Minutes, Digital Reference Committee Meeting

Thursday, August 15, 2002

Present: Julie Arnold, Bonnie Jo Dopp, Katalin Ebrani, Travis Johnson, Neal Kaske, Jim Miller, Cynthia Todd

Topic: Virtual Reference Collaboration Opportunities

Outcome: Neal provided a report on the State of Maryland 24/7 Virtual Reference conference that he attended in Baltimore, in July. The committee discussed participation in this effort, in addition to collaborative opportunity with Virtual Reference Desk (VRD Network), and Library of Congress (QuestionPoint). The committee decided that we will pursue collaboration on the State of Maryland Virtual Reference project, and the VRD Network. The committee also decided that it would not be beneficial for us to pursue participation with the Library of Congress collaborative effort, at this point, but will look into it again in six months.

Topic: Chat with a Librarian update

Leader: Julie

Outcome: Julie shared information on recruitment of new staff (Lily Griner, Glenn Moreton, Lori Goetsh, and Judy Markowitz) for the Chat with a Librarian service. Julie is in the process of providing one-on-one training to these operators. Chat transcript coding is being done at this point, and the results will be presented by Julie and Neal at VRD 2002 in November. The service is thriving and becoming more busy. Travis suggested a “cheat sheet” for HumanClick operators, which Julie will follow up on.

Topic: Next Steps for Committee

Leader: Julie

Time: 15 minutes

Outcome: Work of the committee was reviewed. Some ideas for marketing were discussed, and it was agreed that the next marketing step would be to create a bookmark for the Chat service to be handed out in Library Instruction classes and at service points.

Julie and Alesia will continue to research best practices for digital reference, and Neal and Cindy are looking at guidelines (policy related) of other digital reference services at peer institutions.

The subgroup evaluating email reference data (Cindy, Neal, Julie, Jim) met after the meeting to discuss possible methods of evaluating the email data that is available in ra136@umail.umd.edu. There are currently 500 copies of answers to email reference questions in ra136 (or lib-email@umail) to be evaluated. We will continue to ask library staff to cc: copies of email questions and answers to the lib-email account.