April 8, 2002 Meeting of User Education Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Members Present: Sue Searing – Chair, Bob Burger, Chris Quinn, Paul Callister, Lynne Rudasill, Frances Jacobson, Karen Hogenboom, Cindy Ashwill, Lori DuBois

Additional Attendees: Julia Spann (GA)

The meeting commenced at 9:05 am. No changes to the agenda. No further edits to the minutes of March 11, 2002.

1. Voyager Planning

Sue mentioned that Voyager would be a main item on the agenda today. May 1st is the next Voyager Launch Briefing. May 10th is the “go/no-go” date. “No-go” means a delay until December 2002 or maybe even summer 2003.

Cindy mentioned that publicity for Voyager will be conducted via mass e-mailings (E-Week), stories in campus media, and the FAQ at http://www.library.uiuc.edu/voyagerweb/voyagerfaq.htm. Publicity will take place in two phases: early publicity now; major publicity in Fall.

Temporarily, because no new records are being added to the DRA catalog, there is a “gap database” that lists acquisitions during the Voyager transition. Lori pointed out that the problem is that a lot of people do not have access to the database. It isn’t available to the public, and staff stationed at many service desks can’t get to it either. Bob said there are several reasons why this was not publicly accessible, but that he would look into the possibility of a web-based form being created for public access.

Sue drew comparisons between the DRA implementation process and the Voyager implementation process and pointed out that the Voyager implementation timeframe is more streamlined than that of DRA, because we learned from DRA what to expect and have better strategies now for reaching people.

2. Public Interface Team

Lori spoke about the interface that ILCSO is working on (the “vanilcso” interface) and demonstrated what the interface looks like and how it can be manipulated. She said the PIT crew is looking at other Endeavor customers’ interfaces for models of what we might want to do and what to avoid. Each ILCSO institution will be able to customize the interface within certain constraints. The URL for vanilcso is http://eistest.aiss.uic.edu/ilcso_dev.

The vanilcso version is supposed to be completed by April 30, 2002. After that date, ILCSO will place a copy of vanilcso into each institution’s development space and institutional customizations can begin.

3. Instructional Strategies / OPAC Training

Training for staff-side searching will be conducted for everyone uniformly, and then function-specific training will be provided separately. The User Ed Committee needs to watch for features that users may have problems with and develop training and/or documentation for those features. Sue hoped that the PIT crew will conduct usability testing with patrons; User Ed members are willing to help with this.

4. Information Literacy Services Coordinator Position

Bob mentioned that approval was gained to make an offer at the level of associate professor with tenure. It is anticipated that the offer will be accepted and the coordinator will start around July 20, 2002.

5. Public Information Strategies

Cindy Ashwill reminded the committee that April 14-20 is National Library Week and Inside Illinois is scheduled to carry stories spotlighting the library. At the end of April, The Compendium (the Library’s newsletter for faculty) will announce the new improvements and advantages associated with Voyager. Cindy is marketing Voyager as an “enhancement” rather than a whole new system.

In the Fall, publicity will go out through the News Gazette. There will also be a story in PostMarks, the publication for parents of undergraduate students. Lori suggested Grad Times also.

Sue said departmental libraries should promote the new system as well and inform their users about the gap in records for new books.

6. Library Gateway

Lynne reported that the Gateway re-design task force completed a round of focus groups. Now usability testing will take place in the next 2 weeks.

7. Teaching Alliance Proposal

Sue worked with Linda Smith (GSLIS Dean) to submit the second-year funding proposal to the Provost’s Initiative for Teaching Advancement. The focus is on undergraduate teaching. They should hear in May whether the proposal was successful. Even without another PITA grant, the Teaching Alliance will continue in 2002-03.

8. CASTL – Carnegie Association for Scholarship on Teaching and Learning

Sue spoke on CASTL, a nationwide partnership program between 200 universities that looks at scholarship on teaching and learning in higher education. Sue mentioned that UIUC’s involvement in this venture would be beneficial to the university as it would raise awareness of instructional issues and promote research on instruction. It might offer research and publishing opportunities for untenured Library staff who are involved in library instruction.

9. TeachIT

TeachIT is a campus-wide event for showcasing how people use technology in instruction. Lori will be presenting an electronic poster session about how the library uses online tutorials and WebCT to provide instruction to students, and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of online instruction for reaching large groups of students. TeachIT is taking place Friday, April 12th from 9am-4pm at the Grainger Library.

10. Other

Bridging the Gap Conference (in Chicago): Paul Callister shared thoughts from the conference, which took place in cooperation with Lexis-Nexis and firm and corporate libraries. The discussions involved an examination of information literacy among law students and how to improve information literacy for their practice. The issue was not that law students can’t read but that they won’t read. Several factors contribute to this dilemma (i.e., time constraints, values, workplace politics, etc.) and strategies were discussed during the conference to help deal with them.

Orientation for Campus Guides: Lynne did her presentation at the annual training for student campus tour guides.

Spring Workshops: Lori said that students did not register or attend the spring workshops in the same numbers as during fall semester. Julia will prepare the statistics.

Teaching Alliance event: A two-part workshop entitled “Being an Effective Lecturer” will take place in the Illini Union, Room 406, April 18th and April 25th, 11:30-1:30. Dean Papajohn of OIR (Office of Instructional Resources) will lead the workshops. Sue mentioned that those interested are encouraged to bring an actual case for discussion. This will pre-empt our User Ed Luncheon for April.

Meeting adjourned at 10:25am.