Reference Librarians' Page

Each librarian should add a comment listing and ranking the databases/services/resources that he or she thinks should be listed in the general category of the Subject Databases list.

Please attach as comments a ranked list of the databases/services/resources for each of the subjects you are liaison to.

Attending - Sharon, Laurie, Anne & Scott (Jeff out of town at IACRL)

Subs - nothing new

Instruction / Reference - Break so nothing

Databases

Specific Databases :

International Index of the Performing Arts (Chadwyck-Healy/Proquest)

Scott and Anne had proposed that we look at this several weeks ago. They reported preliminary findings last meeting, and were going to check the non duplicate (in Ebsco) titles to see if they covered late 20th, early 21st century drama, and also if they were duplicated elsewhere. Scott reported that there were 31 unique titles, and that f those 15 had the potential to include late 20th early 21st century topics. These are not all FT. Scott took a look at Ebsco’s International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance, which is all full text and covers 130 books and 120 periodicals. Since we’ve determined that we do need to increase coverage - at least of indexing, and ideally of full text also - in both Theatre and Dance, we decided to go ahead and schedule trials of both of these simultaneously to facilitate comparing them. I did not put down the details in my notes, but I think that Laurie was set to arrange this, and did not need any more info from Anne or Scott. If that is wrong though - please add a comment.

Bibliography of Asian Studies

Scott looked into this, but found that it really did not add much to our JSTOR and Historical Abstracts coverage, and that more than that was not needed.

Subjects Needing more Indexing / FT Coverage

Sharon thought that she remembered that we were all supposed to be looking at our subjects and the ILL data, usage data etc. to determine if there were subjects that needed increases in Indexing / FT Coverage. No one else remembered this, and since she had not posted the notes from the previous meeting this made sense. However, some subjects were discussed.

Environmental Studies - Laurie brought this one up as an subject that we need more coverage in, but for which there is currently no good solution. The products that are in a reasonable price range for the amount that we would use them do not have the content that we need. The databases that have the content we need, are even larger than that and very very expensive. Laurie indicated that the product Earthscape that we had added a year or two ago was not really meeting the need. It was getting used, but she felt that people were not finding the content that they needed there, and so it was just misleading. ** She suggested that we drop this for next year, and everyone was agreeable to that.

Sharon asked Laurie if an increase in monograph spending, perhaps particularly edited volumes and/or adding some specific periodicals would help. Laurie answered that the monograph / edited volume idea had some real promise, and that we should perhaps look into that. She thought that it was possible that there might be a periodical or two that would help, but probably not. The main need is with the senior research students, and their topics are so varied that it is doubtful that one or two periodicals would do any good.

Religion - Laurie brought up that we’ve mentioned religion on and off in the past as a possible topic to increase coverage in. We discussed it a bit and the conclusion was that there was not enough happening here at the moment to justify an increase. We also noted that the addition of Historical Abstracts contributes quite a lot in this area.

No other subjects were brought up at this time.

Discussion on Usage Statistics

We went through Laurie’s Usage data and various comments were made :

• Medline - Sharon noted that this was probably down because more people were using the PubMed interface than the medline one.
• PsycInfo - Jeff had asked in a previous email about the possible decline in this that the graph shows - though we of course do not have complete 07-08 data yet. Laurie had been able to look at the data at the monthly level, and indicated that it is down about 1000 searches from where it was at the end of Winter term last year. Sharon noted that Spring Term definitely was the heaviest usage term, and so she did expect that much of the ground would be made up then. Laurie asked if the change in professors from Colleen to Kei might have made a difference. Sharon indicated that Kei was assigning the same kind of research projects that Colleen had been, but that she was not emphasizing PsycInfo itself as much (Colleen really pushed this)- so students probably are using Google more. The research methods class Psyc283 is this term, so that may make a difference.
• WWPS - noted how this is up already from the whole year of IPS - good news!
• ClasePeriodica - Sharon speculated that the jump in 06-07 was probably due to one student or faculty member using it for a project.
• LION vs MLA curve - in 06-07 we actually accessed MLA via LION - so that is why there was more LION than MLA. Then in 07-08 we got MLA separately from Chadwyck Healy, and so people are using LION less. People also seem to be slow to learn about MLA on its new platform - and it seems to still be accessible from LION - so there is some confusion. We don’t know if the MLA content that is still on LION is the full MLA content or just partial. Use of the two may also be down due to higher use of google and/or fluctuation of courses. We won’t really know for sure if there is a total downward trend till the Spring term data is added.
• RILM - we didn’t talk about this at the meeting, but I wanted to point out that the dip in this is probably due to Jeremy and Sarah’s Fall Sabbatical. They are the ones that use this in their courses. So, it will probably pick up in Spring, but still be down for the year potentially because of losing a term of use.

