Present: Christy Branston, Helena Calogeridis, Judy McTaggart, Jim Parrott, Richard Pinnell, Susan Routliffe (Chair), Mary Stanley, Jackie Stapleton, Linda Teather, Melanie Watkins, Rose Koebel (Recorder)
Guest: Shabiran Rahman
Minutes of Previous Meeting
The minutes of the meeting of June 24, 2003 were previously approved and issued to Library
staff.
Focus Groups for the Reference Service Review
The Focus Group Project Team (Christy, Jackie, Melanie, and Shabiran) provided an update of their activities over the summer:
ORE submission:
The online application form has been submitted to the Office of Research Ethics for approval, which the team hopes to obtain by the end of September. The team will also submit a paper copy with accompanying documents. The ORE submission will eventually be posted on the Community Needs Assessment Committee’s website.
Focus groups (who, when, how):
The team has recruited staff from several Library departments to facilitate the focus group discussions. Training has taken place for the facilitators and recorders through TRACE.
Project team members will act as recorders.
The project team will aim to have eight groups of participants: two groups of undergraduate students registered in Arts; two undergraduate groups registered in Science/Engineering/Math; two groups of graduate students; one group comprised of students with disabilities, and one faculty group.
The focus groups will be conducted at the end of October, or early November.
The team will obtain a random sample of participants using the TRELLIS database.
The project team formulated three questions for the focus group discussions, with input from Donna Ellis of TRACE. The team will also prepare the script to guide the facilitators.
ISMC’s comments include:
A suggestion was made to utilize two recorders for each focus group discussion. Linda volunteered to record if additional recorders are needed.
Christy will ask Susan Bellingham about the cost of the recording service used by Special Collections for the oral history program.
Christy will send the ORE submission to ISMC, once it is final.
The Focus Group Project Team will report back to ISMC when approvals are obtained from the ORE, and when it has the desired number of participants for the focus groups. It was suggested that the team report anything else of significance along the way.
The Committee extended its thanks to the project team for all of the work already accomplished.
Reference Service Review: Where are we?
ISMC reviewed the status of the reference service review and considered what additional matters the group might want to address in the upcoming year.
With respect to the reference review, ISMC has:
created the Project Charter for the Review of Reference Service at the University of Waterloo Library and taken it to the managers group and a departmental meeting for feedback;
developed the work breakdown structure, which Linda documented in a Gantt chart;
held a joint meeting with the Community Needs Assessment Committee to discuss ways of assessing user needs as they relate to reference service;
developed the Project Charter for Focus Group Discussions about Reference Service and populated the Focus Group Project Team;
created a list of factors which may influence reference service, which was taken to an ISR meeting for further input.
The Committee agreed to maintain its current membership to retain continuity for purposes of the reference review. A fixed date of completion has not been set, but it is anticipated that the review will continue into the winter term. The Committee will most likely seek new members in the fall of 2004.
Other issues for ISMC to address in the upcoming year were identified:
a collection policy for the Electronic Reference Collection: Helena will prepare a list of issues for discussion at ISMC’s next meeting.
the increased demand for public workstations: Jim will try to find out what signage is being used at express workstations elsewhere.
Reference Service Review: What Next?
The Committee reviewed the Scope Includes in the Charter to see what components to tackle next.
clarifying and redefining if necessary, our reference service philosophy and goals: Richard will review local documents (e.g. Technical Paper 1991). Helena and Jackie will look at what information is being given to new ISR staff. Jim will look at other institutions’ philosophies, through, for example, the RUSA website. Susan will send a message to the Reference Canada listserv asking if other libraries have statements of philosophy or goals that they would share with us. Linda will read the UW 5th decade report (to ensure consistency). Any findings may be shared before the next meeting.
Next Meeting: September 23 at Davis. Topics: collection development policy for the Electronic Reference Collection; email use at public workstations.