Agenda

• Ideas for marketing subject specialists and the AskUs service
• Announcements from libraries and departments
• DiscoverLibrary – summary of forum discussion; further discussion; ideas for action (tutorial, etc.)

Minutes (KP)

Present: Leslie Foutch, Cindy Franco, Sue Erickson, presiding, Jodie Gambill, Amy Steward-Maillot, Melinda Brown, Chris Benda, Rahn Huber, Julie Loder, Sara Manus, Kitty Porter, recorder

1. Communications Committee (CC) asked RSC to come up with ideas for marketing subject specialists, the CC’s focus for the year. Group comments centered on the idea that there needs to be a discussion about the whole marketing process, that there has been a tendency to come up with the campaign before the buy in to the services marketed by the people providing the service. More input should be sought about what services we would like to see marketed, who is the target audience, and what is a measurable goal to be achieved. Then the marketing campaign can be developed. We talked about the CC’s wanting to provide support for our efforts and how this would fit in with their mission. Sue will take back to the group our idea that there be a all-public-services forum to discuss with the wider group about what services we want to market, what is going on in our individual locations with respect to those services, what works and what doesn’t. Then we can establish some kind of a service goal to take to CC to get their help in reaching the goal.

2. Individual reports:

a. Rahn - Management has interviewed 2 candidates for the director position. They are sponsoring Social Hour on Thursday, when they will present a PowerPoint program introducing the library staff. The program will involve bobble head dolls in some fashion.

b. Julie – Trials for RefUSA and Demographics Now are finished. Units who want to see either/both added should let her know, as well as let her know if they can share in the cost. There was some sentiment that it would be good to have an open period in the e-classroom when we have trials so people can get together to try things out.. There was discussion about how to involve faculty more in trials.

c. Sara – Steve Nordstrorm is leaving. They will probably be outsourcing cataloging for awhile. Their boiler is fixed now the task of ridding the building of mold will begin.

d. Leslie – Peabody gave the Collegiate Learning Assessment to all first year students on one day with library tours that same day. They have moved to their new offices and opened the Workroom, a quiet space with no computers. Grad students love it, undergrads don’t which pleases grad students. Their grad student clinics are beginning. During orientation they spoke to all graduate students. Things have been humming.

e. Kitty – Science & Engineering announced winner of M&M contest. Orientation very busy with lots of students through. Daily count has been thought to be up since first day of classes. Gave orientations to many of our department grad students. Course texts have been placed on reserve. This may be causing problems for some of the other libraries as students are saying their professors say the library is putting all course materials on reserve. Not sure that is coming from our people.

f. Melinda – Central has hired a new term librarian, Mary Aquila. She has a great resume and they are all excited about her starting Oct. 1. Saw 170 students in 2 hours at orientation event, usually get about 100 in a whole day. S&E got 200.

g. Chris – Divinity graduate class is larger this year – 110 students, nearly twice as large as last year. Course registration took place in the library this year for the first time. Chris and Bill were invited to be part of orientation and follow-up evaluation for first time. Chris did survey of students about orientation. Got good suggestions as well as praise from 50% return. He will be offering EndNote seminars.

h. Jodie – DiscoverLibrary service is down. Nothing else to report,

3. There was a suggestion that a Project Team could be formed to go over the types of questions noted from this year’s first year, transfer, and graduate student orientations, and gather questions into a FAQ.

4. DiscoverLibrary. Sara read a summary of the recent Reference/Instruction forum on DL. There is going to be another discussion of in October. It was felt that there needs to be some clear understanding of who the target audience is, what DL is useful for and what not. Melinda had invited Dale to one of her Freshman Writing Seminars and that proved to be useful for both of them. It was mentioned that it would be a good idea to invite him to some more advanced research classes as well. The forum will hopefully suggest alternatives for getting feedback to DL team to allow improvements to the product, a goal desired by all.