Database List Issues

A-Z List - Laurie proposed that we consider dropping ArticleFirst, Periodical Abstracts, Wilson Select Plus and ECO from this list. Not dropping access, and they would still be linked via SFX and could maybe keep in the general section of the subject list. This sparked a discussion of issues with the A-Z list. The basic dilemma is that the list is serving two purposes, and it cannot do both well.

1. As a fairly comprehensive A-Z list - where you look when you already know the name of the database, service or product you want to link to
2. As a selection tool - even though the Subject list is supposed to be the selection tool, because this is listed first (and perhaps because we more often refer to it in instruction and via ILL cancels because in those instances we are sending folks to a specific database), people click on it and use it as a selection tool.

Issues

• Because people frequently (perhaps even most often) use the A-Z list to decide on a database, the fact that it is long and lists things that we don’t really want to emphasize means it does not work well at this task.
• Even though people get to Periodical Abstracts and WilsonSelect Plus most frequently via SFX - there are times when people are told to go to it directly - for example in ILL cancels. Even though we can give them a link, sometimes they may still have trouble with that. Also these two databases don’t link that well to SFX, and so sometimes people need to go in direct if they cannot get to the Full Text via the SFX prompt. This means that there are a significant number of times when people need to be able to find a link to these databases from our webpage pretty simply. Going to an A-Z list is the most intuitive and direct way to do this.
• ArticleFirst is something that Sharon does direct students to in Physics and Chemistry classes. Although it is a very flawed database (no indexing, none of its own FT - though some links to PerAbs and Wilson), it still has significantly greater coverage of Chemistry and Physics journals than Ebsco’s Academic Search Premier. Usually Sharon provides a link to it in instructional materials, but again sometimes students are not going to have that info with them - so they need to have a way to find it easily from our webpage.
• ECO - we did not talk about this in the meeting - but this is not one that I think we want patrons to use at all - I thought we had it turned off - we can clarify if this is the case at the next meeting.

Possible Solutions - we discussed the following things, but we did not reach any conclusions and did not really feel that any particular solution so far solved the problems. It may be that we will have to prioritize the issues, and decide what is the best imperfect solution.

• Idea #1

1. Leave the A-Z list as a pure A-Z list (perhaps re-including some things on it - see discussion of non journal databases below)
2. Cull and Prioritize the Subject List - and add a star ranking system.
3. Place the Subject list before the A-Z one on the main page and in the drop down menu.

• Idea #2

1. Leave the A-Z list first, and cull it (perhaps also add star rankings) -
2. Keep the subject list second, also cull and rank it
3. Have a more complete A-Z list somewhere else - perhaps in the right column or under a site index or at the bottom and in Quick links

• Idea #3

1. Cull Wilson, Article first etc. from the A-Z list and perhaps add star rankings
2. Maybe or maybe not also get rid of “other Resources” column on the right.
3. Prioritize & Rank the Subject List, but include all the general databases (ArticleFirst etc.), and perhaps leave some/all of the “other Resources” here.

• Idea #4

1. Everything in Idea #3
2. Plus add everything to the library catalog so that a title search here would be a complete A-Z list of every kind of resource - books, journals, databases, packages, services, etc.

**Homework for Next Meeting**

Everyone will go through their subjects in the subject database list and rank the items as well as add or suggest deleting any.

