Reference Services Committee Meeting Minutes 14 March 2012

Reference Services Committee Meeting Minutes 14 March 2012

WHO WAS THERE: Patricia Ayala (Gerstein), Allison Bell (Gerstein), John Bolan (Bora Laskin), Juliya Borie (Cataloguing / CAUG), Richard Carter (St. Mike’s), Chad Crichton (UTSC), Heather Cunningham (Gerstein), Elsie Del Bianco (Trinity), Debbie Green (Robarts), Monique Flaccavento (OISE), Len Ferstman (Innis), Margaret Fulford (University College), Debbie Green (Robarts), Marc Lalonde (ITS), Joan Links (Media Commons), Klara Maidenberg (Scholars Portal), Sara McDowell (Robarts), Kathleen McMerrow (Music), Kimberly Silk (Rotman), Michelle Spence (Engineering - Chair), Susanne Tabur (Gerstein), Ian Whyte (UTM), Lann Soglaswora (Guest - Robarts), Judith Logan (Guest – Robarts), Jacqueline Whyte Appleby (Scholars Portal), Rita Vine (Information Literacy Co-ordinator), Candy Yip (Canada-Hong Kong).

REGRETS:Ian Whyte (UTM), Joanna Szurmak (UTM), Jenaya Webb (OISE), Jennifer Toews (Fisher), Mary Reynolds(Regis), and Patricia Bellamy (Robarts).

POPULAR DATABASES LIST (Michelle Spence)

WAC has created a final list of popular databases to replace the one now linked on the UTL homepage. Heather Cunningham said the provider names on the list, while familiar to librarians, might baffle students. Anyone with comments like these on the revised list should contact Patricia Bellamy and WAC. Meanwhile, the popularity of this page should become clearer when ITS have got Google Analytics to work, allowing us to track how often patrons visit the page.

ASK A LIBRARIAN BUTTONS

Debbie Green reminded everyone to pick up their Ask-a-Librarian buttons after the meeting.

DONATE BUTTON (Marc Lalonde)

Marc said he had put a Donate to the library button on many pages on the UTL website, including the UTL homepage.

ASK A LIBRARIAN BUTTON (Marc Lalonde)

There is also a plan to add the Ask-a-Librarian button to library webpages. Debbie asked if the button could also be embedded in article databases and Get It UTL pages. Marc said he would look into it.

DROPDOWN MENUS (Marc Lalonde)

ITS has started simplifying the dropdown menus on the UTL homepage in an effort to make the site less cluttered and easier to navigate. Marc has completed the Help, About Us, and Faculty menus, in some cases including side sub-menus; next he plans to clean up the Students and Services menus. One problem with the UTL website is that many links are duplicated. Google Analytics should help reduce this duplication by pinpointing which locations work best for different links.

DRUPAL (Marc Lalonde)

Since Drupal will be replacing Plone as the staff web-editing software, ITS will be offering Drupal workshops for staff in the central libraries.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS PAGE (Marc Lalonde)

Marc showed the group the new Special Collections page, which promotes a featured collection at the top followed by a brief outline of the major UTL special collections. Marc admitted he had had to guess what a special collection was, listing chiefly digital and rare book collections. He said if anyone had a good definition of special collections he would be grateful for it, as a brief explanation at the top of this page would be helpful. Margaret Fulford asked if the featured collection could be set apart from the headings below more clearly. Discussion followed. Ideas consisted of whether to include government documents as a special collection, and whether there was any way to organize the collections on the page by general topic rather than by library.

PERSONAL LIBRARIAN SERVICE (Rita Vine)

Larry Alford is keen on pursuing plans for a Personal Librarian program aimed at helping 1st year students make the transition to university. Right now the St. Mike’s Kelly Library offers the service to 1st year students at St. Mike’s; similar programs are also available at Yale and Drexel universities. Rita Vine is spearheading the effort to get a PL service adopted across the St. George campus.

