New Brunswick Libraries
Information Services Steering Group (ISSG)
Meeting June 9, 2005

Present: Stephanie Bartz, Kayo Denda (recorder), Tony Joachim (guest), Marty Kesselman, Ferris Olin, Penny Page, Pat Piermatti, Eileen Stec, Myoung Wilson (convener)

1. The minutes of the April 14, 2005 meeting were approved.

2. The agenda was adopted

3. New Business

Seamless information - Myoung

• Myoung reported on special ISSG meeting on Seamless Information Services (May 25, 2005) with ISG librarians and Judy Gardner and Roger Smith from Access Services. Highlights include:
  
  
• Librarians voiced concern on issues of staff preparedness and performance, especially those of student workers and temporary workers.  Judy’s requested the librarians to be more pro-actively involved with the operations of the Access/Collection Services.
  
  
• The newly elected ISSG Co-chairs will address these issues in a structured manner during 2005-2006, in consultation with Judy.
  
  
• Jeff Teichman and Roger Smith were added to ALEX_REF list and Kevin Mulcahy and Stephanie Bartz to the Access Services list. The intent is to foster communication and information sharing between Access and Reference departments.

Searchable NBL instruction portal – Tony

• Tony was charged to create a searchable NBL instruction portal to enable creation of reports. The intent of capturing of the instruction data has been to collect data on emerging trends and patterns in NBL  library instruction in order for the librarians to strategize for services.

• To date, Stephanie Bartz has prepared an individual report from the stored informing the librarians of their instruction workload during the academic year.
  
  
• The ColdFusion operated portal Tony created is intended to extract data from NBL instruction stats, but it has enhancements and can gather data dynamically.

• Two issues related to this portal are: (1) who should have access to this data and (2) the presence of inconsistent/ incorrect information in the database (variation of names, typos, etc.)

• Tony provided the demo of two different interfaces for discussion. The participants will send Tony further comments if applicable.
  
  
• The new Co-chairs, in coordination with PC Team Leader, will notify NBL on the availability of this portal. The reference team leaders will serve as the “trusted point person,” with access to the reporting capability of this database.

4. Future of ISG/ISSG membership and meeting structure  M. Kesselman

• Jeris is the elected PSC representative. Marty will also serve on the PSC as the appointed member by the NBL Acting Director.

• As ISSG Co-chairs, Marty and Jeris will divide their responsibilities as follows:

  Jeris:             Budget and personnel issues (P4P, voucher money)
                       Liason with the NBL Acting Director

  Marty:            Liaison to PSC
                        Liaison to NBL librarians

• The group discussed the issue of ISG/ISSG membership including:
• Possibility/need of the Access Services representative
• Continuing the ISSG model with reference team leaders of research units, branch representative, PC team leader, CKDB team leader.
• Open meetings to entire ISG would promote information sharing
• The group strongly supported Marty’s interest in ISG/ISSG restructuring and recommended further discussion in the future.

• Myoung encouraged the elected Co-chairs to meet with the NBL Acting director and team leaders to plan the transition, including a new ISG/ISSG structure

• The ISSG status of members present at the meeting is as follows:

  Pat Piermatti                continuing LSM team leader
  Stephanie Bartz            continuing PC team leader
  Ferris                           incoming Douglass team leader, July-Dec 2005
  Eileen                           incoming Douglass team leader, January-June 2006
  Marty                           incoming Co-chair
  Myoung                      outgoing Chair
  Penny Page            will solicit ideas for discussion among branch libraries including leadership change and ISG/ISSG representation.

  Ron Jantz            the group recommended that the CKDB team convene and discuss ISG/ISSG representation

• The incoming Co-chairs will make recommendations for the new ISG/ISSG structure. They will also announce the meeting schedule starting July.
  
  
• Tony was appointed as a member of the Instructional Services Committee.

5. Reports/Updates:

PSC:                Myoung distributed the documents from PSC meeting.

Unit reports:

ALEX
Arrival of the new RUCS lab in the undergraduate reserve room.
Jim Niessen will be on sabbatical July –Dec 2005.
ALEX  ref  team will engage in ref. room space planning.

DGLSS
“Douglass Vision” building wide discussion took place in May. Discussion included assessment of Phase 1 and recommendations for Phases 2 and 3, which will be included in the Douglass Information Services Team Annual Report
D21 concept document review committee was formed: Ferris (chair), Jane Sloan, Kayo Denda, and John Shepard.

LSM
Fall Semester intern, Ingrid Greenfest (from Germany, SCILS student with PhD in chemistry) will fill in for some of Howard’s responsibilities during his sabbatical
New furniture, carpet, and new terminal with JAWS installed in the reference room.
Pat is the chair of the committee to discuss the repurposing of the Special Collections Room.

Branches             None

NBL Reference Collection:           New database: “Choice Online”

Instruction:            Theo Haynes is the incoming chair
                            Bobby Tipton, is the outgoing chair

PC:                  Completed the PC allocation. Hopes to eliminate all the Windows 95 machines.