Present: Jim Parrott, Richard Pinnell, Susan Routliffe (Chair), Mary Stanley, Jackie Stapleton, Linda Teather, Rose Koebel (Recorder)
Regrets: Christy Branston, Helena Calogeridis, Judy McTaggart, Melanie Watkins
Guest: Susan Bellingham
Minutes of Previous Meeting
The minutes of the meeting of September 9 were approved.
Demand for Public Workstations
The Committee reviewed what it has learned since the last meeting and decided what the next steps should be. The recent increased demand for public workstations in the libraries may be attributed to:
the relatively large number of students in residence, who may not yet have been connected to Resnet before the beginning of the term;
wireless computers that may have been blocked due to virus detection;
students accessing course notes and materials, Quest and e-mail;
extremely busy Science labs.
In response to the increased usage of the public terminals, signs were placed on three computers in Porter requesting patrons to limit their use to ten minutes. It was noted that the laptop drops in both Porter and Davis are heavily used. The Committee agreed that it may be useful to further promote knowledge and use of wireless connectivity. To this end, Mary agreed to:
send the url (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/AboutLibrary/laptops.html) that provides information and instructions regarding laptop and wireless connections in the library to uwstudent.org;
an article about wireless network in the libraries, which appeared in a past issue of news @ your library and send it to the student publication ezine.
Other suggestions include:
holding joint Library workshops with IST during orientation in order to set students up with their wireless computers;
testing the effectiveness of the current instructions on how to connect to the wireless network. Linda will borrow a laptop for this exercise for the next meeting.
As the usage of the public workstations seems to be leveling off, ISMC decided to take a wait-and-see approach with respect to doing anything other than leaving the new signs in place for now. Whether to continue with the signage on the computer terminals will be earmarked for future discussion.
Reference Service Philosophy and Goals
Committee members reported on what information they found regarding anything speaking to reference philosophy and goals:
UW 5th decade report (Linda): While there's nothing that specifically relates to the Library's reference philosophy, Linda found several statements that could frame the context of the review project itself. Most notable are the recurring references in the report to the learning process and experience.
RUSA website/Google search for reference service philosophies (Jim): The Reference and User Services Association website did not yield much in the way of a reference philosophy. A Google search gave more promising results. Some of the commonly occurring features of statements of reference philosophy are: who is served and in what order; manner of service; components of service; how far reference service should go, and limits to service. Various policy statements made a distinction between finding the information, and instructing users in finding it on their own.
REFCAN query (Susan R.): Susan received several responses to her message to the Reference Canada listserv asking other libraries to share their statements of philosophy or goals. Much of what was provided could be characterized as practice and procedure. Of note is Ryerson's service philosophy.
Information given to new ISR staff (Jackie and Helena): The ISR Training Committee web site contains a new draft version of the manual "Policies & Procedures Manual for the Provision of Reference Service." It is practical in nature, e.g. it provides a description of our reference service and guidelines for offering service. Further revisions are on hold as it was thought that the ISMC reference service review would influence and revise this document.
The Committee agreed that a reference service philosophy statement should consist of one or two sentences appended by several guiding principles. Jim, Jackie and Helena will collaborate on a draft statement for the next meeting.
Next Meeting: October 7, 2003 at Porter. Topics: review draft statement of philosophy; determine next steps for reference service review; Electronic Reference Collection issues; setting up laptop exercise.