RISG Minutes
April 15, 2009
Present: Maggie Bartley, Remlee Green (Chair), Bill Helman, Lisa Horowitz, Angie Locknar, Anita Perkins, Lisa Sweeney, Mark Szarko (Minutes), Barbara Williams
Guest: Patty Durisin Barbera
Information Navigator Preview (Patty Durisin Barbera)
Patty provided the group with a preview of what the redesigned Information Navigator will look like. She has been working on it as a consultant for the past several months. The most obvious change in the redesign is that the site would move from html to the LibGuides template.
The group discussed various aspects of the new design, including the use of text, various aspects of the navigation, additional links, and format options for the home page. After the Information Navigator is done, Patty is also planning to work on the Barton Basics tutorial and updating the video tutorials, with the hope that everything will eventually be in one place.
The group agreed that we would all continue to look at it on our own time and send additional suggestions or questions to Patty. The tentative deadline for rolling out the new Information Navigator is the start of the fall semester.
Definition of Reference: RUSA vs. ARL (Lisa Horowitz)
Lisa presented the group with 3 different definitions of reference from RUSA, ARL, and NCES. The definition we choose will help us to know what we're sampling when we take reference statistics and help us assess reference services. The group discussed all 3, but liked the simplicity of the RUSA definition. It was agreed to let the sub-group (Lisa H., Remlee Green, Bill Helman, Heather McCann) consider the discussion and then pick what they view to be the most appropriate definition.
Finalize Reference Vision (Lisa Horowitz)
The group discussed the latest version of the reference vision and made some suggestions for revising it. The most significant change was to make it a service vision statement, although there was some debate as to whether this change makes the document too broad. Lisa will update the document based on the discussion and send it to Steve and post a copy of the Desired Future State wiki.
Text a Librarian (Lisa Horowitz)
Lisa described a recent demo of Text a Librarian, an inexpensive web-based product for supporting text message questions. The advantages of the product are that it looks very easy to use, allows multiple librarians to be logged in at one time, and offers a variety of notification methods. The biggest problem is that the recent survey data suggests that our users don't consider texting to be a method they'd use to contact librarians. The group briefly discussed whether the staff time would be better applied to other initiatives. Lisa will summarize the group's discussion for Steve.
Announcements & Updates
It was agreed to make announcements through e-mail.