Wednesday, June 02, 2004
10:30-12:00
Location: Art Library Conf Room
Present: Joan, Cindy, Laura, Beth and Ann, Neal
Unable to attend: Julie, Travis, Eileen
Facilitator: Joan
Note taker: Beth

Topic: All Staff Meeting
Leader: Joan
Outcome: (Begin to) Plan presentation

Jane Williams will pencil us in for a presentation at an All-Staff meeting in August. Possible dates: Aug 12 10-11:30, Aug 17th 2:30-4. We are thinking of presenting in the middle of the all-staff meeting. Travis had previously suggested that we give an update on how electronic reference is going generally, how many people are participating, how it has evolved. We will be talking for about 30 minutes. We discussed some of our goals for the meeting. Goals include: consciousness-raising, keeping electronic reference in everyone’s minds, linking DigRef services into bigger ref services package by way of Ubiquitous Librarian document. Some things we can cover:
We can talk about some of the consciousness-raising we have done, like our digital reference lecture series. We can talk about electronic reference statistics (includes email, um chat and AskUs) and compare to desk statistics. Discussion of trends, number of hours we spend on chat services. Maybe have a Power Point and talking both. Laura could show how she has added ask a librarian to databases. We can explain how we are trying to be where our users are. At some point in the near future Joan will create a draft of what we hope to cover in the meeting.

Topic: Chat Scenario #1
Leader: Cindy
Outcome: Discussion of staffing chat service
**We did not get to this topic.

Topic: Digital Reference: Peer Training Session
Leader: Joan
Outcome: Update on IRS-T Sponsored Session

Background: IRS-T got a request to do peer training specifically for digital reference. We looked at an outline of the Peer-training session created by the working committee consisting of Neal, Cindy, Joan and Niyati. It outlines goals for the session. It will be a 90 minute session. They will give attendees some background on digital reference and give everyone a sense of the history of and future directions for digital reference.
Audience target: grad students and librarians. There will be a demo as well. Not sure yet if we will cover both UM chat and AskUsNow in the session.

Topic: Maryland Ask Us Now: Liaison meeting
Leader: Joan
Outcome: Report from May meeting

Joan reported that the last meeting was a video conference. Joe Thompson reported that they have gotten a 3rd grant. The grant takes effect in Sept 2004, so MD AskUsNow will continue to exist. 24/7 Reference may merge with another service so, there will be changes in the software coming soon. This may happen as early as the Fall of 2004. It may merge with Tutor.com or QuestionPoint, we do not know yet. Question Point would be an advantage because it has a good chat service. A UM library school student intern may be helping Joe with categorizing questions. Joe emphasized importance of logging in on time. There will be a Spring refresher training series (half-day). He will be training people on QRC as well. We will be contributing Spanish language coverage soon (3 hrs a week). New! Overflow category: so that we get first crack at Maryland-people questions.

Topic: Demo of Question Point
Leader: Joan

Outcome: Demonstrate QP Functionality and KnowledgeBase editing Joan showed us what she is doing with QuestionPoint. On the Art and Arch homepage they have a logo users can click on to ask a question of an art/architecture librarian with QP. QP gives each question and ID number. Users can check the status of their question. Questions can be routed to a specific librarian. You can assign, refer or file the question (close/complete, delete, add to KnowledgeBase). Knowledgebase: you can do a search within the KB to see if your question (or similar) has been answered or asked before.

Round Robin: Laura says RLG databases now have the Ask A Librarian link at the top. RLG, Ebsco and FirstSearch all have this link now. Laura is still working on getting video files up from the last lecture. ITD working on a way we could have it on a streaming server. (You’d have to download a client though to use the ITD version but easier and quicker to get up).

Neal & Julie are working away on the cost-benefit analysis. They sent in a proposal to give at VRD 6 (in the Fall). They will be looking at algorithms with Cindy. Neal and Julie are still reading through and categorizing questions from AskUsNow and should be done and able to report on it to our group by the end of the Summer.
Joan said that anyone that wants to know more about QP should talk to her. She reminded us about the refresher course w/ Joe Thompson.

Next meeting:

We didn’t get to Cindy’s topic. So for next time:
Topic: Chat Scenario #1
Leader: Cindy
Outcome: Discussion of staffing chat service
Time: 20 mins
Possibly also continue discussion on all-staff meeting, peer training --