Digital Reference Committee Minutes

March 22, 2002

Present: Eileen Abels, Julie Arnold, Katalin Ebrani, Ann Hudak, Travis Johnson, Neal Kaske, Alesia McManus, Cindy Todd

Guests: Beth Alvarez, Bonnie Jo Dopp, Jennie Levine, Anne Turkos

Absent: Lynne Woodruff

Topic: Library of Congress Collaborative Digital Reference Service

The committee has decided that it will be beneficial for the University of Maryland Libraries’ to participate in this project. Travis Johnson will be taking the lead as coordinator and contact person. Travis will be working closely with the rest of the committee on setting up this project, and will act as liaison to library reference staff who will be participating. The committee will try to arrange for someone from CDRS to address staff at an all-staff meeting in May.

Topic: Email Statistics

Julie reported on conversations with several people outside of the committee on the best way to collect email reference statistics. As a result of these conversations, the committee has decided that it is not only useful, but necessary for statistics to be compiled and evaluated in order to meet the charge of the digital reference committee. Some of the issues that need to be addressed are use, services, evaluation, human resources, priority setting, and training. The committee will ask that reference staff copy email reference responses to a umail account. The committee decided that Julie will draft a statement to library staff asking for cooperation on this.

Topic: Future Meetings

The committee decided to meet the third Friday of every month, from 9-10:30 am. The meeting place will be McKeldin 7113 unless otherwise noted.

Topic: Email Reference in Special Collections

Guests Beth Alvarez, Bonnie Jo Dopp, Jennie Levine, and Anne Turkos presented the committee with information about email reference in special collections. Some of the issues discussed were: higher and higher quantities of email reference in special collections as more information goes up on the Web; large number of users finding email forms through search engines such as Google; scanning and photocopying policies; charging policies for services; large amount of questions coming in from non-UM affiliates; impatience of customers waiting for answers. It was also reported that numbers at the traditional reference desk and telephone reference remain high while email continues to increase. Some possible resulting issues for the committee to discuss at future meetings are: technical issues, i.e. putting information up on the Web in database format so not so easily retrieved by search engines, human resources, consulting fees, and use statements.

Round Robin:

Julie and Neal reported on the success of their talk at Computers in Libraries on the UM Libraries’ Chat with a Librarian Service. Julie reported that the numbers for Virtual Reference transactions are double from last semester.