Attending: Georgiana McReynolds, Alan Rostoff, Peter Cohn, Angie Locknar, Remlee Green, Anita Perkins, Mark Szarko, Heather McCann, Lisa Sweeney, Maggie Bartley, Lisa Horowitz (by phone)
Minutes: Heather
Announcements
- The instruction statistics form is up. Use for all instruction sessions, even if no one attends the session.
- Anita reported that the ISG Services Promotion Group (which will initially focus on partnering with Stellar) will collaborate with CFG.
- Peter and Mark are meeting with Peter M. to talk about possible ways that CFG might be able to work with RISG
- CFG agreed to co-sponsor the spring seminar. Volunteers from CFG: Mark, Nora
- Assessing staff training. We will continue to collect statistics for staff training.
- Reference manual is being updated. Content is done, but will bring to group to discuss what will be next steps, including the formatting issue.
- Peter finished the implementation plan for the instruction plan, and will post it to the wiki. It is essentially a timeline, approved by Steve.
- Three sessions have been recorded in the DIRC during IAP. There were some problems, but nothing major. More sessions will be recorded in the weeks to come.
- Lisa H. - Brief update on IM project (Meebo). Mark is pilot person, there are some other volunteers. She spoke of an institution who found that putting a meebo icon on their home page seemed to increase ref questions, but at MIT the question is how to staff it. There are some benefits to this IM, but still the problem that only one person can be monitoring it at a time.
- Peter's term as committee chair is coming to a close (will be chair through June), please let him know if there is someone interested in taking on that role.
Reference statistics (Lisa H)
We discussed reference stats, and possibilities for an automated system. Lisa H will meet with the new ref stats group (Heather, Remlee, Alan, Lisa S.) to discuss what kinds of ref stats we really need, and then she'll follow up with other groups as needed.
GeoWeb Update (Lisa S) The final location will be linked from the GIS website.
The purpose of GeoWeb is to make the Geodata Repository available through a web browser, rather than only viewable with GIS software. The site is not in its final stage, Lisa is hoping to roll out Geoweb in the beginning of Spring semester. This is a good way for librarians to answer questions about the types of data available through MIT's geodata repository. Lisa shared with RISG so we would know about it as a resource to use in all libraries.
A brief demonstration was given, showing how to search for data in the repository using a browser. For more information about how to use this tool, contact Lisa S. Training is being planned for the future, after usability testing and final tweaking.
RISG's role in supporting bibliographic software (Remlee)
The 2005 user survey showed 76% of respondents believed bib software was important, but few knew we had/supported the software. There are a few classes now, often local implementation. Howard Silver had been supporting this effort, but he is ready to hand over responsibility to a person willing to handle administrative duties which include checking in with Refworks folks, addressing licensing problems which come up infrequently. Howard is the person that currently answers technical questions. He's ready to cede this role, but still act as last resort. He would also like to hand off primary responsibility for Endnote support.
ESL is working to promote awareness of bib software services. Remlee is heading up this effort and wanted to include RISG so that it could be a more coordinated system-wide effort.
Summary of discussion:
Have a group of champion/support people for three products (Endnote, Refworks and Zotero). Two people from ESL, one person from each divisional library. It is not mandatory that they be members of RISG, as long as one person from RISG is also on the team. It makes sense for Peter to be the Rotch person due to his experience with the software, Remlee and Anita will also be in the group. Next step is to find people from Humanities and another ESL person. Mark is going to bring it up at a Hum meeting.
What sort of instruction of bibliographic software will be offered?
Local efforts as appropriate, with some system-wide sessions during IAP, IAPril, and JulyAP. There is a possibility that video instruction will be available as well.
The group will support instruction, in addition to support. It will determine levels of support required for Endnote, RefWorks and Zotero, outline what to do when there's a problem or question. So far we support RefWorks deeply. Remlee mentioned that there is someone at MIT from Zotero, who answers questions that she can't. The group will keep up with the changes and emerging bib software programs. They will need to determine how proactive they want to be.
Reference Vision: (Lisa H.)
We need to look at the reference vision progress report and see what progress has been made. Determine what is still relevant and what we would still like to try. We also need to talk about reference and what it is, where it is taking place and how to capture it in terms of "this is how much we've done" (assessment side). Are there ways it is happening that we are not taking advantage of? We might look at it in terms of marketing and outreach.
Of the RISG group, how does reference fit into your libraries, and your world? Maybe we should be exploring this in more depth, looking for improvements.
Anita noted that reference varies between units. Looking at the report, we're excited about how much is being done, it seems we have accomplished much of where we wanted to be in 2007. It's pretty impressive how much we've accomplished and we're ready to go on to the next level. These results show our expectations and proposals of five years ago were not overly far-reaching. Group agreed to write up something that says how much of the reference vision we've accomplished within the timeframe alloted, possibly something for the libraries or public services.
Next step is to discuss where reference is going. Lisa H will plan this discussion for our next meeting.
Come to the 'ask a cataloger' session - friday 25th, 11am, dirc