Reference Librarians' Page

Subs

Laurie is going to sit in for Sharon from 1:20 - 2:20 tomorrow (Thursday)

No other subs were needed

Assignments / Instruction Sessions

Reminded folks about the info on the History of Ed assignment at the ref desk

Scott has session for Accounting coming up. They will be researching company info using Ebsco Business Source Elite and Lexis Nexis. He does not anticipate that they will have any questions.

Copyright Policy / Options for Professors to provide readings to classes

Based on the meeting 2 weeks ago, Sharon proposed that she and Anne develop a list of issues to present to Jeff with the idea that he would note those that he definitely wanted addressed by the policy, those that he thought were not essential, etc. Scott & Laurie were asked to send any issues via email to Sharon and Anne that they wanted to make sure were addressed. Then after Jeff’s input on direction, Sharon and Anne would work to develop 2-3 policies, route them for feedback, and then Jeff would decide.

LibGuides -

Sharon and Scott expressed enthusiasm for the product. Jeff had questions about how restrictive the format was / was not. The product does not require you to have any particular content, named tabs etc. There are fixed blocks, including one for a photo/image, but no fixed text that must be anywhere. So, there is a lot of flexibility. Anne asked if we deciding on this product would mean that we were deciding to have a guide for each department/program. Sharon answered not necessarily. That as of now we left that up to individuals. But, that we could consider this and make such a decision together. If we want to eliminate the web resources by subject section of our website now, we would probably want to decide then to have at least a minimal guide for each one - that included the info that was previously there. However, we could opt to have Scott just transfer that - and then have making more detailed guides be up to each liaison for each subject. We agreed to ask Laurie to set up a trial so that we could see if it worked as easily as it appeared to from the info.

Other Issues for the next long meeting

Faculty instruction for Library Catalog searching, using I-Share, renewing books, new databases, SFX etc. ~ Laurie suggested that we still needed to address this, and everyone agreed. Possibilities proposed were :

• Brown bag lunches or other mini instruction sessions focused on a topic - could be at lunch or 4pm etc
• Putting more instruction and/or putting instruction in a more accessible place on our website. (note Laurie has already acted on part of this by adding links to the logging into to your library account instructions in 2 new places on the website).
• Stuffing mailboxes w/ I-Share guide or other printed handouts
• Sending periodic email message reminders about how to log into your account or I-Share, how to renew, how to put items on reserve, etc. Anne will go ahead and send one now about logging in / renewing.
• Sending out a Monthly bulletin / newsletter that included various regular things. It was suggested to perhaps do this instead of focused emails. Others felt that for some topics a focused email would be read by more people. Perhaps a combination of both of these methods could be worked out. One benefit of the bulletin / newsletter concept is that these could be archived in the news section of our website.

Laurie raised the question of whether Ref desk staff should be performing overrides for student workers during times when a student was not available. The specific type of incident that comes up is that students have items overdue, and so cannot renew. Students are allowed one online renewal, but currently not if they have overdue items. A further complication is that once items go to overdue, we do not know if they have already renewed or not. So, we have several questions to address :

• Do we allow even the first renewal if items are overdue - currently our policy as developed is no renewal after the item has become overdue. However our practice at the moment is to override and let them renew.
• If we still allow one renewal after the item is overdue, do we need to determine if the student has already had his/her one renewal. Once items are overdue, we cannot see from the OPAC if they have been renewed. So, we would have these options :
• Ask the student, and take them at their word
• Look the item up in the circ module of Voyager to see the transaction history to determine if the item had already been renewed.

One further complication, and why many folks have things overdue, is that the due date that displays in the PAC is actually the day after the item is really due. Since we close at 1am, the due date is 1am on the date - and so, is really only an hour into the day. They see the date and think they can return it any time that day, and so it becomes overdue after 1am. What the system is trying to do is make it due at closing time on the “day” it is due - but since closing time is actually a new day, the problem occurs. Anne will check, but it does not look like we can change this. If not, it is something to keep in mind as we decide if we want to require overdue books to be brought in to be “renewed” (i.e. re- checked out).

Laurie also reminded us that she still needs feedback from Jeff and Sharon on the SFX customization that she proposed.

