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Library Instruction Committee - Staff Only

November 1, 2000
Porter, Room 428
Minutes

Present: Margaret Aquan-Yuen (chair), Astra Goodhue, Maureen McCormack, Erin Murphy (recorder), Connie Shuttleworth, Janet Wason

Absent: Jackie Stapleton, Melanie Watkins, *Linda Hastings

* M. Aquan-Yuen provided this information to group with regard to meetings. Linda Hastings will only attend meetings if her participation or feedback is required for an item on the agenda. In preparing agenda the Chair will try to schedule such items near start of meeting to make use of Linda’s time for committee meetings as efficient as possible.

1. Minutes of the meeting of October 5th , 2000 were approved with corrections.

2. Business arising from last minutes:

Student E-zine: Undergraduate Page has not yet added the link to the Student Life 101 E-zine.
M. Aquan-Yuen has not reviewed further information on deadline for submission of articles to Student Life 101 from M. Stanley. Questions of library liaison & participation in Student Life 101 or E-zine have been postponed for now.
Erin has not forwarded examples of articles to the committee as inspiration for future submissions to E-zine. This refers to print copies provided by a Librarian at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, some examples of “articles promoting Library Information services” which were published about 1998 in the student newspaper for that campus. These will be forwarded to members of the committee in future if appropriate.
Appreciation Coffee break for LINC: Margaret sent email Invitation to all Library staff for this event.
Wednesday November 8th, 10.00 - 11.00 a.m.Staff Lounge, Dana Porter Library.

Kiosk display: Melanie, Jackie and Margaret have passed ideas about revising current display to Linda H.
One side of display will be devoted to items about User Services. One side will be devoted to Library Instruction items. For example the Kiosk is one location where we will be providing information about changes to OPAC with voyager 2000 update.

3. Winter Program
- Graduate flyer:
Final flyer must be provided to Graduate Office by November 10, to be mailed to incoming Graduates for Winter Term. Group reviewed Graduate Flyer from Winter term, 1999. Revised flyer for 2000 will highlight the following sessions:
Information for Graduate Students. Jim Parrot and Jackie Stapleton have agreed to offer 2 of these sessions in January. Dates will be finalised and noted on revised flyer as soon as possible.
Action: Margaret will get dates and location from Jim and Jackie and forward these details to Linda Hastings for revisions to flyer.

Keeping Up with Your Research Literature – Electronically. These sessions will be cited in Graduate Flyer. Jackie will be on maternity leave by end of February.
Action: Erin and Jackie will settle date and time for one session in January. These sessions will be cited in Graduate Flyer. Details will be posted to orientation schedule for Winter, 2001, in UW Electronic Library.
Action: Jackie will ask Doug Morton if he can act as instructor for some of these sessions to ensure we will be able to offer one per month throughout Winter term. Anne Fullerton will also be available to help with ‘Keeping Up’ sessions when she returns from sick leave.

Trellis Online Catalog; Implications of next update to OPAC interface, scheduled for December 15-18, 2000 were discussed. Jim Parrot and Dan Sich have taken on responsibility for handling ISR input regarding Voyager 2000. [See Thu 2000-10-19 email from Dan for latest notes about Voyager 2000. This provides links to two OPACs, which have already gone live with Voyager 2000.]
Decision: We will aim to offer two sessions on USING Trellis for Winter term. These will try to address ‘basic search features’ in TRELLIS as well as ‘significant changes to OPAC’ resulting from Voyager 2000 update. Sessions will be scheduled for 2nd week and 3rd week in January.
Action: Margaret will revise script for Trellis sessions to reflect changes, which will be introduced with Voyager 2000 update. Margaret will finalise dates and times for sessions and provide details to Linda H. for orientation schedule, Winter, 2001. Margaret will contact staff in ISR or members of LINC if she needs help offering Trellis sessions for Winter term.

4. Help Pages on OPAC (Jane Forgay)
Next upgrade to Trellis will require substantial revisions to online help screens available from Web OPAC. It is expected that virtually all work to complete revisions and updates to online help screens for TRELLIS, will continue to be handled by Jane Forgay with some clerical and editorial support from other staff members for UW Library. In light of the ongoing workload required to maintain customised online help screens for TRELLIS, there is no guarantee that we will be able to continue to provide this level of detailed documentation for TUG users about the Web OPAC.

One alternative would be to abandon further upgrades to help screens with advent of Voyager 2000.
In lieu of the customised help pages for TUG users we could provide the ‘generic’ help documentation for Voyager web-catalogue. This would not take into account changes to default displays, as set by TUG OPAC prototyping group. This would not include specifics about services available through OPAC from TUG circulation departments. It is not clear at this point how frequently OPAC users consult online help screens, or whether the information provided there helps them to use Trellis more effectively. The group discussed whether online help should be revised for Voyager 2000.

Decision: Users would probably benefit from the information and details provided in online help if it was upgraded for Voyager 2000, especially if ISR staff took advantage of the option to refer users to these help pages regularly.
It would be good if other staff groups beyond LINC [ISMC/ TUG Information Service Managers?] could examine the costs and benefits of customised online help screens for TRELLIS in light of the ongoing work involved. It may be necessary to relinquish this standard of help, or consider alternative approaches, or work out a better way to distribute the ongoing work involved in providing point-of-use instruction about TRELLIS.
Action: Jane will revise online help screens to reflect changes introduced with Voyager 2000. Because of the complexity of the task, revisions will not be available by January 2001.
ISR staff should be aware that there will be a time lag before online help for TRELLIS reflects new look and features introduced with next upgrade.

Some paper publications may need updating with switch to Voyager 2000. For example “Trellis Basics”
Action: Margaret will send copies of “Trellis Basics” to all members of LINC. Group can share suggestions for updates by sending messages to instruct@library.uwaterloo.ca ; Copy all messages about this publication to Jane Forgay

5. Web Page - Contact Information about Training Access for Journal Indexes
A link to the web page prepared by Jackie Stapleton will be added to area for Library Instruction Committee in staff web.
Another link to “Examples of Templates, Handouts, etc.” has already been added to same section of staff web under “Promoting Library Instruction”

Around the Table

Margaret - Margaret contacted Carl Nagel to find out if any action would be taken to add an option similar to ClassNet, [Software which would allow instructor to access display on individual laptops and possibly project such displays to large screen??] to LT3 Flex Lab. Carl asked her to refer this question to staff in LT3.
Action: Margaret will contact Susan Routliffe, to see if this issue can be discussed at ISMC


November 29, 2010