Letter from CCL President Meghan Chen

Dear CCL colleagues:

The New Year began with desperately needed rainfall on our thirsty state, giving us hope that the prolonged drought and its consequences might be abated. January also portended a cautiously optimistic budget outlook for our state as the Governor’s proposed budget contains items for community colleges, including approximately 1.34% for enrollment growth and 1.48% for cost of living adjustment (COLA). (If you are interested in following this process, please see the League’s Budget and Policy Center for updates.)

In that budget proposal, one item is $6 million for our integrated library system. As the budget process takes its course to the May Revision, we are engaged in providing requested information from decision makers about this need across the state’s community colleges. That is why you are asked to provide input and information as this process continues, and I thank you for your timely response. The budget item has to be approved in June before we can move forward with selecting an ILS. There is great interest among colleagues in how that will be done; some asked me if a decision has already been made. The answer is an emphatic “no” because the question is premature since the budget process needs to reach its conclusion and we need to see if the ILS funding is in that final budget and in what amount. Another key reason the answer must be “no” is that we have to have a process for determining the best system that money can buy to serve our students.

The CCL Executive Board’s ILS Task Force has begun thinking about articulating the “universe” of CCC libraries and what we want the modern ILS to do. If the funding for the ILS were approved, there would be a state task force to work on the actual process, and CCL would play a key role in that process. Any questions from fellow library leaders and vendors should be posed to the CCL ILS Task Force co-chairs Doug Achterman dachterman@gavilan.edu and Alicia Virtue avirtue@santarosa.edu.

Our annual Deans and Directors’ meeting is coming soon on March 23-24, and the registration so far has been strong. I look forward to seeing you at the Grand Sheraton Sacramento for one of my favorite annual gatherings because I get to learn and to be re-energized by being with all of you. Please register now if you have not yet done so.

Sincerely,

Meghan

Note: Registration Link and the Agenda for the Annual Deans and Directors meeting is at http://www.cclccc.org