Porter ISR
Minutes of the Meeting
Friday, September 9, 2005
Present: Margaret Aquan-Yuen; Christy Branston; Rachel Caldwell; Helena Calogeridis; Marian Davies; Jane Forgay; Val Huggan (Recorder); Christine Jewell; Sandra Keys; Kevin Manuel; Judy McTaggart; Mark Aaron Polger; Shabiran Rahman (Facilitator); Carol Steele; Marina Wan; Janet Wason
Guests: Jennifer Haas; Alison Hitchens; Roslyn Keller
Regrets: Erin Murphy; Baiba Turner
1. Minutes of the Previous Meeting, June 17, 2005
The minutes were approved with minor corrections.
2. Business Arising
Jane and Shabiran met to discuss the mini teams. The mini team assignments for library associates were realigned to accommodate Alice Clair’s retirement. The final document was sent out.
Susan, Jennifer and Shabiran will be meeting every other Tuesday on a regular basis.
3. Around the Table
Janet reported:
1. On May 10, Janet visited the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (Toronto branch) Annual Technology Exhibit. Many of the devices were designed for personal (rather than institutional) use. For example, the Trekker uses GPS and digital maps to help blind people find their way in urban and rural areas. The SARA Optical Character Recognition System is a portable, stand-alone reading machine that allows the user to read books, magazines, and other literature. The CNIB's new facility has been built using principles of accessibility, such as different floor textures to differentiate areas, and upward-facing light fixtures that bounce the light off the ceiling to reduce glare.
The Library has acquired a copy of the CNIB publication "Clearing our path : recommendations on how to make public places accessible to people who are blind, visually impaired, and deafblind," which deals with barrier-free design. When it returns from binding, it will go into the Porter Stacks under the call number NA2545.V57 C54x 1998.
2. This summer, the Community Needs Assessment Committee completed analysing the data gathered during the "Library Survey of Information and Accessibility Needs of Students with Disabilities", a web-survey which took place during the early part of 2004. This survey was carried out as part of the library's Accessibility Plan (2003), and was done in conjunction with the UW Office for Person's with Disabilities. The final report has been given to the Library managers; it will be discussed at a managers meeting later in September. Janet will send the report to members of Porter and Davis ISR.
Alison said she is busy learning her job. Mainly working on cataloguing American periodicals.
Kevin has been working on the following:
Z-reference weeding
Government publications quick reference weeding
Government publications online training module
NVivo analysis of online survey feedback
NVivo training for Shabiran, Mark and Judy
Helena focused on three of her current activities.
1. LINC.
Again, the Library Instruction Committee's principal activities this year included
the planning and coordination of fall 2005 library tours and workshops. Some
members also participated in or contributed work to several outreach activities
on campus. Although the Committee operates with reduced membership, the important
work gets done. The Committee is now considering several small projects,
which were suggested mostly by other ISR members. Helena, the current chair
of LINC, also mentioned that the chair position will be up for renewal in
May 2006.
2. Online Reference Shelf.
Helena and Michele Laing are the current UW representatives of this standing TUG project. Last summer University of Guelph indicated in its Project Charter that it is no longer interested in this project and plans to pull out. That leaves WLU and UW. WLU issued a report about e-reference, from its point of view, and indicated its willingness to continue. Now UW needs to discuss the future of the Online Reference Shelf effort. Michele and Helena will organize and facilitate a meeting sometime at the end of September/beginning of October. The new ERM database search engine will be made live soon by Bill Oldfield, so that resources may be searched by subject.
3. MLA International Bibligraphy indexing.
One of Helena's major outreach activities is that of a bibliographer for this database. Helena indexes 6 journals covering German language and literature topics. Last summer she indexed a commemorative volume of contributions mostly by the faculty members of the Germanic & Slavic Studies department at UW.
