Coordinating Committees

Progress Report to CUWL – September 17, 2010
User Services Coordinating Committee

July 2010 – September 2010
Submitted by Jill Markgraf, USCC Chair

The 2009/10 committee members graciously agreed to meet one last time in early July before the new committee was named. They came up with a list of potential topics for the fall webinar series and addressed issues related to the Resource Discovery RFI. Some members were involved in the resource discovery user testing on their campuses.

The new membership of the USCC met via phone conference on Aug. 26.  Members  include:
Kimberly Bartosz (Parkside), Brad Gee (River Falls), Lee Konrad (Madison), Jill Markgraf (Eau Claire, Chair), Kris Midthun (Milwaukee), Paul Moriarty (UWSA ex-officio), Cris Prucha (La Crosse), Zora Sampson (CUWL ex-officio) , Jennifer Chamberlain (Colleges), Laura Jacobs (Superior), Mark Rozmarynowski (Stevens Point).

The committee reviewed its charge and CUWL communication tools (such as the distribution lists, the wiki, the website and the xythos server). A standing meeting time was set for the second Friday of each month at 11:00 via freeconference.com teleconferencing.

The committee began its discussion of the Strategic Directions and initial ideas for addressing them, including the following:
Incorporate information literacy skills/learning outcomes into campus core competencies (Strat.Dir. 2, Obj. 3)

  • The Liberal Education, America’s Promise (LEAP) campaign, initiated at UW-Madison, was mentioned and a document distributed to committee members to discuss at a future meeting and/or develop a webinar on this topic

Enhance alliances and communication with senior campus administrators, faculty, students, public policy makers and the K-12 community (Strat.Dir. 2, Obj. 1)

  • Committee members discussed some of the outreach already taking place between their libraries and the K-12 community. One idea to be further explored is to conduct a survey of libraries and inventory K-12 outreach activities to share ideas and better communicate to administrators, public policy makers and the community at large the contributions we make.
  • Members discussed taking steps to increase dialogue between K-12 librarians and university librarians. A suggestion was made to have a phone conference involving both.
  • Webinar on FYE and libraries (see below)

Develop culture of assessment to better align collections, services and spaces with user needs (Strat.Dir. 3, Obj. 1)

  • Committee members discussed some of the reference and instruction assessment strategies they have been using. The idea of doing an inventory of assessment methods being used in UW libraries was raised. From there, expertise could be identified and shared through webinars, the CUWL conference, consultation or other means.
  • The idea of a shared chat service using Libraryh3lp was discussed. This was also raised as a possible topic for a webinar. The Colleges are begin to work with Libraryh3lp in a shared environment and may be willing to facilitate such a discussion after they have some experience with it.

Research models for changing work flows to achieve efficiencies and cost savings (Strat.Dir. 3, Obj. 3).

  • Committee members began a discussion of how user services might achieve efficiencies based on the charge established by CUWL. A beginning point of identifying online user guides that are not campus specific was discussed.

Monthly webinar/phone conference forum
The committee decided that it will continue its series of monthly webinars, again planning three per semester, on the third Thursday of October, November, December, February, March and April. The USCC committee met again on September 10 via teleconference to discuss the first webinar of this semester, which is scheduled for October 21, at noon, via freeconference.com teleconferencing. The topic is FYE (first year experience) programming and the library. Kim Bartosz (UW-Parkside) and Molly Matthias (UW-Milwaukee) have agreed to facilitate this discussion.

The  committee will select additional webinar topics that address the strategic directions.

CUWL Annual Conference
Rachel Slough, the new E-Learning  librarian at UW-LaCrosse, has agreed to serve as the User Services representative on the CUWL Annual Conference planning committee.

Distance Library Services Standing Committee
This group will meet on October 13  via conference call, with new co-chairs, Anne Kasuboski (UW-Green Bay) and Stefan Smith from UW-LaCrosse .