1, 2023. Please respond to those surveys. With these three pieces of software, we have made great headway toward our vision of state funded library automation for all community college libraries. We are not done. We will continue to survey all of you once or twice a year to ask what else should we be working toward as a community. Another area of work that is still incomplete is the acceptance of the bylaws of the LSP Governance committee by the Chancellor’s Office to acknowledge our role as the advisory group that shares oversight and responsibilities to recommend software and other services that the libraries would benefit from. We are waiting to hear back from the Chancellor’s Office on this issue. We also have not yet signed a contract for July 1, 2022 through June 30,2023 for the CCL to work as the vendor of LSP Services to the community. As a non-profit corporation the CCL manages the oversight of the LSP by subcontracting the project management and network administration to the CCLC who hire and pay the employees. We have verbal confirmation from the Chancellor’s Office that both of those issues are virtually resolved and the paperwork should follow.

We are excited to welcome Sonya Christian as the new Chancellor for California Community Colleges. She currently is the president of Bakersfield College. We invited her to speak at D&D, but she had conflicts in her schedule that prevented her attendance. We will invite her again next year. So looking back, we have accomplished much, and looking forward we have much more to do and expect that as a community we will be able to accomplish all that we need.

Smiles,

John Taylor
CCL, President
Dean, Orange Coast College