Judy noted that she has been busy preparing the schedule for the fall term. The back-up pilot project will resume starting the first day of the new schedule. Chat reference hours have been taken into account in the allocation of hours. As well, individual desk hours have been equally divided (as much as possible) between time spent physically at the desk and time as back-up. Judy's name has also been added to the alias for the chat reference group. She will notify the group when a member calls in sick or is absent and the group will then find a replacement (the group will continue to arrange their own switches and find replacements as they have in the past). When calling in for absences, staff should let Val know if they have a chat shift Val will forward this information to Judy. Val will also continue to update the chat schedule on-line and all switches should be reported to her.
Judy also reported she gave a tour for a group of high school students registered in the UCEP program (University Co-operative Education Program). This program is offered by the Waterloo Catholic District School Board in partnership with U of W, Wilfrid Laurier and St. Jerome's University. Students are registered in one university course of their selection and are given part-time, non-degree status. The remainder of their grade 12 courses are taught on campus by a teacher from Resurrection Catholic Secondary School. Each student is also assigned to a professor or supervisor for whom they will be conducting research.
Christine reported the following:
Electronic theses
Electronic submission is catching on. Approximately half of grad students are
now submitting electronically. Once approved by the grad office, Rose Koebel
places these theses in the Ethesis Database within a week.
PhD theses are still sent to UMI ProQuest, where they are filmed and returned to us in fiche. This is true whether the thesis is submitted in paper or electronically.
This means that all of our PhD theses are available through ProQuest. From 1998 on, they are available in full text through ProQuest Dissertation and Theses (PQDT) (along with theses submitted to UMI from schools around the world).
Keep in mind that there ProQuest UMI can have a processing delay of up to a year. For recently submitted UW theses, you may want to look for a title in the Ethesis Database. Masters theses are not yet included in PQDT, so you will have better luck looking for a Master’s thesis in electronic form on the UW E-thesis Database. This may change in the near future.
All electronically submitted theses are also available in electronic form on the Theses Canada Portal.
Institutional repositories
Margaret Aquan-Yuen and I participated in a brief web-based workshop on institutional
repositories in Canada. CACUL sponsored the workshop and the speaker was
Kathleen Shearer, who heads up the CARL IR project. Margaret and I have since
been reading up on institutional repositories and we plan to submit a brief
report to Shabiran.
Marina reported:
1. State of the website: The public Library Web was converted to the new University look in June. The Staff Web is undergoing conversion now, but the task is harder because of the mixed quality of the files. The Staff Web did not go through the same conversion process as the public web in 2004. Also, WebOps does not have any co-op student help this term.
2. Docutek contract, for Chat and Email Ref, will be renewed for another year. We should test functions not already used (e.g., co-browsing) and review the use of the software. I will remain the technical contact with Docutek. Shabiran will handle the review process, etc.
3. LibWebReview was set up as an ad hoc group for the design of the new website and its conversion. We could see the value of continuous review and improvement of our website, to respond to survey results and other input from staff and patrons. There is a good chance that the LibWebReview group will continue in these functions.
Christy and Sandra demonstrated the new laptops. The updated procedures document will be distributed shortly.
Mark listed some of the things he worked on this summer.
1) Mark helped Kevin with NVivo by developing keywords for him to put the text (for analysis) into categories. These keywords (or categories) are referred to as "nodes". Kevin has also provided him with some training in NVivo.
2) Mark developed a list of terminology that we consistently use at the Library, in signage, publications, our subject guides, library guides, and the Library web site in general. He has compiled it and since the new web site was unveiled, he changed some of his publications and web sites to reflect the new terminology. He will share it with ISR shortly.
3)While Judy was on vacation, Mark took over the Distance Ed related inquiries. Most of it has been on email.
4) He developed 4 modules for a UWACE course (Psyc 101)
5) Mark is continuing to pick up the telephone voice mail at the Information Desk
6) Mark is interested in doing a demo for "Mail Merge", an exciting tool on Microsoft Word where you can write out a form letter and extract data from an external database and "dump" the data into the form letter. This would be helpful for Liaison Librarians when they want to send the same letter to new faculty and grad students (for example) and they only want to write one letter but they want to address it to different people in different departments. Having a form letter with empty fields would be helpful because those empty fields can be populated by extracting data from a Microsoft Access database. I can give a demo at a future ISR meeting.
