Information Services Management Committee

Minutes of the Meeting of March 5, 2002
1:30 – 3:10 pm
Porter Conference Room

Regrets: Sue Moskal, Richard Pinnell

Guest: Michele Laing

1. Minutes of Previous Meeting

   The minutes of the meeting of February 19, 2002 were approved with changes via email,   prior to today’s meeting.

2. Virtual Reference:  Group Reports

   The following groups or individuals reported further on the progress of their work.  The Committee considered what elements of those reports should be included in the final report, and heard what recommendations were starting to emerge.

   1. Potential impact of virtual reference on library services, patrons and staff, including the identification of staff and resource needs:  Sue M., Judy, Melanie, and Mary distributed a spreadsheet, which brings together the responses from Ryerson, Windsor, and Alberta university libraries, who are running virtual reference in some form. Key points were:
      • The responses received from the three libraries indicated that staff were not overwhelmed by providing virtual reference; workload does not appear to be an issue with the addition of this service.
      • The University of Alberta and University of New Brunswick libraries are planning a joint approach to virtual reference. 
      • The University of Alberta library decided that all staff will be trained to use a specific set of databases.  When a question requires a more specialized database, it will be referred to someone with that expertise. 

      Group members felt that contacting the three libraries was worthwhile.  Based on this experience, in their view, a move towards the implementation of virtual reference would be a positive one. The group will bring tentative recommendations to ISMC for fuller discussion.

   2. Prepare cost estimates for hardware, software, furnishings and equipment: Linda, Michele and Doug provided an updated version of their software evaluation spreadsheet. They recommended that:
      • if UW implements virtual reference, that the LSSI Virtual Reference software be used. LSSI offers full functionality and is used by three of the four OCUL members currently offering virtual reference service. Using the same software as other OCUL libraries will ensure that UW is well positioned to take advantage of any collaboration opportunities that develop within OCUL and there will be experienced users nearby with whom we can consult and share experiences.
      • UW monitor collaborative developments among the OCUL libraries and participate as appropriate.

      The costs were estimated as follows:
      • Software:  Costing information is included on the spreadsheet. Total cost is dependent on the number of seats required.
      • Hardware, furnishings, and equipment: No additional costs will be incurred if the service is provided from existing ISR staff workstations. All ISR staff workstations more than meet the vendor's workstation requirements.

      Linda, Michele and Doug found the OCUL Virtual Reference meeting they attended recently to be valuable, particularly in listening to those using virtual reference. Comments about the meeting and issues touched upon included:
      • Divine’s NetAgent demo was interesting but Divine currently supports call center applications and is trying to move into the library market. Divine has been in contact with Jenny Marvin to understand co-browsing problems with a library's licensed databases and is in negotiation with Toronto Public Library and the National Library.

      • The significance of virtual reference in supporting instruction for distance education users and information literacy and in supporting virtual classes or group sessions.
      • The importance of good vendor support and the vendor's understanding of libraries.
      • Concern about response time/bandwidth problems when the service runs from a remote server (e.g. vendor's server in Maryland or California).
      • Recommendations regarding OCUL collaborative initiatives may be presented to the OCUL chiefs in April and a small group of OCUL VR managers will be working together to develop proposals for collaboration.

   3. Risks and probabilities associated with the virtual reference desk project: Doug distributed a revised list of risks and probabilities, which includes a description of how to handle each risk. Susan will compile elements from Doug’s list for the final report.

      Several questions were raised during today’s meeting, which will be considered for future discussion:

      • Is there a need for Jim to provide a report on Task #9: Explain issues associated and implications of issues?  At this point, there don’t appear to be any broad issues, but there may be ones that haven’t been identified by any of the other groups (e.g, consortia arrangements). 
      • If the Committee recommends that the project proceed to the pilot stage, what would we hope to learn from the pilot?  We would need to define the purpose of a pilot, and establish some parameters for when to run it. 

   Next Meeting: Date to be announced.  Topic:  Recommendations and key issues as identified by Mary, Melanie, Judy, and Sue M.