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Information Services & Resources

Email Reference Minutes
Tuesday, March 13
Rm. 428

Present: Richard Bower, Rachel Caldwell, Helena Calogeridis, Marian Davies, Judy McTaggart, Barbara Menich (Recorder), Jonathan Morgan, Carol Steele

Regrets: Sara Perkins

1. Business Arising

1) Minutes from last time: change the spelling of Marian’s name (Feb. 13)

2) CROG is still thinking of the summer as the time to make the decision about dropping Docutek.

3) There are many comparable alternatives to Docutek software that the Library could consider using.

4) A group member suggests that we should think “down the road”. How will users want to communicate? Look at open source software, Facebook, etc.

Action: Helena will ask Charles about looking into open source software with IST (in 2 months).

2. Best Practices (Judy)

1) Judy discussed the Best Practices page. The next section would be procedures. The group identified the difference between procedures (as ‘steps’) and guidelines (as the ‘framework’).

2) The group should develop the mandate statement, service guidelines, description of what we do, not how we do it (purpose, etc.).

3) We want to get rid of Service old and software, all the technical Docutek verbage. There is too much information in old procedures, so this will be streamlined, and the structure of navigation links (on right) changed.

Action: Group members can contribute to improvements via email

3. Meeting Length

1) Meetings should be scheduled for a longer time because they tend to go over time. They should be scheduled for an hour and a half. The group will use Bookit to confirm meeting times.

4. Open Discussion (Around the Table)

1) One group member does not mind using Pine, even though Pine is clunky.

2) A group member suggests that we should increase advertising for email reference. We might want to focus on email advertising in the fall. The group will discuss this further once the new Communications Librarian is in place. Item for discussion will be, will the whole reference suite be advertised (i.e. chat, in person, telephone, etc.) or just email reference?

3) Identities of users are important; answer given depends on affiliation. The group will “Use discretion as to answer for non-UW users” (‘others’). A note about discretion or a ‘consult with staff’ clause will be added to the procedures. The groups primary clients are students, faculty, and staff.

4) Action: Helena will look at the stats and report by the next meeting.

5) A group member suggests that, though we will never achieve the same depth of service as in a personal reference interview, we can provide the same level of service.

 

Email Reference Group
libRefEmail@library.uwaterloo.ca
May 17, 2007