Porter ISR
Minutes of the Meeting
Friday, April 8, 2005
Present: Margaret Aquan-Yuen; Christy Branston; Helena Calogeridis; Jane Forgay; Val Huggan (Recorder); Sandra Keys; Erin Murphy; Mark Polger; Shabiran Rahman (Facilitator); Carol Steele; Baiba Turner; Marina Wan; Janet Wason
Regrets: Marian Davies; Christine Jewell; Judy McTaggart
1. Demo NetLibrary (Jim Parrott)
Following the brief demonstration of NetLibrary by Jim Parrott this morning, it was agreed that we needed more specific information about how NetLibrary will be made available to patrons and how we as staff will incorporate NetLibrary into workflows for selection and ordering. Rachel Caldwell will be working with Jim to create an intermediary web page for patrons and Carol Steele will be attending a meeting with regard to ordering titles in Net Library.
Action: Jane agreed to gather the details that become clear from these meetings and put together a summary sheet by the next Porter ISR meeting.
The minutes were approved.
Mark discussed findings from the data collected by Mark and Judy over the two week period (March 21 – April 1) Both Mark and Judy found that half of all voice mails (18 in total over 2 week period) were hang-ups, other half were directional calls. Very few calls were research assistance. Both Judy and Mark made recommendation to transfer Reference phone line (5763) to circulation so they could filter out phone calls. This means Circulation staff will answer the phone first and then direct users to the Reference Desk phone.
Some staff disagreed with this approach. This is still under debate. The issues are: Circulation staff who gives excellent customer service may end up answering reference questions, thus Reference Desk staff will have less reference questions, thus statistics may not be accurate.
Action: ISR staff will continue to discuss/debate how we manage responding to voice mails for our telephone Reference service. An issue for discussions would be: Should reference staff prepare a document where circulation staff are trained on how to distinguish between Reference questions and Directional/Factual questions.
We are going to continue SFX for Factiva and Christy will contact Doug to get answers to some questions.
The annex is filling up so a lot will have to be discarded.
Action: Shabiran will let Wish know that we agree and accept this proposal.
Wish ’s e-mail message: http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/staff/isr/por/wishemail.html
The Porter ISR Group will make a decision on what is a better way to deal with the signing out of the laptops.
We don’t want to feel pressured that outside users might want to use laptops in LT3.
Action: Sandra and Christy will look at some of the details of making the best use of the laptops.
Most of the suggestions we made went into the report. The next step will be that Mark Haslett and Susan Routliffe are putting together a two page document. Both the cover letter and document will go to Bruce Mitchell.
Shabiran will send out a map for all staff to see the sequence of the duct work.
Shabiran said the spare key is in place now and will be given to Cataloguing staff who are on the desk when the ISR department door is locked.
Erin was concerned that when the work on the 3 rd floor is being done staff might have to relocate to 428 and cause a problem for the laptops in 428. It was decided that it won’t be a problem as the construction is due to be finished before the fall.
Marina wants staff to let her know by the end of June if there are any projects that co-op students can help with.
Christy said that she has received many responses to the Survey posted on the Library’s home page.
Janet would like an update on the status of headphones in the alcove. Marina will report it to the help desk.
Janet asked if the help desk could be open over the lunch hour which is the busiest time for the desk. Marina will follow up on this.
Helena wondered if there is a checklist of software that is available to students at the Davis Library.
Helena said Link will be sending out messages regarding the membership renewal and Fall orientation.
Shabiran showed the signs that Marian has prepared for the computers specifically pointing to the print job disappearing after 2 hours.
Shabiran asked staff where would we like to see our department one year from now, two years from now and three years from now? Within the next year start thinking of what we would like to achieve.