1) 2:00 - 2:15 pm: Announcements

2) Proposal for Cooperative Chat by the Digital Services Sub-committee of the Reference and Outreach Committee (Guest Virginia Cole) - Kornelia

3) PCAC topics - Michael Cook and Oliver Habicht

(1) PCAC membership recommendations: http://wiki.library.cornell.edu/wiki/x/E4Y

(2) CUL Public Computing Policy: http://wiki.library.cornell.edu/wiki/x/aoM

Attendees: Kathy Chiang, Xin Li, Pat Schafer, Kornelia Tancheva, Kizer Walker, Scott Wicks

Guests: Virginia Cole, Michael Cook, Oliver Habicht

Note Taker: Tiffany Howe

1) Announcements:

Marty Kurth will take Oya’s place on PSEC

2) Public Computing Advisory Committee (PCAC) topics (with Michael Cook and Oliver Habicht)

Michael and Oliver distributed copies of the Draft Cornell Library Public Computing Policy and the PCAC membership recommendation

Recommendations for PCAC membership

• PCAC is a unique group because it bridges ITS and Public Services—each person on the group has a specialized skill
• Recommendation from Committee: member interest and commitment take precedence over term length
• There has been little turnover so far, and the group is very proactive and has worked well together
• All PCAC members, and Pat Court (as liaison to PSEC) are in agreement of this membership recommendation
• Ideas from PSEC:

              -Write down responsibilities and time commitments for future members

              -Primary responsibility of the group is to PSEC

              -While everyone wants Pat Court to remain the permanent liaison, all wondered if a temporary liaison might be helpful until Pat is in a better position to take up these responsibilities again. Pat Schafer will discuss with her before the next meeting.

              -How will PSEC know when membership on PCAC should be replenished? PCAC will have a list of units that may have interest in the group, and try to choose interested people from those units; membership will be situation based, not time based

               -Will PCAC allow for personal development? Will they take on “apprentices”? PSEC will discuss this again when talking about committee memberships; PCAC’s meetings and listserv are open (this may be a good way to recruit apprentices)

                -PCAC should assign 2 year memberships with renewable terms—then new people to the committee will have to commit for at least 2 years

                -PCAC should send their re-write of the membership recommendation (which reflects the above topics) to PSEC for final approval

                -When approved by PSEC, the agreement should be put on the PCAC website

Draft Cornell Library Public Computing Policies

• These are baseline Library public computing policies

                -The do not contradict the University policies

                -Individual libraries may add special rules if they’d like

                -PCAC wants CUL units to put notices pointing to the Library Public Computing Policies on any equipment in the libraries that allow copying (desktops on monitors, VCRs, etc)

• PSEC gave suggestions regarding minor edits to the draft

                  -Remove “only” from last sentence in Support section.

                 -Possibly add something about restarting the computer to fix any immediate problems

                  -Remove “from/to Cornell computers and/or equipment” from Behavior section

                  -Change references to “music” to “audio”

• PCAC should rewrite the policy with the above edits from PSEC, then send it back to PSEC for approval (also including suggestions on how to distribute and enforce the policies)
• Once it is approved, it should be sent to CIT and LMT as a “for your information,” then posted to cu-lib and the PSEC website

3) Proposal for Cooperative Chat by the Digital Services Sub-committee of the Reference and Outreach Committee (with guest Virginia Cole)

There are at least 6 volunteers who would like to participate in this service. There may be more, on a rotating basis.

There are many upgrades to this service since it was last researched.

• Software was changed and improved in March 2006 
• Procedures and training have improved 
• Statistical reporting has improved

As a cooperative, when local people aren’t available to answer questions, other members will

• The login will change if the question is being answered by a different library
• The librarian who is answering the question will have his/her name and college displayed
• The home library’s resources of the person asking the question will be used

There are approximately 100 institutions already in the cooperative

Characteristics

• Chat is a necessary complement to our digital services 
• The quality of the personal service on Chat is comparable to the service in person
• The cooperative cannot do as good or as in depth of a job as a local library can—it is intended to be a supplemental service, not meant to replace librarians

The Digital Reference Services Committee should redraft the proposal as soon as possible and send it back to PSEC. PSEC will send their endorsement (and the suggestion of a 1 year trial, to be reviewed again in Summer 2008 with the potential for long-term subscription) to Lee Cartmill

Next meeting: March 28, 2007; 2:00 – 3:30pm; 703 Olin Library