Communications Committee Meeting March 7, 2006

Attending: Celia Walker, Angel Bruner, George Anglin, Jim Webb, Ava Wilson, Henry Shipman, and Suellen Stringer-Hye.

Agenda:

1. Web Ticker: Items to be removed: places to study, student jobs, and freshman writing seminar information. Items to add: 18th century collection, preservation Power Point presentation about handling library materials. The item about the best novels exhibit will remain. We discussed what the time frame for items on the ticker should be. Each item has its own time frame, so we will continue to evaluate the ticker at each Communications meeting.

2. Placement of Preservation Power Point on Home Page: As noted above, an item will be added to the web ticker to announce the Power Point presentation. Its permanent link will probably be somewhere on the About the Library page.

3. Lib QUAL+ 2006 (publicity campaign): The Lib QUAL+ survey will begin March 20th. Janice Adlington is the chairman for the Lib Qual+ team. An e-mail will be sent to all faculty and students, asking them to fill out the survey. There will be a drawing for prizes for those completing the survey. To help publicize the survey there will be a press release in the Register and an ad in the Hustler. Suggestions for further publicity were: adding a desk top link to the survey on library computers, using screen savers as reminders of the survey, and putting an icon on the Heard Home Page, on the left side above where the VU Print notice is now. Suellen and George will work on implementing these suggestions.

This discussion brought up the question of who is in charge of publicity for events and items of note in the library. We want to eventually work up a policy, forms to announce events and procedures for publicizing them.

4. Communication Vehicles Survey (with Audience Outline): review and assignment of tasks

Committee members will interview library directors and division directors about the kinds of communication vehicles they use. Assignments are as follows:

Central – Ava OUL Admin – Celia Science – Suellen Owen – Jim Peabody – George Music – Flo Law – Paula Divinity – Celia Library Admin Svcs – Ava Special Collections – Henry Tech Services – Angel ILL – Jim TV news – Angel LITS – Suellen and George.

Reports for most of these interviews should be in by the next meeting.

5. Communications Survey: final summary of results: The Staff Communications Survey report can be found on the Communications Committee Wiki. The survey asked about the Staff News Feed, the Staff Web, the Watercooler, open discussions (Donuts and Coffee sessions) and other ways to communicate internally in our system. Sixty-five responses (about half of the library staff) were received. The layout of the Staff News Feed daily e-mail continues to need updating. A suggestion was made to have the article links lead to the whole newsletter rather than just the one article, so that the reader would see its place as part of the whole. Discussing the report highlights led to another suggestion to form a sub-committee project team just to deal with the Staff News Feed. Suellen will be the chair. Jim and Celia also volunteered. Angel agreed to proofread the new news feed articles each evening at 4 pm.

6. Preparing for the Upcoming Staff Forum: All committees are to come up with a report of what they’ve accomplished during the past 6 months and their plans for the next six months. The text is due March 19. These reports will be available for staff to read and form questions for the Forum to be held on March 29. The committee reviewed our priorities list to evaluate how many tasks we’ve accomplished so far and what items need to be worked on next. Any further suggestions for task ideas or reordering priorities for the next 6 months should be sent to Celia.

submitted by Angel 03/10/2006