Coordinating Committees

CUWL User Services Coordinating Committee (USCC) Meeting Minutes

April 10, 2009, 10 am-12:03 pm

Present: Steve Frye, Renee Buker, Ella Cross, Leigh Dorsey, Lisa Jewell, Jill Markgraf, Valerie Malzacher

1. Announcements:

  • UW-Superior has hired Kristen Lindquist as their new systems librarian and distance education contact. Kristen will be starting in this position in July.
  • UW-Milwaukee has finished their Metalib user tests and is working on compiling their final report by May.

2. April and May CUWL USCC Forums

The April USCC forum will be April 16th at noon. Patti Becker and Jill Markgraf will facilitate the discussion on reference collections.

The May USCC forum will cover LibGuides, particularly uses of the software that are not course-specific. Such uses include a recent LibGuide page for the BSN@Home program (a collaborative, distance education nursing program), informational pages for department liaison use, sharing information with faculty about possible serials cancellations, etc.

3. WAAL – Who is going? Who is presenting?

Steve will be presenting at WAAL.  He and Ian Benton will speak on Wednesday about UW-Madison’s use of Jing in providing reference service.

4. RDETF Update

The Resource Discovery Exploratory Task Force has been examining different tools that are available and researching the pros and cons of each. The task force has also been working to create a list of features desired in the tool that is ultimately chosen. Flexibility in the appearance of the user interface is desirable, but staff technical ability and time is also a consideration. The task force will present more on their findings at the CUWL June conference, and more details and links to implementations of each tool are available on the task force’s wiki page.

5. CUWL Survey – Deadline

Committee members were reminded to take the survey, sent by Valerie, regarding the CUWL organizational restructuring.  Deadline for the survey is April 10th. Committee members were also encouraged to send out the survey link to coworkers who may not belong to one of the CUWL email lists.

6. CUWL June Conference

The committee discussed the draft roundtable and breakout sessions for the CUWL June Conference. The tentative topics suggested for user services related sessions include:

  • Moving from Print to Digital Reference Collections
  • User Experience of MetaLib
  • Reference Trends 2009 (including new methods of connecting with users, such as text messaging, Library H3LP, etc.)
  • How do we assess the impact that libraries have on student academic success?
  • Collaborating and Partnering with your Campus Community
  • They're Here - Current Resource Discovery Tools
  • Distance Library Services

Steve will contact possible presenters for each of the topics and begin to develop short session descriptions.  More details on dates and times, as well as current updates, are posted on the “Annual Conference 2009” program page on the CUWL wiki.

Meeting adjourned at 12:03 pm.
Recorder: Renee Buker