Everyone will look at the list of general database and rank those and indicate what they want to leave out or add.

People will try to post this to the blog (note: I will make a general post, and then folks can add their rankings as comments).

• Non Journal Database Items and the A-Z list - a few months ago we agreed to separate out a number of titles from the regular A-Z list and to put them in a separate column to the right. Everyone agreed that this was the best thing to do at the time to help make the main list less unwieldy and to help eliminate confusion so that folks knew what the “Journal article” databases really were.
• However, Sharon expressed concern that this solution still makes it difficult for folks who have been told to use a specific resource or service, such as Choice Reviews, Credo, etc. to find those links. Most are not going to be able to make the distinction on their own that these will not be in the regular A-Z list, and so when they look there - they don’t find them. The column on the right is pretty prominent and easy to see, so that helps, but Sharon thinks it is still problematic. She speculated about whether or not we needed a complete A-Z list somewhere/somehow.
• Laurie pointed out that such a thing, if it were to include all electronic resources, even excluding periodicals, would just be huge and would be like trying to duplicate the library catalog. She suggested that shouldn’t we use and direct people to the library catalog as the main way to find all the resources.
• Sharon agreed that we definitely did not want to try to duplicate the library catalog in some list, just because things were online, and that we did definitely want to work more towards directing people to the library catalog to identify resources.
• She also indicated though that going through the library catalog was an extra step, and not all that intuitive for certain kinds of resources. That for some kinds of things people expected a more direct route. She speculated that there was perhaps a distinction that we could make that might differ slightly from person to person, but that we could not really adequately define between what needed to have a more direct link. For example - on the one hand it seems to Sharon that forcing people to use the library catalog to link to things like Choice Reviews or the Credo Package (not individual titles) seems problematic. That people just do not think of the library catalog as place to go to link to them. She wondered if some combined criteria - things that were “database like” along with things that were “large” (OED, Encyc Britannica) could be included on an A-Z list, while individual titles with only those very few exceptions would be linked just in the library catalog.
• Anne indicated that she thought that we could fairly easily come up with a short list of things that should be included along these lines, and then let the library catalog be the source for the rest.
• Laurie pointed out that if we put everything in the library catalog and directed people this way consistently that this should overcome most of those issues.
• Sharon conceded that this was true in some ways, but that she still felt somehow that having to use the library catalog to do search to link to what a patron might be thinking of in their mind as more of a service was problematic.

Misc Other Database Notes

• The CARLI list has not yet come out - Laurie thinks it should be any day now.
• Scott will be putting up the results of his analysis of the ILL data that Anne posted previously (note he has done this and it is in the Library/Reference folder).

Next Meeting

Because our time for deciding on the CARLI Databases is short, we will need to have a long meeting on Wednesday April 2nd.

**More Homework for Next Meeting**

If the CARLI list comes out, please review it in light of your subject areas, and come to the next meeting if possible (or if not the one after) with info on any of your subjects that you think we want to consider adding something for.

Caveat : I waited a long time to put these in, and of course now my written notes look cryptic - so these may be slightly off on some points. As always, if there is anything you think is wrong or left out - please add the info in a comment.

Ref Schedule issues

Reference over break - have a list of people on call. Look at the calendar to see who is here what days. Sharon will send out a draft list, and then we’ll pass it on to the circ staff.

Education Research Complete - Sharon had indicated in the agenda for this meeting that she thought that we needed to see pricing on this before we decided about it, and that she thought that if it was very expensive at all that because of ERIC’s comprehensive nature that we would not want it. However, Laurie pointed out that it might at substantial full text beyond Academic Search Premier. This would make a difference. I assume that we then indicated that someone would look into this - Anne? - but I have nothing in my notes.

Switching Databases to Ebsco Platform - We confirmed that we definitely want to switch the following :

• Philosophers Index
• ERIC

We are pretty sure that we also want to switch RILM and Art Abstracts, but Anne and Sharon still want to do one final double check with the faculty in those departments.

We confirmed that we do not want to move PsycInfo at this time.

