Instruction in Library Use Committee

Minutes of Meeting held January 16, 2002.

Present: Sara McDowell (acting chair), Jeff Newman, Sylvia Newman, Dave Hagelaar, Margaret Fulford, Judy Mills, Mary Roddy, Cris Sewerin (secretary).

Regrets : Fran Sardone, Len Ferstman, Gabbi Zaldin, Suzanne Meyers Sawa, June Seel.

  1. Minutes of last meeting

Approved with no changes.

  1. Staffing report

Sara McDowell is now the Co-ordinator for Instruction in Library Use for Robarts Library. Jeff Newman is now our ILU website coordinator – congratulations and thanks to both .

  1. UTSC Workshop

Fran Sardone is organizing this workshop. It is a good opportunity to meet and interact with faculty, and Fran encourages ILU committee members to take part.

  1. Website for “Challenge of Information Literacy” Workshop

–We now have links to all the presentation materials, with the exception of the OISE powerpoint files. They are at Unfortunately the photos did not turn out. There is also a link to the original version of the workshop home page.

–A link from the ILU web page was suggested.

–Jeff will begin work on an ILU Committee web page, which will include among other things, links to minutes of meetings.

–Workshop evaluations were passed on for other committee members to look at. Discussion of the workshop will take place next meeting when Frances is present.

  1. SIRSI

The committee agreed that Frances’ final message on the topic (dated January 8/02, excerpted below) summed up our thoughts well:

‘After many people's responses, it is quite clear that individual participation in the

SIRSI implementation teams is what is required … the ILU committee should add the SIRSI implementation to it's agenda [since] this is an important topic for the committee in planning for instructional materials and workshops. If any questions, concerns or ideas are raised during an ILU meeting, undoubtedly they could be passed along to a member of the SIRSI implementation team….It is also likely that questions raised in an ILU meeting can be answered by a SIRSI team member. Clearly ILU committee members do not wish to participate as a committee in the SIRSI implementation and so the committee will not do so…’

We are fortunate to have several individual ILU members in SIRSI implementation teams, including Jeff and Len on the OPAC team. Jeff reported on the OPAC team discussions thus far:

–So far the OPAC team’s timeline extends to end of July

–Testing & interface customization will begin in April

–Most likely we will not be involved before the end of the academic term

There was some discussion of SIRSI’s impact on our teaching:

–The greatest and most direct implications for us will be the redesigning of classes, supporting materials, handouts, web pages, etc.

–We need to explore collaboration on catalogue teaching tools, and standardization of guides which we can adapt to different libraries.

–Creation of interactive tutorials is also a possibility – there is one at Texas U., for example. Jeff and Cris expressed interest in working on this. Sylvia also suggested Rea may be interested.

–Coordination of web-based instruction, for example, between Robarts and Gerstein, was discussed. Jeff will explore the possibilities and report and our next meeting.

–It was clarified that print materials will have to go through publications committee.

–Digital reference service with real-time help was also suggested.

Other SIRSI sites worth looking at include Indiana, Carnegie Mellon, York, and Penn State.

  1. FindIt Brochure

Sara asked the committee to reconsider this brochure completely : should it expand, contract? Should other libraries be added? What about the cost? Should we consider alternative or additional advertising sources, such as web and/or listservs? Do we produce too many?

Several suggestions, comments were offered:

–There was general agreement that FindIt is valuable, particularly for cross-disciplinary studies

–We should continue to produce it

–The science subject listing is useful

–The structure could be clarified : students tend to find it confusing

The committee will send further thoughts to Sara, which she will summarize. We will aim to have changes made in time for the Fall 2002 brochure.

In the course of discussion it was agreed that our ILU Evaluation Forms should include the question “How did you find out about this sesssion?”

  1. my.library

There was some discussion of its usefulness and of its future under SIRSI. It appears most useful for creating guides, but many find it as time consuming as writing a web page. Another shortcoming is that it cannot be easily copied : links need to be re-created. The usefulness of a written help guide was discussed. Jeff indicated he already has one. He will share it via the ILU site.

  1. ILU committee-specific list

Sara brought this forward. There was some discussion, and we agreed to continue when Fran returns next month.

9. Next Meeting - Margaret Fulford will kindly host our next meeting Wed. Feb. 20, 10 a.m. - 12:00 noon at:

Dentistry Library, Faculty of Dentistry, 124 Edward St., 2nd floor

Directions: one block north of Dundas, half a block east of University (close to St. Patrick subway station, and just a 20-minute walk from Robarts!)