January 22, 2001 Meeting of User Education Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Members Present: Sue Searing – Chair, Elizabeth Clarage, Lori DuBois, Frances Jacobson Harris, Chris Quinn, Sarah Reisinger, Lynne Rudasill

Additional Attendees: Julie Veazie (User Education GA)

1. Housekeeping

Minutes from 12/11/00 approved. No changes to the agenda.

2. LOEX Meeting

Paula Kaufman approved funding for two people to go to this conference. The theme is “Managing Instruction Programs in Academic Libraries”. Online registration opens on 2/15. Several committee members are interested in attending. The decision was made to send an announcement on LIBNEWS-L. Anyone interested will write 1-2 sentences on why they would like to go and send it to Sue S. by Friday, 1/26/01. A subcommittee of User Ed Committee members who do not want to go will decide which two persons will get the funding from this committee.

3. Mission and Goals

The Committee reviewed the mission statement for library user education at UIUC and made several minor changes. Everyone approved the final version which Sue S. will give to Paula Kaufman to take to the Administrative Council and the Executive Committee. The mission statement will also be presented at the March meeting of the Library faculty. The User Education Committee will postpone discussion of goals until the March meeting.

4. Teaching Effectiveness workshop

Sarah Reisinger read responses from several evaluations of the workshop. Sarah will give Julie V. the evaluations to summarize for further review by the Committee members. In addition to repeating this class for people who were unable to attend, future workshops will include a clinic type workshop where participants can work on specifics of the presentation of their workshops. Sarah R. will check with Dean Papajohn to see if the OIR would provide observers. Another possible workshop would be a panel of faculty who have successfully connected with the library. This would be available to department libraries and others.

5. Learning Communities

Sarah met in Fall 2000 with 8 groups, a total of 120 students for a 45 minute orientation to the Library. Some leaders of the communities obtained library stacks passes for their members. There will also be Library tour and orientation this Spring 2001 from 2/19-4/19/0l each Thursday at 4 and 5. Joanne Kiley, Sarah’s G.A., is proactively getting the schedule of tour guides filled. Anyone interested should contact her.

6. Reports from ALA

Presidential Task Force

Information Literate Community Partnerships Frances Jacobson Harris reported that the discussion was primarily about librarians as advocates for information literacy in information literacy partnerships between all types of libraries and between libraries and other agencies. She has some material to help develop partnerships between school libraries and academic libraries.

Committee on Institutional Cooperation Instructional Librarians Meeting

Lori DuBois reported that the committee discussed a draft of the committee’s charge. Because time is limited during the ALA meeting, they would like to set up a retreat to discuss in more depth the mission of the group. This committee serves as an advisory committee to the CIC in matters of user education. The committee discussed user education committees at their institution and the importance of getting all libraries within their institution wanting to provide user education in a consistent way.

CIC Public Services Director

Sue Searing reported that they discussed the VEL in relation to the new Bath profile and Z39.5 standards for what is indexed and also its functionality. All the OPACs must follow these standards for the VEL to work better. Vendors do not all subscribe to the standards which are still in draft form. Alternatively there could be two sets of indexes, one for each local OPAC and one for the VEL. User education programs would have to reeducate users and staff if it become operative. There seems to be a general skepticism against the VEL. An emerging alternative is WebFeat which is a translation program, customized for your institution.

7. Announcements

• Virtual Reference Project from 2/15-5/15/01 David Ward from Undergraduate Library will be using the FAQ from our “Learn to Use the Library” site. He set up this graphic tutorial which takes you through the search process. It may be a model for the User Education Committee for similar mini-tutorials.
• Information Literacy Group: report from Sue Searing about this group of faculty and administrators whose goal is that students access and evaluate information on the web. Students would be exposed to evaluating the web in a controlled way. Currently, the group is not very active.
• Sara Randall will be leaving. The prototype for the new Gateway will be available and discussed at a meeting on 1/31/01 from 9:30-10:30.
• State Library will hold a retreat which Sue Searing will be attending. The retreat is for representatives from each library system to stimulate innovative and creative requests for IMLS grants.

8. Action List

• Sue Searing will put an announcement on LIBNEWS-L regarding interested parties for the LOEX conference.
• Sue Searing will verify March for our presentation to the Library faculty.
• Sue Searing will reserve a room for User Education Committee meeting on 3/19 (not the usual week).
• Lynne Rudasill will make approved corrections to the User Education Mission Statement and will sent it to Sue S. who will send it to Paula Kaufman.
• Sarah Reisinger will draft a memo to send to previous participants to determine interest in future OIR training sessions. She will also contact Dean Papajohn regarding observing trainers.
• Julie Veazie will type up summaries of evaluations from previous OIR training on Teaching Effectiveness.

Adjourn