CARLI Database Brokering List - Laurie will email us when this comes out.  She expects it around March 31st (note it did come out in early April, and Laurie has emailed everyone the link and password info).

Online Reference Collections

We noted that we did want to mostly wait till this summer to start reviewing this.   However, if there are some titles or collections on the CARLI list, then we can consider any that seem obvious choices or a deal etc.

In the long one when we look at this whole area - Laurie suggested that we approach this by thinking of specific titles that we want, and then seeing how those titles are available — rather than looking at collections as a starting point.  Everyone seemed to agree with this.

Database Plans

Revisions to the summary of the database planning procedure drafted in the previous notes :

• Laurie pointed out that we need a mechanism for dealing with things that come up outside of the planned schedule. There are times when there is a new database that we didn’t know about during the selection process or something is on sale, or a new gap in coverage arises. Everyone agreed that this was important. So, the conclusion was that if this happens - if it is in your subject area look into it initially to see if it is relevant or worth trialing - if so bring it to the rest of the group. If you want pricing before you decided, contact Laurie and ask her to explore that. If you see something that is really on sale and/or that you think we might be interested in (in an immediate way) that is not in your area, forward the info to the appropriate liaison. The main thing is, not to bring up or forward everything that comes along - but only things that for some reason warrant looking at before the regular place in the cycle that we have outlined.
• Laurie and Anne also brought up the situation where sometimes you want to do a trial connected to a specific course, and so again this would not necc. be during the time period designated for trials in the process outline. So, if this happens, feel free to ask Laurie to try to set up a trial that fits with your course. Again though, lets keep these to a minimum, and just use this when this kind of feedback is important to a decision about obtaining the product. We should not be doing trials of databases that were are not really contemplating getting at all.

Collection Development in General - Jeff brought up again that we needed to make plans to look at our collection development processes across the board, and not just for databases. He hopes that we can work towards “budget development” - where we are projecting needs, and then requesting changes to the budget to fit that - rather than just always reacting with the budget that we have.

Databases vs Periodicals

Jeff also brought up that we need to continue to work to define what we want to consider in the periodicals budget line and what we want in the databases line.

Sharon indicated that she and Laurie had been having some conversations on this, and that she (Sharon) was working on a spreadsheet that indicated for each major resources (not individual periodical titles that are obviously periodicals) the following 3 things :

• Which budget line is this resource paid out of
• Which librarian is responsible for the invoice for this resource
• Which librarian is responsible for managing the resource subscription.

She is still working on this, and hopes to have a draft that we can discuss soon.

Database Plan - Someone requested that Sharon put the draft plan for database renewal/selection as a word document linked to the blog in the sidebar, and not just leave it as a post. Sharon agreed to do this.

ArtStor

The question was brought up about what happens now about ArtStor. Jeff indicated that the next step is for he and Greg to talk.

Laurie indicated that if we were going to get this for 08-09, we’d want to know at the start of summer if possible so that we could get it on the agenda for the lab machine profile changes that happen in August. They would need to get the ArtStor software set up for that profile.

IIPA - International Index of the performing arts.

Scott reported that

• 240 journals were indexed here
• 60 of those were Full Text
• The coverage was from 1932 - Present
• There were 61 duplicate titles with Academic Search Premier

Scott will check for next time if there are duplicates with other databases, and will try to assess how much coverage there is of late 20th century and early 21st century that is not duplicated elsewhere. (Note, he did this, see the notes for the next meeting).

You may have already noticed this… The SFX A-Z list and the SFX menu now show related objects for serial titles. This means that previous titles and things like “continued by” and “continues in part” and the like will show up in the A-Z list and the menu.

You can see an example if you look in the A-Z list for the title Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Look at the end to see the line “Continued by: The Journal of American History”. (The only odd thing is that the “Continued by” part is hotlinked, not the title itself. I’ll work on trying to change this.)

