Minutes of December 9, 2011 Meeting

Present:

Stephanie Bartz (recorder), Jeris Cassel, Kayo Denda, Mary Fetzer, Judy Gardner, Melissa Gasparotto, Tom Glynn (chair), Karen Hartman, Mei Ling Lo, Jill Nathanson, Jim Niessen, Michelle Oswell, Jane Sloan, Eileen Stec, Gideon Thompson

1. Chair's report

• Tom Glynn, Jim Niessen and Gene Springs met with Virginia Papandrea from SC&I regarding potential expansion of the field experience program to allow for an easier way for more students to connect with the libraries. IIS will be asked to develop an online form where field work opportunities in the libraries can be listed.
  
  There are already two students who may be doing field work in the spring, likely based at Alexander, but working with multiple librarians. The hope is for wider participation across the New Brunswick libraries in the future.
  
  Tom, Jim, and Gene will create a plan and develop standards so that interns get experience but are not just treated as free labor.

• Tom Glynn and Jill Nathanson met with Jeanne Boyle to discuss statistics. All reference desk and off-desk statistics since July are now available in a format that can be added to LibPAS. Gimlet statistics can be downloaded to a spreadsheet developed by Joe Abraham and added to LibPAS.

• "How do I… checkout a Netbook?" has been added to the Libraries website to promote the services now available at the Art Library, Alexander Library, and the Kilmer Library.

2) AUL's report

• There have been some issues with technical support in the IHLs and TLH. Mary will be meeting with Rhonda Marker and James Hartstein to try and find a resolution before the start of the spring instruction season. Tom Glynn and Kevin Mulcahy will likely also be included in the meeting.

• Professor Chirag Shah from SC&I is working on a grant proposal that will partner with the libraries. If the grant is successful there will be opportunities to participate.

• Sabbatical requests are being reviewed with an eye toward determining how to close ranks and provide interim coverage if the requests are approved.

3) Reference statistics

• Additional discussion of how to (or whether to) count specific types of off-desk transactions is needed. The most recent question came up in relation to whether requests to purchase subscriptions should be counted as reference or just considered part of normal liaison work. Answers to questions are being counted differently in different places (e.g., chat vs. reference desk) but we should try to count as uniformly as possible across all libraries. The next NBISG meeting will include a broad discussion of reference statistics as well as a discussion of the use of uniform tags in Gimlet.

• The current arrangement of Gimlet doesn't provide a place to report queries sent in via regular mail. Jill will add Snail Mail as a new category.

4) Discovery Layers

• Grace Agnew gave a presentation on the current state of the Kuali OLE project and the VALE OLS project at User Services Council. There should be input from public services before final decisions are made regarding the VALE OLS. Three open source products are being considered (VuFind, eXtensible Catalog, and Blacklight). Judy will draft a message inviting Natalie Borisovets and Chris Sterback to attend a future NBISG meeting to provide information on the VALE OLS. Natalie is on the VALE Reference Services Committee and Chris is on the VALE OLS Implementation Taskforce.

• There was also discussion about the status of the search options being developed for the new web pages and whether a metasearch option is being considered.

5) Construction at Douglass Library

• The collections have been moved, but small shifts are ongoing.

• A seminar room, located adjacent to the Fordham Lab, is under construction and is expected to be completed in time for the spring semester. Furniture has already been ordered and meetings with the A/V vendor are scheduled. Performing arts classes/events will be given priority for use of the room. Scheduling is being handled by an administrative staff member in the Music Department. Requests to schedule single meetings and other onetime events should be sent to Michelle Oswell.

• The librarians' offices are scheduled to be completed by December 23rd. The four librarians and Andrew Ruggiero will be moved during the break between semesters. The new offices replace the former instructional alcove. The old offices will be converted into group studies.

• The old technical services wall is scheduled to come down in January in order to provide additional study space.

6) Report from the E-Display Working Group

• A Sakai site has been set up to allow the group to share content and communicate via a single email address. Comments and suggestions regarding the e-displays can be sent to edisplays@sakai. Anyone interested in helping to develop content should contact the group.

• The Scarlet Latte display and the LSM display are both operational. The television has been installed at Douglass but is not yet running. The location for the Kilmer display was only recently determined.

• Policies for the displays are a work in progress. Generally, the displays are intended to advertise and promote library resources, services, and events, but we're still determining, for example, whether we can safely say Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, etc., or whether Happy Holidays is all that's permitted. There have, as yet, been no requests from outside groups to post information on the displays, but this could be an issue for the future.

• Future developments such as adding touch screens to all libraries were discussed and may be a topic for a future NBISG meeting.

• Thanks were expressed to Anne Butman for all the work she's done getting the displays up and running, to Yuhwei Ling for developing the Drupal interface, and to Stephanie Bartz for developing content for the Scarlet Latte which is also being used at the other libraries.

7) Report from the Phone Reference Task Force

Jill Nathanson, Rebecca Gardner, and Jane Sloan met with Anne Butman to investigate possibilities for a centralized telephone reference service. With the coming of VoIP there are options that didn't exist when the original report on central telephone reference was done in 2000. There are many questions still to be answered, but since not all libraries have transitioned to VoIP there is time for further discussion and planning. Tom will schedule a special meeting on this topic or consider it as the main topic for a spring NBISG meeting.

8) "Roving reference"

• Gideon Thompson provided a literature review on roving reference and gave an overview from his perspective. Within the context of other recent discussions in the libraries, roving reference could be considered as an extension of:
  • the marketing effort, providing reference service outside the libraries and thereby promoting the libraries
  • liaison roles, by increasing contact with faculty outside the library environment
  • traditional desk reference, by extending reference coverage to other areas of the libraries

• There was a discussion of whether a few mobile devices should be purchased in order to give librarians the opportunity to familiarize themselves with what's out there. Jill Nathanson and Michelle Oswell will compile a short report with recommendations for the purchase of four different devices to be tested out and shared between at the four main New Brunswick libraries.

• A broader discussion about other ways to do reference may be scheduled for a later meeting.

9) Announcements

• Jill Nathanson, Mei Ling Lo, and Janice Pilch met with staff at CTAAR (Center for Teaching Advancement and Assessment Research) to explore ways that the Libraries might partner with them to provide instruction, particularly for library-related topics like Refworks and copyright.

• Jill, Mei Ling, and Janice also met with representatives from the COHLIT (Center for Online & Hybrid Learning and Instructional Technologies) concerning library content.

• Tom Glynn requested that library faculty read and respond to the AAUP survey regarding next steps in the current negotiations.