RISG minutes, 8/20/08

Attending: Maggie Bartley, Peter Cohn, Remlee Green (chair), Heather McCann, Lisa Horowitz (minutes), Angie Locknar, Georgiana McReynolds, Anita Perkins, Lisa Sweeney, Mark Szarko

Announcements:

  • Harvard card - Group is still working on creating an automated system that patrons can access online.  Harvard is ready, but we're not quite there yet.
  • AL reminded us of her session on her work with 3.091 tomorrow. Will include reports from the Teaching and Learning Lab (TLL) and how to the project will move forward in the fall.
  • RISG video group will be updating the video tutorials. Angie and Darcy are running refresher training in Camtasia tomorrow in the DIRC. A wiki page will be available as well, linked from RISG page under Projects and Documents > Video Tutorial Review.
  • Reminder to continue to use the perception of relevance survey for any graduate or mixed levels instruction in the fall. Library Instruction Evaluation Survey Form AL will update the form for IAP to include IAP sessions in the new drop-down class menu.
  • LH and MS were accepted in to the ACRL Immersion program on Assessment which occurs in December.
  • The Services Promotion Group (a subgroup of ISG and CFG) have created a mini page, http://libraries.mit.edu/mini. This will be linked from every Stellar course page in the fall, in the footer. It is a beta, the group will continue to work on it incrementally with Nicole. Will be a QuickStart page of the Libraries' home page. Two expected changes: Will include a feedback form, no info navigator. The group has been talking about publicity and assessment.
  • RISG Instruction Assessment group has met with all librarians participating in the fall instruction assessment pilot. At a meeting next week, will discuss teaching strategies, how to teach to outcome so you can assess at end. Tomorrow meeting the group meets with Rudy from TLL to get feedback on our survey and approach.
  • New Vera is live.
  • Worldcat Local group has been meeting, but still major bugs that prevent us from promoting as a beta. If those work out, release to staff by late Sept./early Oct. RISG agreed that any training available for staff on Worldcat Local would be appreciated. Suggestion was to release it and let people play with it, and then offer training. There will also be lots of user testing in October.
  • GIS lab is now recording stats for helping users, using an online web form. A part-time casual employee of GIS set this up. []It creates an excel file. Fills in all kinds of info, sits on GIS server. Plan is to keep all data but Kerberos name. Still have not decided how often to get Kerberos name flushed. This is within GIS lab. Technology not complicated. (Uses php to connect to Oracle.) LS and HM also record this data in the reference monthly stats. Heather reports all stats for this to director's office. Lisa's stats are recorded for GIS, outside of the Libraries. Oracle is something that the campus has and IS&T supports. php is common, so perhaps large enough body on campus to make it a good choice for ref stats also. LH will discuss with Steve.
  • Instruction registration system project: Is within RegSys wiki. Project of library staff who have made list of what's desirable. Next step is to compare systems and see what fulfills our features list. Have not tested systems yet. All systems require set-up from a system administrator. Tim Rix will work with Alex Brennan to set up for testing. Is there something simple and easy that would fulfill all the features, or is there something that could be set up, or do we need to purchase, or ask for resources to develop something?

https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/RegSys/Home See the wiki and add comments as homework.

Goals

  • RG went to last PSLG meeting. Brought back recommendation that as we are all doing great work, this year committees should focus on letting things go if they are not as high priority, and don't create new projects if can't let things go.
  • Purpose of RISG planning for next year is not brainstorming but focusing on two major plans with ranges of 2007-10.
  • Goals document is in our wiki. Also have future agenda items page that could be considered.
  • Discussed our goals.
  • RG will add recurring goals list to the wiki, attached to our goals page. RG will clean up goals chart to include recurring items and to eliminate empty spots. Will also combine future agenda items with goals. Will create a timeline and send to all for comments and volunteers.
  • Brainstorm at next agenda to put into priorities, and to keep on a list, if can't be done this year.

Reference Statistics Sampling

  • As noted above, RISG will consider new ways to collect ref stats on line.
  • Try to do sampling instead of daily? Current stats are not necessarily reliable or used as often as they could be. What do people do with these stats? Do we make any decisions from them? In order to get momentum to change anything, this is the right time of year to start.
  • Question: ARL stats - what do they require? What do we do already?
  • Dewey keeps time spent on complex ref. Used for formal decision making at Dewey? They discuss trends in annual report, and send that to Steve.
  • Could we get same trend ideas with fewer stats? GIS and Dewey keeps in-depth stats on time spent. If we moved to a sample system across the libraries, it does not mean that other stats would be kept less. GIS would continue to keep all data because of requests from other depts.
  • If we kept sampling, could possibly gather a lot more data. But what is a realistic sample? Smaller reference statistics subgroup will discuss
    • What does sampling mean for desk staff, esp. nights and weekend people? Will that be even more difficult for them to take?
    • Can we impress on staff importance of good staff if taking them were most limited?
    • What are stats being used for? Trends vs. actual data used for decision-making? If used with time, can help with staffing and lab hours (GIS).
    • Research what other schools are doing and what is required from ARL. What do they collect?
    • Compare to benchmarks from assessment plan. What do we collect that we don't use? What stats are used by admin for support in provost's office etc?
    • Idea of sample is to make it represent whole year.
  • In any discussion about taking stats, think about blurring lines between divisionals. Is it impt. to keep this? e.g., Angie's stats-taking. Keep stats by person rather than by unit?
  • Non-librarian staff who are answering questions away from desk who are not filling out sheets at all. How can we encourage that group to collect stats also
  • More thoughts or want to join the group, let LH know.
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