SIRS (McKeldin Service+ Information & Research Services
Desk Committee)
Minutes of meeting
August 23, 2000
Present:   Gerri Foudy, Manny Fantis (student), Jamie Edwards,
Glenn Moreton, Ross Laguerre, Mary Winker, Susanna Van Sant,
Eric Lindquist, Barbara Nail-Chiwetalu, Chris Bunn

1)      It was proposed and decided that SIRS would send a statement
to Web Board urging that the UM Databases link be restored to the first
level of the Libraries' homepage.

2)      Print only workstation for Service Plus area.  We heard
feedback from the teams on the following SIRS proposal:

        We will continue to encourage users to utilize WAM
labs, however we will allow any of our users to
Pay-for-Print documents that they have created elsewhere as
long as that is possible from the MS-Office Suite that is
loaded on our  public workstations.   Rather than set up a
separate workstation at this time, we will utilize the
workstation that is behind the Info Desk and faces the
"glass partition."  We will place signage to inform users
that this station is for print-out-only (although SIRS
urges desk staff to use good judgement in applying this
standard since users may need to reformat before they can
actually print).  Our signage will instruct users to call
the CSC help desk for technical assistance.  We will design
a sign-up sheet in case queuing develops.

The teams supported this additional service.  Cindy will draft appropriate
instructional signage for the workstation that will be used by users.
We postponed our discussion on how to evaluate this service until a later
meeting.

3)      "Plug-ins."   We have seen a number of users in the McK Electronic
Research area who are trying to access sites that require the loading of
additional "plug-in" programs in order to operate.  As part of our efforts
to understand what these programs are and how they effect our operations,
Chris made a presentation on their nature.  What we have observed from our
experiences so far, is that Windows NT will not allow users to make the
changes in workstation configuration that simple loading of "plug-ins"
involves; therefore, users are not able to access those sites requiring
"plug-ins" that are not already on our workstations.  In order to monitor
how our current NT set-up is effecting our users who need such "plug-ins,"
Information Desk staff (including rovers) are asked to send an email to
Chris Bunn describing all episodes where users are shut-out from a non-commercial
site using "plug-ins."

4)      Training of new staff.  Glenn presented a Social Science team idea for
coordinating the subject related training for newly hired librarians.  We identified
a number of additional issues:  1)  How does this relate to the work of the Peer
Training Collective?  2)  These are imagined as one-on-one sessions which would
be open to other librarians (and desk staff?) who are interested.  Are they on-demand?
Regularly scheduled?  SIRS suggested that the teams engage in further discussion on
the proposal.

5)        Round Robin.
Cindy reported that we have fewer hours of rover coverage this Fall.

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