Minutes of June 26, 2003 Meeting

Present:: Boyle (Chair), Beck, (Recorder), Frusciano, J.Gardner, R. Gardner, Harrington, Libutti, Montanaro, Murtha, Sewell, Wenk, Wilson
Excused:: Agnew, Borisovets, Kesselman

1. AUL Update

Welcomed new members: Sara Harrington & Tricia Libutti and Karen Wenk
Goodbyes to leaving members: Rebecca Gardner, Marty Kesselman and Leslie Murtha
Encouraged to use the IRIS test catalog for default browsing implementation and a change in the labeling of secondary subject headings.
WAC is looking into the new design of the university's web pages and hopes to get the library placed on the front page.
Brochures are being updated and many of them will reside on the web.
Open URL was approved by Cabinet. Gary Golden, Grace Agnew and Jeanne Boyle will now take responsibility for overseeing the implementation process in collaboration with the section team of Wilson, Kesselman and Montanaro.
Supreme Court upheld CIPA, but it does not affect our policies.
Cabinet plan for Information Literacy accompanied the agenda.
The agenda was adjusted to accommodate technological and environmental conditions as well as membership attendance.

ILL Manager Patron Interface

JG Judy Gardner demoed the new ILL Manager Patron Interface.

We are moving to this system because RLG is closing RLIN ILL system. We will now be borrowing using a peer-to-peer distributed system. This system is currently being piloted at the Paul Robeson Library and Dana.
A flyer describing the new process will be put in outgoing ill books
Major changes include the ability for users to renew ILLs instead of going through AAL, users will be able to provide their own choice of email for contact purposes and document delivery.
After the demo, ramifications of the new process were discussed.

Library Navigator for Communication Research

MW Myoung demoed a web tutorial she designed for communications students and faculty.

Becoming a User-Centered Library - Everyone

The following questions were addressed as part of this discussion:

What does it mean to be a user-centered organization?
What is a user-centered library?
How do we become one?
What actions have we taken or decisions made that are user-centered?
What actions have we taken or decisions made that are not user-centered?
What are our next steps?
Conclusions:
- We need to get more information about our users
- That many of the things we were doing we consider to be positive indicators that we have a user centered library
- Both positive and negative examples of user centered libraries and services were discussed
- We need to compose a description of ourselves that details our user-centered qualities, as, open stacks
- Questions:
  - Should we go through an organization review process?

Legacy Round Robin

Each current member was asked to prepare a brief list of their top public services issues. Issues identified were:

Public services librarians will have a growing involvement with software products
Instruction and scalability issues
AAL and AAL Live participation needs to be expanded
Palci expansion to articles
Workload & Staffing issues
Emphasis on looking at the concept of library as place, including facilities improvements and creating better environments for our users
Increased liaison responsibilities
Focus on undergraduate library user needs
Continued focus on training
Staffing issues and resource issues
Meetings, Meetings, Meetings - too many!
Need to develop a strategic vision for public services as related to digital resources
Assessment of electronic resources statistics reports
Encourage decisions to be made at lower levels
Web pages need to be updated - an example was the How do I?
AAL needs more people to participate
AAL participants find they are not respected by their peers for their public services activities
Continue work on open url
User center library discussion needs to be continued
Workload issues
Need to clarify our public services value system

VALE Q&ANJ Proposal

JEB for NB Discussed the VALE Recommendation for Rutgers to participate in 6 hours per week to Q&ANJ. Rutgers Librarians would be staffed from 9 PM -11 PM.

There was disagreement among the participants about participation. One campus rejected the idea completely. Others thought that it was our responsibility to contribute as both VALE members and as a good citizen of and for the state of N. J. Individuals felt it was important to participate because of all the grant money that is tied to participation in activities which encourage the partnership of K-12 and academic institutions. Concerns were raised about the inability to answer questions aimed at lower education levels. (K-12). A consensus felt that as reference librarians we were able to answer questions no matter what level they were because of our highly developed searching skills and abilities. Staffing issues were discussed

Conclusion: We would like to participate but cannot resolve staffing issue.

The meeting ended around 12:00.