Research and Instructional Support Group Minutes  -  Jan. 21, 2009

Bartley, Cohn, Green (chair), Helman, Horowitz, Locknar, McReynolds, Perkins (minutes), Szarko, Williams 

1.  Announcements:

  • Welcome to new member Barbara Williams.
  • Lisa:  the Library Survey group will have some results to share within a few weeks.
  • Lisa has further edited the Reference Vision Progress Report and will send it to Steve.  Note:  the draft (just distributed by Steve) of "MIT Libraries: achieving a desired future state for 2015" may have an impact on the reference vision.
  • Peter noted the upcoming NELIG meeting (Portland, ME, June 5) on "Tapping into Learning Environments of the Future."  Speaker proposals are invited.
  • Remlee reminded the group of the LibGuides sessions scheduled for February.
  • Circulation questions will be handled differently in Request Tracker starting next week.  Lisa will send out an update when this takes effect.   

2.  Update on the fall undergraduate instruction survey (Mark, for the instruction assessment group)

  • Preliminary results (charts) were distributed; summary will follow electronically. Overall results are positive. Another survey is planned for the spring.  
  • The group is seeking others who teach undergrad library instruction to participate in spring undergraduate assessment.
  • The group is in contact with Greg Harris (Assistant Director for Institutional Research in the Provost's office) to see if a library-related question can be included in other Institute surveys (e.g., pre-freshmen, seniors, alumni; the same question in all surveys).   Some of these results could provide a baseline for later comparison.
  • RISG discussed strategies for boosting the number of survey participants.  

 3.   Instructional toolkit  -  updates and questions (Mark)

  • A draft of the new toolkit in wiki format is linked from the Projects and Documents page of the RISG wiki.  The group reviewed it for organization and content and agreed on a number of revisions. 
  • Mark will update the toolkit and bring it back to RISG for further discussion. 

 4.  Discussion of draft proposal for a new model for reference statistics.   Issues include:       

  • The consistency of data collected is questionable without common agreement on definitions, e.g. what is a "reference" question?  How are technology questions counted?   Definitions of categories of questions need to be established and reinforced.
  • It's still useful to capture mode of communication.
  • Feedback from several units confirms interest in trying to capture time spent on complex questions.  That would, however, complicate the process of compiling the data.
  • The need for an automated system.
  • Additional sample weeks (perhaps 6 weeks instead of 4) might provide more accurate trends data.

The statistics group will continue to work on the proposal.

Next meeting:  Wed., February 18, 2009, 10-11:45, Rotch

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