Coordinating Committees

CUWL User Services Coordinating Committee (USCC) Meeting Minutes
May 9, 2008 10 AM TO 12 PM

Present: Steve Frye, Barb Bren, Renee Buker, Ella Cross, Leigh Dorsey, Jill Markgraf, Jana Reeg-Steidinger, Valerie Malzacher

Absent: Dave Dettman, Lisa Jewell, Nick Weber

Call to Order: Meeting began at 10:03 AM.

1. Announcements: Steve gave a brief update on the CUWL Spring Meeting in Green Lake.  The $9 million DIN to increase System access to all the same databases as UW-Madison was chosen as a priority by System provosts and chancellors; most campus Faculty Senates have also approved endorsements of the DIN.  It will be presented to the Board of Regents and, if approved, move to the Governor and state legislature.  It was noted that the dollar amount could be adjusted along the way.

Jill announced that with the departure of Chris Cox from UW-Eau Claire, she will be the interim Head of Reference and Instruction.

Valerie reported that UW-River Falls received 1,081 responses in the LibQual survey last month.  Their library did heavy promotion of the survey, including passing out fortune cookies with LibQual messages and promising to provide coffee and cookies during finals week if the number of respondents surpassed 1,000.  This led to a discussion of finals week events at other campuses.  UW-Madison has borrowed the fortune cookie idea for one day of finals week, and other days will include stress release balls, coffee, and other treats.  Many other campuses offer coffee and treats to students, and UW-Stout also posts signs of encouragement in the windows of their building.

Several members reported on presentations of interest at the WAAL conference in April.  Steve mentioned a presentation by Carroll College librarians on “Academic Support Services as Outreach”.  At Carroll, support services such as the writing center and tutoring services are coordinated and administered by the library – instead of the library inviting “other” departments to use library space for these services, support services are a core part of the library’s activity.  Valerie was intrigued by Kim LaPlante’s presentation on LibGuides and asked if any UW campuses were using this product.  UW-Stout, UW-Milwaukee, and UW-Madison are all piloting this on their campuses, so this may be a future idea for a System-wide subscription.  Jill attended the presentation by UW-Madison librarians on “Reinventing the Library Class Session” and was interested to see a copy of the new script instruction librarians use on the Madison campus.  Steve sent out the script to the committee via e-mail.

Steve attended the LOEX conference this year and reported on some of the presentations and themes.  One of the popular themes at the conference was physical facilities, specifically classroom setup.  During a pre-conference event at Elmhurst College, the library showed their new instruction room, which is right by the entrance of the library and closed off with glass walls.  The philosophy behind this is to show to all that enter the building that instruction is central to what they do, and that librarians are teaching.  Other UW campuses have similar instruction rooms that have become quite popular.  Steve also mentioned that there was much discussion at LOEX about the setup of the reference desk, with many libraries switching to one central service desk (circulation and reference combined) or a smaller desk to easily invite students to come around to the other side, sit down, and collaborate in searching with the librarian.  Steve further talked about a presentation he attended on teaching information literacy using fantasy football.  The presenters had gotten their class of student athletes involved in searching for and evaluating information on fantasy football picks, then tied the process to what the students would be doing when researching for their academic work.  The librarians also mapped out the processes used to ACRL competencies to help get faculty buy-in for the use of fantasy football as a topic in the class.

2. Working group updates:

Information Literacy Assessment (Ella): The group met May 7th.  Each member will create a 1-3 page report covering their assigned test by May 23rd.  Dave will compile the reports and present findings at the summer conference.

MetaLib Assessment (Steve & Valerie): The preliminary assessment protocol is posted on the CUWL wiki and will be tested with students on May 9th.  The group will meet on May 12th to finalize the protocol, and then it will be used with students on campuses represented by the group’s members.  The protocol is designed so that other campuses can also use it to assess their iterations of MetaLib.  The summer conference presentation is in progress.

New Reference Models (Jill & Renee): An open-ended, 10-question survey was sent out to reference coordinators, who were encouraged to forward the survey to all reference staff in their libraries.  As of May 9th, the group had received 49 responses.  A number of libraries have also posted photographs of their reference desks on Flickr.  A literature review is underway, with citations being posted to CiteULike.  Some survey results should be available for the roundtable discussion at the summer conference, with the group’s full recommendations to be complete by August.

Web 2.0 Tools (Barb): The group is currently working on their bibliography and starting to organize their findings for the summer conference.

3. June’s Summer Conference: Steve will post the list of attendees to the CUWL wiki.  The week of May 11-17 information will be e-mailed about parking and accommodations, and a pre-conference survey will be sent to get information about number of attendees at each session and questions of interest for the roundtable sessions.  Survey responses regarding the roundtable sessions will be sent to the coordinators of those sessions before the conference.  Roundtable coordinators also now have wiki pages they can use to post information if they choose, and they may also have access to clickers during the conference (contact Steve to request these).  Steve has not been able to confirm details with Stefan Smith, so Jana volunteered to help Steve coordinate the “Free Range Librarian” roundtable.


Meeting adjourned at 11:25AM.
Recorder: Renee Buker