• Request was made to have a link to Sharon’s personal online calendar from the library’s calendar. Follow-up - I was able to add the text of the URL to the calendar header, but it is not hotlinked. Anyone can cut and paste it easily.
• Reference meeting Timing
• Sharon announced a plan to designated the 2nd and 4th Wednesday meetings of each month as times for a longer 1 hr meeting, and to designated the 1st and 3rd Wednesday meetings of each month as shorter meetings - shooting for 15-20 minutes whenever possible.
• She will try to have an agenda for the longer meetings. Please submit agenda items to her by Noon on the Monday before. She will then try to have the agenda out Tuesday AM, so that people have a chance to do some thinking before the meeting.
• We can also bring up issues for the longer meetings at the shorter meetings, so that people will have even more time to think about them before hand
• She will try to also post notes here after each meeting.
• LibGuides - Reminded everyone to look at Laurie’s email on this product. We will discuss whether or not to have a trial / demo at next week’s meeting.
• Staff Meeting - Jeff asked if folks had agenda items that would make a staff meeting this Friday make sense. Anne mentioned changing the display theme, and Jeff mentioned that the next theme was already planned. It was decided not to have a staff meeting till the following Friday - 25th.
• Display Books - The previous discussion reminded Sharon that she needs to facilitate getting a workflow nailed down for how we take books off and put books on to the display in terms of their cataloging. She will try to do that before the end of next week.
• Upcoming Instruction Sessions / Assignments
• Public History / Denial (Laurie)- has some kind of assignment where students create a character from the time of the Lincoln Douglas Debates. We don’t have a lot of information on the assignment, but the idea seems to be something like this : If they pick say a “College Student” at that time or a County Lawyer, or a Shopkeeper, etc. - they would then research things about what that persons life would have been like, and one assumes how they may have been involved in politics at the time - how they may have thought about the issues, etc. We don’t know how the research will then be presented - if they are doing papers or presentations or skits or…. They will be using Special Collections materials. Anne indicated that Catherine’s syllabus was on the web - here is the link : http://courses.knox.edu/hist347/ There is more info, though not a lot, about this assignment on the syllabus.
• Egyptian Warfare / Musacchio (Laurie) -
• This class has two large sections, so 57 students total. They have a research paper assignment. There are not a lot of resources here on the topic, so there may be a lot of ILLs. If ILLs are for archival material, juvenile material, dissertations etc. - then please put them in extensive searching and notify Laurie. Don’t cancel them. That way she can identify the subject areas people might be having trouble with.
• The professor has a CD-Rom bibliography that she wants the class to use. Laurie will find out tonite if it is plug and play enough that it could be used on our laptops or our lab machines. If not, then the students will just have to go to the professor’s office to use it.
• History of Education / Vandergriff (Anne) - This class requires some kind of research assignment, but the professor prefers not to do a library instruction session. The students often have trouble finding sources from the right perspective on the topics they have chosen. They also sometimes have trouble conceptualizing how to write about the topic from a historical perspective. Anne will look into creating a handout / pathfinder - that we can potentially give students or use as we are working with them so that they have something to take away.
• Introduction to Literature / Henderson (Scott) - They do have to write about various pieces of literature - primarily short stories-, but Scott does not anticipate them really using MLA or other sources much. We may get some questions. Sharon Reminded everyone about the Short Story / Poetry explication indexes - which are in the reference room. For any stoires pre about 1980 - these are really good. For post 1980 - need to use MLA and/or WorldCat.
• Biological Methods / Allison (Sharon) - This should not generate many reference questions. It sometimes generates some dissertation ILLs. If so, Librarians can go ahead and cancel them w/ note - no need to put in extensive. Students do not have a research paper, they just often need info to help them design experiments, and they are required to have references for their lab reports.
• Physics 241 / Schulz (Sharon) - This is just a brief session for a methods class. There is no assignment attached. It is just an intro to physics information sources.
• Art (Anne) - Anne has an art session coming up, but she does not anticipate anythign out of the ordinary
• Microfilm Reader / Printer ~ Neece is promoting a product that is a bit more sophisticated than what we were originally looking at. Carley is also very interested in this product. It would allow a micro-opaque attachment. There is some concern that the technology is too new and/or that this would be too complicated for walk-up student use. Laurie would like to see us buy a used machine at this point to just replace our old one, that would be digital - but basic. If we are going to look at this new product and if the cost of it is more than what we would do otherwise, then she would like us to review the STS product that she demoed for us a couple of years ago. She is going to give Jeff an updated quote on that and the info describing it. He is going to send to her the brochure on the item Neece is promoting.
• Jeff announced that there is an Academic Librarian’s Lunch scheduled at the ALS office in East Peoria on January 29th. The speaker is Kathy Walsh on Intellectual Freedom. Librarians should feel free to register. If they do, they just need to give Tanna a copy of the registration fee info / registration confirmation - and she will get the fee advanced to you, so you can bring it when you go. Let her know as soon as you can if possible so that she has time to arrange for the money.