March 8, 2004 Meeting of User Education Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Members Present: Phill Johnson (05), Allison Sutton (04), Cindy Shirkey (ex officio), Joe Straw (ex officio), Helen Sullivan (05), Lynn Wiley (05), Greg Youngen (05), Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (ex officio) – Chair, Melody Allison (ex officio)

Additional Attendees: Chad Fennell (User Education GA)

1. Meeting Schedule for 2004 Meetings (Action: None)

• March 8, 10-11
• April 12, 10-11 *Meeting Canceled.
• May 10, 10-11
• June 14, 10-11
• July 12, 10-11
• August 9, 10-11

2. Old Business

Fall Library Festival

Tom Teper and Nancy O’Brien have joined the festival planning committee. Kate Freding (Graduate Assistant) and Lisa are working on a budget to send to the Budget Group. As per last meeting, Lisa contacted Penn State and found that their program costs about $4,500 per year. While this figure includes spending for two semesters, the majority of their costs are incurred in the first session. Lisa indicated that the planning committee is putting together the festival has come up with a number of ideas for booths, such as library fortune tellers who predict to students which library they will use depending upon their major. There has also been discussion in the committee as to an end of the day (around 2:30), “expedition tour”, to two major science libraries, ACES and Grainger. In the case that this activity is added to the schedule of events, library faculty from both Grainger and ACESS would be asked to meet interested students at the Main Library building and to walk them to their respective libraries.

OVID Splash Pages

The committee approved the new OVID splash page text. Lisa will make a few minor grammatical adjustments and then submit the revised statement to Wendy Shelborne for posting. Melody and Allison will work on “version two,” which will be published at a later date and will attempt a more streamlined explanation.

3. New Business

Open Forum on Large-Scale Instructional Technology Applications

There was discussion on LIBFAC-L recently about courseware at Rochester. Lisa said that she would look into software and would discuss with the User Education Committee if there was interest among library faculty for this kind of program. She received email in support of such an investigation. Software packages that will be investigated include tutorial programs (TILT, Searchpath) and broader systems (LibDatata), which provide tools that allow users to create and publish (and republish) customized library web content. Cindy has installed TILT at UIUC and will send a URL so that committee members can get an idea of the functionality of this tutorial. The committee expressed interest in beginning to look at such tools and will eventually enter into discussion as to which of the aforementioned best suits the user needs of the library system.

Slavic Conference Room

The Staff Development and Training Committee has proposed that the library purchase new equipment for the Slavic Library conference room. The User Education Committee expressed its support for this plan.

ILCSO User Education Committee

This is a new committee and is looking for volunteers to help with this aspect of ILCSO services (building an online tutorial, etc).

Annual Information Literacy Update at March Faculty Meeting

Lisa will be doing her annual update, and will give a very basic overview of the User Education Committee activities and other information literacy initiatives.

4. Announcements/Open Discussion

Meeting for April 12th will be cancelled; Lisa will be at a CLIR conference.

Respectfully submitted,
Chad M. Fennell
User Education GA