Coordinating Committees

Progress Report to CUWL – October 30, 2007

User Services Coordinating Committee (USCC)

The USCC had its first meeting in late August via WisLine.  During this hour long meeting, we were joined by Ed Van Gemert and Pat Wilkinson who walked us through the draft Strategic Directions document. 

The USCC met for the entire day on October 16 at UW-Green Bay.  We reviewed our charge, discussed communication between our committee and non-represented campuses and spent the rest of the morning learning about user services throughout the UW System.  After lunch, we focused on MetaLib before turning our attention to generating and discussing our action items. 

The committee agreed to the following action items:

  • Investigate new models of reference services while focusing on services for remote users, the role of students and paraprofessionals in providing reference services (staffing issues), the integration of reference services with other academic support services, training issues, assessment issues, and the future of the reference desk.
  • Explore information literacy/library instruction assessment tools and make a recommendation.
  • Document user service tools, resources, and methods currently employed by UW campuses and facilitate the sharing and use of these tools, resources, and methods across the UW System.  The open source reference statistics software developed at UW-Madison (PS Stats) is one example.  The use of student response systems (clickers) at a few of our campuses is another example.
  • Explore the use of Web 2.0 tools in the provision of user services.
  • Create a system-wide user services wiki to share information, tools, resources and teaching materials.
  • Investigate and recommend ways to assess our user services - focusing on our shared resources and parallel services. 
  • Identify the desired/required functionality of our next generation OPAC.

Progress to date:

  • Generated USCC action items in concert with the CUWL Strategic Directions.
  • Established formal contact with non-represented campuses.
  • Committee members have begun to acquire a general understanding of user services throughout the UW System.  This understanding, brought about through a discussion of user services at each of our campuses, helped highlight similarities that we all share and greatly informed the action items we generated. 
  • Discussed MetaLib implementation – focusing on how library staff are using MetaLib when providing research assistance and teaching research skills.  We agreed that a formal assessment of MetaLib usability is needed -focusing on usability from our users’ point of view.  We also need to identify best practices concerning MetaLib implementation and the integration of MetaLib within the workflow of reference and instruction staff.
  • Many campuses would like to do more to assess user services.  The members of USCC agreed that our group could help identify assessment methods and tools which could be employed throughout the system.

Other issues/items:

  • We are in the process of establishing a standing monthly meeting.  We are planning to meet via WisLine Web – although we will monitor the LTCC’s use of Skype and other Web 2.0 tools as possible alternatives to the use of Wisconsin’s Web conferencing service.  We are also hoping to meet in-person twice a year.    
  • One of our action items is the creation of a system wide user services wiki to share information, tools, resources and teaching materials.  We are planning to have this up and running before the end of this semester.
  • Each member of the USCC has joined all four coordinating committee email lists.
  • The cuwluser email list includes 84 members, including representatives from all campuses and 11 members representing UW Colleges.
  • Once our action items are finalized, we will discuss how best to organize ourselves to complete these goals.  This might include the creation of working groups that include members of the USCC as well as other library staff from throughout the UW System.  Some action items might best be handled by a task force comprised of members from multiple coordinating committees.
  • To date, most of our communication has been administrative in nature.  Once our action items are approved we will begin to use the cuwluser list to a greater degree.

Respectfully submitted by
Steven Frye - Chair, User Services Coordinating Committee
UW-Madison