SIRS minutes
Meeting of January 24, 2001

Present: Laguerre, Stanek, Moreton, Stefany, VanSant, Yoco,
Winker, Lindquist

1) We agreed to create an "in-box" for projects for students in
order to facilitate the current practice whereby librarians with
projects for students negotiate directly with Evelyn.  The "in-box"
will be in the Core Staff office.  Librarians submitting work will
fill out a cover-sheet with instructions for the work, the date that
the work is needed back to the librarian, the name of the librarian
initiating the request, and the librarian's phone number.  Evelyn agreed
to create the cover-sheet.  As usual, Evelyn will manage how those projects
are accomplished and will assign projects to as unit workload permits.
Librarians are responsible for following up with Evelyn on the progress
of their projects.   SIRS encourages librarians and staff at the desk to
collaborate in effective management of student staffers.  "Extra" students
should be sent to the Core Staff office for reassignment to other chores.
We discussed and decided that student staffers could work on assigned projects
at the back area of the desk.  This will make them available should user traffic
demand additional desk staffing.

2) Betty Day and Laura Sowers visited SIRS.  Betty reviewed the policy that
Info Desk staff should NOT refer users directly to the ITD Help Desk.  She
recommended that 1)  we take telephone numbers and names for faculty/graduate
students who raise ITD/database "policy" questions and forward those names/numbers
to Betty or Laura, 2)  emergency calls on database access (for example, we have
confirmed on multiple computers that a database in inaccessible) should go to the
ITD HelpDesk, 3) we can report functionality problems to MDLhelp@itd.umd.edu.

SIRS recommended that Betty and Laura do systematic training (or retraining perhaps)
on MdUSA, Jake, and a review of database troubleshooting techniques.  In preparation
for such sessions, Betty recommended that we track the kinds of access and other
computer database questions that we cannot answer.  Cindy will advise staff of this
tracking effort and place a clipboard out at the desk.  Susanna recommended that another
good way to do this is for SIRS members to collect questions from colleagues.

Betty will return to SIRS on February 21 for a follow-up visit.

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Cynthia Todd
Coordinator for Information & Research Services
McKeldin Library
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
ct15@umail.umd.edu