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Reference and Outreach Open Forum October 17, 2006 9:00 AM Olin 106 Agenda: Minutes: Reference and Outreach Forum, October 17, 2006
Present: Linda Miller, Angela Horne, Terry Kristensen, Pat Miller, Chris Phillipp, Ada Albright, Marty Schlabach, Susanne Whitaker, Neil Zusman, Tony Cosgrave, Ken Bolton, Susette Newberry, Susan Kendrick, Xian Wu, Linda Stewart, Pat Viele, Eileen Keating, Susan LaCette, Laura Larrimore, Kathy Chiang, Deb Schmidle, Fred Muratori, Michael Engle, Howard Raskin, Jim Morris-Knower (co-chair), Camille Andrews, Jill Powell (co-chair, recorder), Virginia Cole, Nancy Skipper, Michael Friedman, Bronwen Bledsoe
Jim called the meeting to order and asked for announcements. Pat Viele met with graduate physics students for the first time; Petrina Jackson will be speaking at the Africana Library for a brown bag lunch today at 12 noon; Marty introduced a library school student from the University of Buffalo.
The topic of today’s meeting is Outreach to Campus. The panelists--Michael Friedman (Vet), Fred Muratori (Olin/Uris CRIO) and Howard Raskin (Mann)--will talk briefly about their experiences with outreach to Cornell faculty and students on campus.
Michael Friedman is Outreach Services Associate for the Vet Library. He uses an electronic tablet computer with handwriting recognition so he can take notes and demonstrate databases as the same time.
A welcome letter is sent by Terry Kristensen to all new faculty members and postdocs. Michael sends a follow-up. He has received good responses from a letter that says “do you know you can…. recall books, get library-to-office delivery…” and other services. When he goes to their offices he discusses access services, Uportal (including bookmarks), ILL, RefWorks, MyContents, scholarly communication, copyright, etc. The options are confusing so he reminds users they can always email him their requests. He shows them how to connect to databases but refers them to Susanne if they need reference assistance. Lots of users search for databases via Google instead of via the catalog (where they need to be authenticated). Users wish the catalog forgave spelling mistakes, like Google and Weill medical catalog. The latter offer suggestions instead of no matches found.
MyContents works with CUWeblogin. It used to require Sidecar, which was a problem for those users who didn’t have Sidecar. Michael doesn’t usually download software for people, he refers them to their net admins.
In discussing scholarly communication and copyright issues, Michael often gives the example of a professor and his $400 diagram– when the professor wanted to use it in a lecture he was quoted a $400 permission fee by the publisher of his work.
A copy of Michael’s sample outreach letters will be located on the Ref and Outreach website.
Fred Muratori, Reference Librarian and Bibliographer for Anglo-American and Comparative Literature and Film, Olin/Uris.
CRIO uses the web to establish a library presence on departmental websites. They do this by getting to know the chair, faculty, and administrative staff. It works much better if you’re the subject bibliographer than a reference librarian, because the former has a lot to offer – money and resources. After arranging with the administrative assistant the best time and getting the chair’s permission, he goes to the English department to demonstrate products. The departments are very appreciative that we are interested in them. We have an ongoing role in the graduate student colloquia series for several A&S departments, providing discipline-specific library research sessions for the new Ph.D. candidates.
CRIO has a library template for department pages developed by Ida Martinez. It will be uploaded to the Ref & Outreach website. Examples of the template in use – Latino Studies web page http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/ls.html, English http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/english_outreach.html, Anthropology http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/anthro_outreach.html. The librarians work with the departments to link to these library resources pages from their department home pages.
Each year there are several dozen new faculty in the Arts & Sciences. They are assigned to library liaisons and sent a welcome letter. Virginia organizes an open house for new grads and new faculty, the Tuesday before classes start. They promote this at orientation events or through listservs or newsletters recommended by the graduate student office.
Tours are offered for prospective new students and prospective new faculty. This can have a big impact in some cases in influencing people to come to Cornell. RMC offers these prospective tours as well.
Howard Raskin, Head of Outreach, Access, and Public Computing, Mann Library
Howard discussed the outreach programs at Mann. He feels it is important to bring people into the library as well as visit people in their departments, and Mann’s programs reflect this.
The New Student Welcome is held the 2nd Thursday of the semester. Many staff are involved in welcoming people, food is served, and there are tours and information sessions. It was held indoors this year due to bad weather, but that turned out to be a good thing as it brought people into the library to see Mann’s resources and services.
Publicity – library staff at the Barton Service Event gave out free pizza coupons. This was very successful for encouraging attendance.
Grad Student Orientation – got several grad students to talk as well as library staff.
Howard matches up new faculty with library staff each year. This has lead to partnerships, such as with e-reserves and research collaborations.
There are 26 departments and Mann visits each one once every 2 years (such as at a departmental meeting). Each year the focus is on different topic(s), as decided by the Mann executive council. One year it was scholarly communication, another year copyright and the new building.
Library liaison program – librarians are assigned to 1-2 departments each. They attend seminars, monitor listservs, respond to feedback, publicize resources, respond to instructional needs, attend grad student meetings, meets with graduate field representatives. Howard works with Textiles and Apparel.
Besides exhibits and events, Mann also has student expo space. In the new building they plan to have a large space where students can display their work. Potential collaborators include landscape architecture, horticulture, and communications departments. The Café, which will be in the new space, will be a area for student projects too – to study as a business model, etc.
Computer monitors at the entrance to the library – Mann plans to have more monitors and let people post information (community-generated content).
Pat Viele meets with education coordinators on campus – she emailed me this list of resources: State Curriculum Standards
Physical Sciences Library has a chess set and is looking at more technical toys for the library.
Method of contacting students – contact the International Students and Scholars office, student registrar, get on email lists and electronic newsletters. OKU CRIO does American Academic Library for ISS.
Suggestion – should we have a reference and outreach wiki so everyone can add to it and share information? Useful information such as lists of graduate student organizations could be included.
Future forum idea was suggested on marketing, how to reach our audience.
Our next forum meeting will be November 14, 2006 from 9 am – 10:30 am in Olin 106.
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