The service involves assigning first year students to librarians, who introduce themselves by e-mail and provide personal help along with periodic e-mails throughout the year on such topics as new resources. After talking to librarians involved in the services at St. Mike’s, Yale, and Drexel, Rita said she discovered that, while few students responded to PL e-mails, there were several benefits. One was that some students who didn’t respond right away did contact the librarian in later years when they needed help. Another was that the students who did respond were happy with the service. The final benefit was that, because only about 20 per cent of students would respond, it took up relatively little staff time. In short: high impact but low effort.

Right now, UofT pulls in about 7,000 1st year students each year in Arts and Science, while the St. George Campus employs about 100 librarians to serve them. Organizing the service here would be challenging. If successful, the UofT program would be the largest in the world. But size is a difficulty. With so many students, Rita said, we need a practical way to match students and librarians—possibly using a ROSI feed. Another option Rita suggested was using a mail merge to personalize 2-3 targeted e-mails a year, something Kim Silk good humouredly called “a bit of a ruse”. Most agreed—but liked the mail merge idea anyway. St. Mike’s adopts this method.

Len Ferstman asked why we were focusing on 1st year students. In his experience, he said, 1st year students had few research assignments and therefore had less need than 2nd or 3rd year students for a personal librarian. Discussion followed. Practically, Rita said, 1st year is the best time to reach new students. Margaret said she liked the idea of the PL service coming from the Colleges—though she admitted some colleges are too small to offer a service like this. Len asked why we couldn’t just embed librarians in courses instead of offering a PL program. Embedding librarians in courses seemed a good idea—already adopted at some UofT libraries—but the consensus was that while this service could complement the PL program it need not replace it.

Rita suggested librarians be chosen at random to serve groups of 1st Arts and Science students. Richard Carter said that since he and other Kelly librarians were St. Mike’s employees, they were obliged to cater their PL program to 1st year St. Mike’s students. Focusing the program on Colleges, he said, worked well because it made the service more local and personal for the students. The St. Mike’s service was a flop at first. Their first e-mails, sent from the SMC Registrar’s office, were flashy and pretty, and not addressed to students individually. Very few responded. This year, the Kelly Library adopted a less flashy more personal approach using e-mails sent from the librarians themselves and the results were much better. Sara McDowell said she liked the idea of a College focus, and Jacqueline Whyte Appleby said she felt personalizing the e-mails was important, especially since students receive lots of e-mails and are likely to ignore those that seem impersonal. Rita said her approach then would be to look into making the college approach workable, maybe having non-college librarians helping college librarians with the service. Since Larry Alford loves the PL idea, UTL is planning a pilot service for 500-1000 students for September 2012.

LIBANSWERS (Susanne Tabur and Michelle Spence)

Susanne Tabur and Michelle Spence, along with Debbie Campbell, have been working to develop a LibAnswers FAQ database under the Help menu on the UTL homepage: The idea is to gradually build a database of top-notch answers students can search for by entering questions into a searchbox. The database now contains answers to more than 400 questions. In answering questions, you can embed videos and links, you can make your answers public or private (public preferred!), you can assign subject headings to your answers to make them easier to find, and you can check statistics on how often your answers have been read. Soon, Susanne, Michelle and Debbie Campbell will be ready to have other librarians join LibAnswers; librarians interested in LibAnswers should contact Michelle Spence or Sarah Forbes to get an account. LibAnswers buttons will soon be everywhere on the UTL website. Debbie Green said it was important these buttons look different enough from the Ask-a-Librarian button that there would be no confusion among patrons, a remark that prompted Klara Maidenberg to say there was an untapped mine of potential answers in Ask-a-Librarian scripts.

TERMS OF REFERENCE (Michelle Spence)

Michelle said the committee’s membership documents were outdated and that she would show the group a revised version of it the following month.

OTHER BUSINESS

Debbie Green reminded the group to tell patrons about the Ask-a-Librarian service; she also reminded everyone to take their Ask-a-Librarian package of buttons to hand out.

Michelle said Berenica Vejvoda would be talking about government documents at the next meeting.

NEXT MEETING: Wednesday 11 April 2012

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