MINUTES: Reference Services Committee, UTL

Wednesday May 9, 2012

9:30 – 11:00 am

Alice Moulton Room, Gerstein Science Information Centre

Present: Laura Anderson (Rotman), Patricia Bellamy (Robarts), Juliya Borie (Cataloguing/CAUG), Maria Buda (Dentistry), Richard Carter (Kelly), Heather Cunningham (Gerstein), Dylanne Dearborn (Physics), Elsie Del Bianco (Trinity), Len Ferstman (Innis), Lucy Gan (East Asian), Debbie Green (Robarts), Jack Howard (ROM), Joan Links (Media Commons), Judith Logan (Robarts), Sian Meikle (ITS), Mary Reynolds (Regis), Lana Soglasnova (Robarts), Michelle Spence (Engineering), Susanne Tabur (Gerstein), Jennifer Toews (Fisher), Christina Tooulias-Santolin (Robarts), BerenicaVejvoda (Robarts), Jennifer Wentworth (Robarts), GabbieZaldin (Victoria)

Regrets: Allison Bell (Gerstein),Marc Lalonde (ITS),Patricia Meindl (Chemistry),Nalini Singh (Inforum)

Minutes: The minutes of April 11, 2012 were approved as distributed.

Business Arising: Michelle Spence

The Terms of Reference and Membership draft was submitted to Library Council’s Steering Committee for approval. They disagreed with two changes:

  • Making the Scholar’s Portal representative a regular member rather than an advisory member
  • Allowing more than one representative from an individual library

It was decided that all libraries that have more than one member attending meetings should designate one as the official representative and the other as a guest. M. Spence will send out an email asking for this information. Item number 5 (“To recommend annually two of its members from the central library system to the Electronic Information Resources Committee …) was deleted fromthe Terms of Reference.

Sian Meikle suggested that the Digital Services Librarian should continue as an ex officio member rather than herself as Acting Director.

The revised Terms of Reference document was approved and will be resubmitted to the Library Council Steering Committee.

Data Resources: Berenica Vejvoda

Berenica Vejvoda, focusing on numeric datagave an informative talk on the services and resources available at the Map and Data Library. The computer lab provides access to various statistical software programs with which staff help users find, download and manipulate data. Theydeal with numerous consultations by appointment, drop-in or email with a one hour consultation service offered free of charge. Instruction in data literacy is provided mostly to graduate classes but some New College and Innis undergraduates are also served.

The library’s collections are divided between free and paid databases both locally and externally hosted; costs are shared with faculty and other researchers. The library has a history of archiving original research data in the social sciences and will provide access for its re-use. It also manages licenses, communicates access policies and provides a liaison between Statistics Canada Research Centre and the Statistics Department at the University of Toronto.

Questions from committee members included:

1. Are SPSS data sets available through remote access?

Not at the moment but Sian will look into it.

2. Will the Statistics Department welcome faculty from other departments? Yes

3. What is the catalogue access to data like?

Not as good as it could be although large externally hosted databases are in the catalogue. A list of searchable database collections is offered on the library’s web page. Sian proposed putting in hints at various stages of the search process suggesting that patrons search the Data Library.

Endeca Updates: Sian Meikle

It is time to revisit Endeca with these goals in mind:

  • To incorporate the indexing of authority records for names and subjects.
  • To merge item and bibliographic data so that for example you could filter out items which are checked out
  • To enable the ability to text citations
  • To redesign the layout of the hit list and detailed display
  • To accommodate the diversity of devices accessing the library catalogue

To achieve the latter goal, ITS will push out a mobile app that will adjust the display to accommodate the type of device used. The plan is to use responsive web design where you visualize the website in terms of grids which are laid out; the grids are coded to adapt to whatever device is being used. The display depends on screen resolution – as the screen gets smaller some options will be hidden to use less space but still be available. A demo of the proposed display can be seen at go.utlib.ca/tkf. Should guides be crafted to take this into account so that you don’t have to customize? Since LibGuides uses responsive design, this should be possible. The aim is to have the app ready for September with a soft launch for staff in August. The server hardware is 3 years old and the backend will have to be updated to make the retrieval of records faster.

LibGuides Subpages: Maria Buda

Titles of subpages in LibGuides have been dropped. Do members feel they are essential? If so we can ask if the decision can be overturned. If not we can see if the titles can be included in the cookie crumb line.

“Best Resources” Pages: Sian Meikle

ITS staff are working with Reference staff to examine whether CampusGuides, a sister SpringShare product to LibGuides, is suitable to use as a platform for providing both the Best Resources (Subjects A-Z) guides and the Library Resources pages within Blackboard.

The next meeting of the committee will take place on June 13.