A different example: Look up Missouri Botanical Garden bulletin in the A-Z list. You’ll see that this title is not hotlinked because we don’t actually have online content for this title. But, if you click on the “Continues in part” link to the previous title, you’ll see that we do have online content for the earlier title. I think it’s somewhat misleading to have the titles in the list that we don’t actually have online access to; an inexperienced user has to look carefully to figure out that we don’t have online content. Prior to this new feature, if a title was in the list, then we had access to it. I cannot turn off only part of this related content feature, so this becomes a user-education issue, I think.

This Wednesday (the 12th) is our next long reference meeting.

Before the meeting, if at all possible, please review the Ref Mtg notes on the blog from 2/27/08
Please look in particular at the draft start of a plan headed in the notes as : “Plan for Choosing databases.”

If you have time, please leave comments about this plan on the blog - does it make sense so far, any objections to parts of it,
anything you think was left out from our discussion last time, anything you think should be added at this stage. If you cannot leave comments on the blog before Wednesday AM, please try to have thought about them and bring them with you to the meeting on Wednesday.
In particular what do you think of tying it to the liaisons? What do you think of the timing proposed?

There were also some things various folks were going to do between that last meeting and this meeting, so check the agenda below to see if there was something you are slotted for. If you haven’t gotten to it, you can just let us know that and we can decide to either do something via email between now and the next long meeting, or wait till the next meeting.

Here is a tentative agenda :

I. Substitutions needed
II. Reference desk issues - any problems, questions, assignments for finals that we need to share info about?
III. Update on Ref Works Status
IV. Planning for Database Review

A. Planning for ideal cycle

1. Comments on draft from blog
2. Liaisons?
3. Timing?
4. What more do we need to flesh out, add or change?

B. Planning for current year

1. ArtStor - what’s the next step after trial ends
2. Performing Arts Index - Anne & Scott were going to look into the title lists for this, and check if coverage is good for late 20th c. and early 21st
3. Gale Literature Collection - Laurie was going to get pricing, and then we’ll decide if a trial makes sense. If pricing is not here yet, we’ll skip this till the next meeting.
4. Cambridge Collections Online - this is one that Laurie got a “bogus” referral to from a salesperson, but subsequently some interest was expressed. I’d like to hold off, at least slightly, on looking at this specifically, and I hope that we come up with a plan for reviewing (or deciding not to for now) this and the other major reference collections for this year. See the slot on this later in the agenda.
5. Education Research Complete and/or Education Research Index from Ebsco - some interest was expressed in this on the blog. I suggest we see pricing (either from CARLI if it is included in that report when it will come) or direct if not part of the CARLI group purchase. If it is very expensive at all, then I don’t think it is worth looking into. ERIC is very comprehensive and cheap, and if we move it to EBSCO we have the advantage of the linked full text. It is hard to imagine that a commercial index would be enough better to justify much cost.
6. Confirm other specific databases that have come up that we delaying or are not interested in - these are ones that came up in the blog and from the comments there I’m assuming we are not interested, but want to confirm. Some of these are also ones that only came up because the sales person indicated to Laurie that a librarian had requested info on it, and I think we determined that this was not in fact the case for any of these :
• Web of Science - delaying investigation till Summer, Trial till Mid Fall
• Facts on File databases - not interested?
• FoF World News Digest - not interested?
• Learning Express Library - not interested?
• Access World News - not interested?
• Computing Reviews - not interested?
• Literary Reference Center - not interested?
• SciFinder Scholar - We are not interested in this at this time. This is something that there needs to be more discussion with the Chemistry dept. about how they would use it to justify any cost. Their majors do very little secondary research, and for the small amount they do Academic Search Premier, and ACSs free index to their own journals works fine.
7. Switching some databases to EBSCO. I think the conclusion from the blog discussion is to take the following actions :
• Check pricing for Philosopher’s Index, if it is a large increase - do not make the change. If it is small increase, make the change. - Do we have the pricing on this? Will it be in the CARLI offerings?
• Check pricing for ERIC - if really large increase, do not make the change, if medium increase, make the change (More important to have ERIC on Ebsco Platform) - Do we have the pricing on this? Will it be in the CARLI offerings?
• Double-check with faculty to assess if people are strongly wedded to the interface / using My account etc:
  A. RILM - Sharon will check with music faculty - I have not done this yet, will try before Wednesday
  B. Art Abstracts & ERIC - Anne will check with Art / Educ faculty - Anne have you had a chance to ask?
• Will not move PsycInfo
8. Other bibliographic databases to review - obviously we cannot implement the draft proposal for the ideal review cycle at this late date. However, we probably do still want to do something systematic over the next few weeks to see if there is anything else we should be considering. How does this sound for a plan?
• Get a usage stats report from Laurie for Fall and Winter term uses of our current databases
• Ask for a volunteer to review past year’s article requests in Illiad to do a little subject/journal analysis
• Have Liaisons take some time to consider coverage for their depts. to try to identify significant gaps
• If Liaisons do decide there are some subject areas that need either indexing or full text, they will investigate options and have a list of titles to ask Laurie to check pricing on.
• Let’s not do trials until we’ve found out all we can via descriptions / title lists etc. and checked if pricing is reasonable.
• At the meeting, let’s try to set a deadline for when it would make sense to have a list of databases to look at more deeply
• Handout/pass around / provide access to the CARLI list of databases to purchase through them - just looking at the list, and in light of the above, might spur some thought. We definitely don’t want to look into all of these, but it might be useful for everyone to see the list. I forget if this is something online or? and when it comes / came out.
• Identify the deadline for CARLI sponsored purchases
9. Online Reference Collections - do we we want to review some of these this Spring or not? Some ideas from me :
• If some of these are on CARLI’s list, then perhaps we should look at them now. If not, is this something we could do more thoroughly this summer. I know we’ve said we would do that in the past, and never gotten round to it, but if we decide this we could try to plan something more concrete.
• OR - perhaps we should have a project to analyze what we’ve got so far with online reference (Credo and individual titles), and come up with a better plan for advertising, providing access, promoting etc. these - and see what we can do with that first. Not adding any more till we’ve done better with what we’ve got?
• In addition to the above we could still look at the CARLI list and if there were things on there that were cheap and/or for which we could identify a specific need that we knew we already had a good avenue for linking a class/professor etc. up to - then we could look at those?
10. What else do we need to do this Spring for 08-09 purchases?

