Minutes of April 14, 2010 meeting

Present:

Joseph Asaro, Zohreh Bonianian, Kevin Conover, Debbie Goldberg, Eva Kalamotousis, Jill Locascio, Irina Loutchkina, Ramon Negron, John Rake, Abdullah Sherzad, Penny Weniger

Excused:

Shawn Rodger, Linda Becker (Sakai is not used at Newark Dana), Gillian Newton, Christine Duffy, Alfreda Richardson

Agenda

• Announcements
• Discussion Topic:
  • The changing environment of Reserve operations

Announcements

• Darryl removed old U drive folders (anything before win10) Monday (4-12-10) afternoon. The summer and fall eres folders were made available on the Udrive and some of us are receiving summer eres. Thanks to Zohreh for the prompt.
• Judy has indicated that she would like the group to become more actively involved in the e-reserves task force and is considering turning the group over to us to. It is an important part of the future of reserves and as you know, the main agenda item for today's meeting. Penny asked for some volunteers that would like to get actively involved with the process. Please consider and let Penny know.
• Penny tried to get a copy of a book that was reviewed regarding e-reserve. It is one of the items put in the resource folder of the Reserve Sakai site for review for the meeting. It is "New Approaches to E-Reserve: Linking, Sharing and Streaming". It is not yet in print, and Penny tried to get a copy via ILL, but as it is not yet available in print, it was unavailable.
  (UPDATE: On a prompt from Gill Newton suggesting the book be ordered for the group. Judy felt the it would be of value to our work and asked Myoung Wilson to order the book for group review. Myoung agreed. The group thanks both Judy and Myoung for their support on our behalf).

Discussion Topic: The changing environment of Reserve operations

Prior to the meeting, group members reviewed various documents made available in the Resources folder of the Reserve Sakai site. They did so in order to become familiar with what various other institutions are doing regarding electronic reserves and creating online course packets. These documents included information from Colorado's Tutt's Library, Yale's Bass Library, and Williams College Libraries. Also included was a book review, "New Approaches to E-Reserve: Linking, Sharing and Streaming"

The group had a fruitful discussion. Some of the highlights of the discussion are bulleted below:

• The documents show the way they process reserves. Very similar to us. Just different tools, I think.
• They are using blackboard and we are using sakai. Different software offer different things.
• It seems we would still process the articles and just post them to something other than IRIS
• The trend certainly does seem to be to merge everything course related, including reserves into some form of course management software
• Although it might change our workflow, we would still be an very important source for instructor's
• Williams College is one institution that is actually encouraging their instructor's to post on Blackboard, their version of Sakai.
• We need to keep ourselves in the loop and learn as we go
• Are we going to slowly phase out or just announce that ereserves will only be available through course management
• that is part of what the e-reserves task force is working on
• change can be difficult, so jumping right in might make the most sense
• If there is a choice, it can get too complicated and some people would never choose to change.
• As older faculty members retire, and new ones are coming in, it is this group that is more into posting on their web. New technology.
• Maybe just books on reserves. Or scanning the documents for faculty.
• Is the thought we would scan for them and will be showing them how to post them on their sakai sites? At least for the ones that have not used Sakai before.
• Technology is always changing and we need to try and adapt to what is required. We need to become more familiar with the process and the potential
• It is a chance for RUL to become more cutting edge in electronic reserves

The group felt that the chat meeting was a good meeting option and a better option than teleconferencing, however, possibly not the best forum for tackling really big issues. It was agreed that the e-reserves task force meetings would be best served in face-to- face meeting format. Several group members volunteered to be included on the task force and Penny will forward the names and ask for advice on how to proceed from Judy.

The meeting adjourned at 4pm.