Reference Services Committee Meeting Minutes April 11, 2012

WHO WAS THERE: Laura Anderson (Rotman), Patricia Bellamy (Robarts), Allison Bell (Gerstein), Juliya Borie (Cataloguing / CAUG), Richard Carter (St. Mike’s), Heather Cunningham (Gerstein), Elsie Del Bianco (Trinity), Monique Flaccavento (OISE), Len Ferstman (Innis), Debbie Green (Robarts), Marc Lalonde (ITS), Sam-chin Li (Robarts), Joan Links (Media Commons), Judith Logan (Robarts), Suzanne Meyers Sawa (Music), Andrea Shier (Criminology), Michelle Spence (Engineering - Chair), Lara Soglasnova (Robarts), Joanna Szurmak (UTM), Susanne Tabur (Gerstein), Christina Toolias-Santolin (Robarts), Jenaya Webb (OISE), Jennifer Wentworth (Robarts), Jacqueline Whyte Appleby (Scholars Portal), Candy Yip (Canada Hong Kong), Gabbi Zaldin (Victoria)

REGRETS: Chad Crichton (UTSC), Lucy Gan (EAL), Jack Howard (ROM), Sara McDowell (Robarts), Kim Silk (Rotman), Jennifer Toews (Fisher), Rita Vine (Gerstein)

1. Selection of a secretary: Heather Cunningham

2. Minutes of March 14, 2012 meeting approved.

3. No business arising from the minutes.

4. Report from ITS – Marc Lalonde
Upon the advice of the Web Advisory Committee, some changes have been made to the library home page:

  • Icons (Libraries, Workstations, Hours, etc..) have been updated to have a unified look and feel with the digital signage being created for Robarts Library. Data from Google Analytics shows these icons are very popular.
  • Tweaking of menus and lower pages for a cleaner look
  • Will re-design the lower part of page (with News, Workshops and Featured item) since a usability test showed students just do not see this section of the web page.
  • The ‘Library” tab of the search box currently searches the Drupal central site. By Fall, it should be searching the entire library web presence.
  • ITS is working on a better way to select, save and create an RSS feed for the book cover carousel. It is very time consuming to create right now.
  • Quick Links drop-down menu option was moved from the far-right side of the page to beside Help. Usability tests had shown patrons did not notice or use the Quick Links. Data from Google Analytics will be gathered on its new location. Marc had suggested moving Quick Links to be the first option in the drop-down menu (so catalogue would be second option).

Marc conducted workshops with staff from the central libraries to create sites in Drupal. By the Fall central library web sites should be in Drupal.

Difficulties and time delays in printing and emailing a single item from the catalogue were discussed.

5. E-Resources Cataloguing in Transition – Marlene van Ballegooie and Alastair Boyd

The focus of the presentation is to create awareness of changes happening in e-resource cataloguing practices with the implementation of Serials Solutions e-resource management software.

Benefits of 360 MARC service:

  • Less e-resources “falling through the cracks”
  • More “Title level” access (instead of just the name of the package/provider)
  • “concatenation” of e-resources
  • direct linking
  • full MARC records for many e-journals
  • better support for “virtual shelf” browsing
  • more resources to take advantage of Endeca and Summon faceting
  • more efficient cataloguing of e-book packages

Due to the frequent adds, updates, and deletes, 360 MARC records need to remain distinct and should not be edited or modified by anyone

Example was given of how to identify a Serials Solution record.

Policy of combining print and electronic records cannot continue as it is incompatible with 360 Marc Updates service

Some resources such as music and AV will still use the EIR (EIR Lite) since Serials Solutions does not handle these formats yet

There will be multiple records for e-books in the catalogue for a while as the records get cleaned up. The OCLC records usually provide fuller information than a Serials Solutions record and currently one cannot get OCLC records via Serials Solutions. Serials Solutions records are, however, constantly being updated.

There was discussion about what is the best link to use (e.g. link to the catalogue record or simplelink direct to a resource) when adding links to a LibGuide. There is no difference since both can change. More info pages can also experience the problem of having out-dated links as well if a catalogue record gets updated and a link changes. This should not be a problem with reference resources and abstracts/indexes since these do not change that often.

There was discussion about Subjects A-Z subject analysis and the difficulty in knowing what new reference titles are added since they are no longer in the eir. The subject analysis component needs to be figured out in the record acquisition process.

Alastair pointed out the lack of the authority file implemented in Endeca means many records cannot be found. The examples used to illustrate this were searching “heart attack” versus“myocardial infarction”. The second example is searching for “Anishinabe language” will find only a few records, however, if you know to use “Ojibwa language” you will find over 300 items. The implementation of the authority records has been delayed for three years and it was suggested that it should not continue to be delayed.

6. Reference Services Committee Terms of Reference and Membership

Michelle asked for feedback regarding the revised Terms of Reference and the Membership which were circulated via the refinfo listerv. Discussion was held regarding the removal of the numbers of appointed members since it was thought this might seem restrictive and interpreted as only one member for each unit/library may attend whereas meetings are open. The numbers are significant for voting purposes but voting is not done very often. This discussion will continue at the next meeting.

Date of next meeting: May 9, 2012.

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