Substitutions - no new requests

Extended Reference during Finals Friday 14th

4:30-6:00pm - Sharon

6-8pm - Anne

8-8:45 ; 9-9:30 - Scott

Coffee During Finals - everyone was ok with the plan.

W 12th, Th 13th, F 14th - 9-11pm

Scott will get the coffee from Kaldis & Hot water from Food Service. Reference librarian on duty will set up. PSA will move items to staff room at 11pm or when they run out. Volunteers will clean up the next morning. I will make a sign up sheet for clean up volunteers. Scott will return items to Kaldis.

Summer Planning - Sharon indicated that there were a lot of issues facing us in terms of library service and functions, and that we would need at some point to prioritize those, and then hopefully have some consolidated time this summer to work on the prioritized items. It is hoped that we can find 3 weeks or so in the summer when we all might be here. We looked at the calendar and identified some possible times to try to avoid taking vacation if possible :

June 17th - June 24th

July 7th - July 10th

August 18th - 29th

Sunday / Thursday Reference during Spring Term - Sharon passed out printouts of the draft schedules she had sent via email for Sundays (to everyone) and for Thursdays (to Jeff and Anne). Folks should email if they need to make trades. Then Scott will finalize, and put on the calendar.

Art Stor Demo - The Artstor demo is tomorrow at 4:00 in Stelleyes. Someone will be there then to set up the phone, and Laurie and Anne be there if other set up needs to be done. Jeff is planning to attend. Laurie indicated that the demo would take approx. the full hour. Anne will try to be around afterwards if folks want to play around with the trial.

Microfilm Reader /Printer - Laurie asked if there was any progress on the plans to decide / purchase a new microfilm reader / printer. Jeff said, no not yet.

Next Meeting - Next week will be one of our long meetings. Try to review the past notes and comments on the blog if you can. Sharon will draft a summary of where we are to date on the database planning project, and post an agenda on Monday.