RISG 9/16/09

Present: Remlee Green (chair), Bill Helman, Lisa Horowitz (minutes), Angie Locknar, Heather McCann, Anita Perkins, Lisa Sweeney, Mark Szarko, Barbara Williams

1. Announcements and updates

Committee members shared reports from other committees that are related to RISG.

ISG has taken over ownership of the A-Z Services page on the Libraries’ home page.

New GIS workshops focused on architecture have been very successful.

Rotch is implementing the Librarian Advisor program for 2nd to 4th year Arch and Planning undergraduates. Heather already got one response from an email she sent.

Librarian Advisor Program for freshmen launches Thursday, 9/17. 31 librarians from across the system involved in this pilot.

2.009 started. Angie shared how this works. Any questions, ask her.

3.091 – The first project will be first week in October. Angie will share info when it’s time.

IAP coordinators have been assigned: Rosemary Hanley, Courtney Crummett, Drew Swayze. Rachel Grubbs to help coordinate with between AMPS and the Libraries’ IAP activities.

Steve Gass has approved RISG’s use of Patty Barbera to remake the writing pages as a LibGuide. Remlee will confirm with her. Mark and Lisa will coordinate with her on the project. Steve has also approved of RISG’s determining other projects for her, as long as they fall within RISG priorities.

Mobile web site for MIT – now open to Ask Us! emails and reference consultations. Remlee took screen shots and Nicole will make these available to staff without iphones to see what the new service looks like.

Assessment activities: RISG members are asked to encourage any staff teaching undergrads to participate in undergrad assessment pilot. It’s easy to participate even if you have already taught your class, as the assessment occurs at the end of the semester. Bigger incentives may be available to students who participate. Speak to Angie, Mark or Lisa for further information.

Brochures: PSLG agreed that we could discard any brochures about the individual libraries rather than redoing them, if they have not already redone. Only Humanities is continuing to use brochures, for bookmobile and other outreach.

2. Sorority outreach.

Last winter Peter Cohn met with one sorority for a library orientation. He contacted other sororities, and had several positive responses. He is going to follow up with them. Stephanie Hartman will be helping out. Mark volunteered to work with them.

3. Knowledgebase ideas

Lisa presented several ways that knowledgebases (basically question and answers databases, similar to the Dewey Database Advisor) might be established for MIT users and for Libraries staff. A task force was established to consider knowledgebase products for our user community. Lisa will convene, with Heather, Bill, Anita

4. Fall project planning:

Looking at the goals and future agenda items wiki page.

  • DIRC software: Mark and Barbara will investigate whether the software trial for NetSupport School Pro has begun. The software is a tool that would allow instructors to broadcast to different computers in the room.
  • Reference statistical studies: A new task force was established to discuss several systemwide projects that would assess reference. This does not preclude local units from doing their own assessment. Heather will convene. Lisa, Remlee, Barbara and possibly Bill volunteered. ISG is interested in collaborating where it relates to service provision, customer satisfaction, and service-related issues. Possibly a time study in the fall with a study of the staffing of service points in the spring.
  • Developing teaching skills for staff: skills to offer better instruction. Barbara and Heather will continue to discuss.
  • Sponsor new core competencies training – Remlee will bring up with other ps chairs to see what we should be doing, what they are doing.
  • Spring seminar – we’ll discuss at a later meeting. We have $500 budget for that.
  • LibGuides: We continue to have old html guides as well as new LibGuides. We want to make sure that the link to the research guides page is the most current, regardless of tool used. For example, the Rotch maps guide has been fully integrated into LibGuides. We need to eliminate the old maps guide. Meanwhile, the census pages are not moving to LibGuides, but we don’t want them inadvertently deleted. Additionally, many LibGuides need to be updated based on cancellations. We reviewed the libguides.mit.edu and felt that it was not a useful page and would prefer redirection to the research guides page. Remlee, Angie, Lisa and Mark will work on this project.
  • New project ideas? If anyone comes up with ideas for projects, add to the wiki page. Some thoughts:
    • Publicizing research guides
    • Endnote/refworks – promote our classes
    • Angie work with cite-help to chunk out endnotes tutorial
    • Add KB idea to the chart

At the next meeting, we will review projects list again to ensure that we are not doing too much. Remlee will clean up the page, removing all the activities that are done and collapsing combined projects.

5. Database cheatsheets guide. The group agreed to eliminate these pages.
6. Awareness of research guides. Discussed a variety of ways to promote research guides.
  • Rotch made bookmarks to advertise some of their stuff with URL. Pass out bookmarks when check out books.
  • Show in instruction
  • Labs: Ask computer labs to default to libraries home page, but when computers are updated may be over-written.
  • Put a link to research guides into mini.
  • Info graphics into news and events space on home page. Anita from ISG project. Will meet with Darcy to discuss. Could use that space for topical graphics. Could consider doing a promo in there.
  • In next usability tests, card sorting, ask if research guides means anything. Ask users what they would call it.
  • Slide show in Rotch on monitor at the services desk, and at Dewey. Use these, as well as screen saver for promotion. CFG did discuss screen savers to promote services across the libraries. If RISG creates a new slide show, could use that for screen savers and for monitors near service desks. Make sure that one graphic there is the research guide.
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