Jane said that she, Helena, and Susan Bellingham, are included among the research associates in the newly formed Waterloo Centre for German Studies http://www.wcgs.ca/about/index.php, a centre whose members include faculty from various UW departments. They have created a research support webpage http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/WCGS/ for this centre. The page is now located in the “Interdisciplinary” section of the “Subject Guides”.
Another new Subject Guide in the “Interdisciplinary” section is the one for Independent Studies.
Other summer activities included re-vamping or creating 3 different guides to locating primary sources for history researchers and building course-related webpages for a number of fall classes.
Rachel said that she is always looking for new ideas for articles featured in news @ your library so just give her the idea and she’ll do the write-up
Aside from her responsibilities/projects for Communications, this term, she was helped with several LINC sessions and some of Margaret’s sessions for Geography/Planning students. She is also working at the Information Desk, continuing service with email reference, and now has a regular shift on Fridays with chat reference.
Shabiran thanked everyone for their support since she started as Head of Porter ISR. She says its an excellent department to work for and everyone is very cooperative.
Margaret noted some of the recent changes and enhancements for ERLWebSPIRS 5. The library receives Geography and Sport Discus from Silver Platter. Margaret also reported that she is reviewing the Envirofiche service and the overlap with our current print and online journals. Connie Pantic and Baiba Turner have been able to provide assistance with the list preparation and checking.
Christy said she has joined a UW Campus usability study group that will be looking at the new Common Look and Feel UW web site. This group involves members from various departments across campus. The usability testing is planned for this Fall.
Christy has been working with Helene LeBlanc, Marina, Rachel, and Bill Oldfield on getting the current Government Information web site into a database that will allow for searching and better maintenance. This project should be completed and go live sometime this Fall.
Carol reported that during the Spring '05 term she spent a significant amount of time training a number of people in pre-order bibliographic searching and order creation, including familiarizing Connie Pantic with new resources so that she could handle more complex orders . Here is a list of who is doing what:
Kevin Manuel: continues to create orders from flexes
Daspina Fefekos: until she got a new job, I was still training her to work on more and more complex orders
Connie Pantic: is working on more complex orders, including Architecture requests; she no longer handles flexes.
Anne Unger: creates orders when she has time.
At this point, she is the only person in the bib search pool who handles any and all kinds of Porter orders. And since several people in several departments are involved in this activity, She is spending more time now acting as coordinator, including selecting work for others.
In closing, Carol said that she still really misses Alice.
Baiba sent an e-mail and said this summer she has been busy working on Cognos reports, Excel spreadsheets and statistics. The following list will give an example of the type of information she has provided in the past few months.
1.Use statistics for journals
2. Cognos Training - provided samples and questionnaire for PowerPlay cubes
3. Currently received periodicals for Davis funds (these lists came from Cognos PowerPlay cubes and were not reconciled against the existing Excel Serials Lists that I maintain.
4. Updated and reconciled Serials Lists for a number of funds (Davis and Porter) - work is still in progress
5. Provided lists for Davis Reference Weeding (from Impromptu convert to acceptable Excel format)
For her the most interesting part of this summer has been working/checking the Ulrich's Serials Analysis System. Christine and Baiba started to investigate it in August. We have downloaded UW's 'CISTI's do not supply" list (after removing all journals with an 'end date') to the System. The Serials Analysis System excludes 1,559 of the ISSNs for a variety of reasons - ceased titles, invalid ISSN, title change, etc. Of the invalid ISSNs I've checked several hundred items and in most cases these are small publications and Ulrich's does not include these items in their database. Some invalid ISSNs are as a result of the inability of the System to handle both print and electronic ISSNs - so some tweaking is necessary to improve the output at this time. Ulrich's is aware of this problem and their developers have plans to fix it. Christine and Baiba are still at the learning stage; however, formal training will be scheduled in the near future.