Reference and Outreach Committee Meeting
January 16, 2006 10:30 AM
Olin 106
Agenda:
Open Meeting 10:30 am - 11:10 am
(All interested staff are invited to attend)
Original Scripts (vernacular) searching in the Unicode-version of the Voyager OPAC.
Beth Katzoff and Xian Wu will demonstrate searches using original scripts in the Unicode-version of the Voyager OPAC and will answer questions.
NOTE: This information session will also be offered to all CUL interested staff on January 25, 2006, at 9:00am in Olin 106.
Closed Meeting 11:10 am - 12:00 noon
(PSEC R&O Committee members only)
Announcements:
Committee membership update (Pat)
PSEC R&O Web page/CommonSpot (Ida)
Statistics sampling project update (Mihoko and Jean)
Other business:
PSEC review of Web Guides Working Group and Digital Reference Services Committee charges
Review BIG charge
FindArticles improvements/feedback (Zsuzsa's request)
Forum plans (time permitting)
Begin outreach discussion -- topics, issues, ideas (time permitting)
Minutes:
Present: Mihoko Hosoi (Co-chair and minutes), Ida Martinez (Co-chair), Jean Callihan, Virginia Cole, Beth Katzoff, Jim Morris-Knower, Jill Powell, Pat Schafer (PSEC liaison)
Guests: Camille Andrews
**Open Meeting**
Unicode Searching on Voyager with Original Scripts
Beth Katzoff and Xian Wu demonstrated vernacular searching in the Unicode-version of the Voyager OPAC. Currently, the system works with CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) languages only, and requires Microsoft Input Method Editors (IME) which can be downloaded from Microsoft’s Website for free. The presenters shared the following useful information for public services staff. The handout is attached here.
§ Romanized searching generally is the safest way to search catalog.
§ Title & Author searches in the basic search mode generally work fine.
§ Some English language users might be confused if the computer is set for CJK inputting.
§ Word division and spacing can be tricky.
§ Chinese language users might need to try both simplified (PRC) and traditional (Taiwan) Chinese.
§ RLIN links simplified and traditional Chinese language records, and might be helpful for some users.
§ Original script searching is helpful when a user is not sure about the Romanized title.
**Closed Meeting**
Announcements
§ Committee Membership Update
The Committee welcomed Jim Morris-Knower to its membership. Howard Raskin was not able to continue serving on the committee, and PSEC appointed Jim for the open position.
§ PSEC Ref & Outreach Committee Website and CommonSpot Training
Ida (WebMaster for the committee) finished her training, and the committee has presence on the PSEC Website. Some members have received positive comments regarding the way we have organized our meeting notes, etc.
§ Reference Statistics Sampling Project Update
Jean and Mihoko presented the project at the IRIS Management Group meeting on January 10. They had received daily data from individual libraries, and suggested reasonable sampling frequency for different libraries based on the data. They also made some recommendations to PSEC and the central statistics unit. Ida will let Anne know that we have presented all the available data. The presentation slides (updated 1/10/06) and Excel file are linked here.
Other Business
§ PSEC Review of Web Guides Working Group and Digital Reference Services Committee Charge
Pat will ask PSEC to discuss these charges, together with BIG charge, at its next meeting.
§ Review of BIG charge
We reviewed the charge submitted by Don Schnedeker, and revised it as follows for PSEC review. Ida will let Don know of our revision:
Charge:
The Business Information Group (BIG) has been organized to broaden library support for the university's business curriculum. BIG shares information and best practices in the areas of business research and business information instruction. BIG meetings provide a forum for discussing business research, instruction and collection development topics, and an opportunity to explore resources available to Cornell's business community.
Membership:
The Business Information Group is open to all Cornell Library staff with an interest in business research and supporting business related courses and collection development across campus.
Chair: Don Schnedeker (2006 - 2008)
§ FindArticles Improvements / Feedback
We discussed the FindArticles improvement feedback request from the Resource Discovery Systems Working Group, also known as ReDs (request received from Zsuzsa Koltay). Some committee members had already responded back to Zsuzsa’s request individually. Therefore, we decided that the members who have not responded back would directly reply back to her and that we would work within our own departments to encourage others to reply to Zsuzsa. We also agreed that, due to time constraint, it would be difficult to identify a Ref & Outreach Committee member who would be able to serve on the ReDs-based group exploring meta-search options, although we are happy to provide feedback.
§ Outreach Discussion and Forum Planning
Ida described some future topics for discussion including Barton Hall Event and New Graduate Student event. Possible forum ideas might include “measurement of success.” Discussion will be continued at the next meeting.
Next meeting will be 2/13/05 (Monday), Olin 106 @10:30-12.
