May 8, 2000 Meeting of User Education Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Members Present: Lori DuBois – Chair, Ruby Jahr, Christopher Quinn, Sarah Reisinger, Mary Schlembach, Dee Shonkwiler, Jane Wiles, Beth Woodard, Lynne Rudasill

Additional Attendees: Julie Veazie (User Education GA)

Additions to Agenda: Discussion of Meeting of Beth Woodard with Moms Association and Dads Association

Minutes of April 10, 2000 approved

1. ANNOUNCEMENTS

None

2. ACTION LIST

1. Lori will prepare a report on the 1999-2000 workshops for our May meeting: *This was done and will be reported during the meeting
2. Sue and Lynne will draft guidelines to implement the recently approved policy on identification of paper handouts, as requested by the Administrative Council *Guidelines were drafted, but are still being evaluated.
3. Sarah will contact the Office of Instructional Resources about workshops on instructional techniques and presentation techniques (which ranked high in the needs assessment). *Sarah contacted the OIR. They will be glad to work with us. Time frame is early fall, probably Sept. Sarah would like to meet with OIR for 1-2 hours to plan for the classes. She will check with OIR to see if there will be a cost. It would be nice to have a series of workshops.
4. Beth will announce the upcoming program with Deb Gilchrist, July 13-14 on LIBNEWS-L. *Beth wanted feedback on who to send the announcement of the Fri morning session. The committee said it should be open to anyone who is interested. In her announcement, Beth will ask for replies from those planning to attend in order to have a count for handouts and possibly lunch. Paula Kaufman will be asked. Beth thought some committee members would take Deb Gilchrist to dinner on Thursday evening.
5. Sue will check into meeting and hotel rooms for Deb Gilchrist. *Sue has reserved the Grainger Commons for July 13 all day and July 14 am. She will check on lodging and audiovisual needs and availability.
6. Julie will reserve a table for lunch at the Union on April 27, with the goal of holding monthly lunches for discussion of user education issues. *Julie reserved a table for 12. Report on the lunch later in the agenda.
7. Sue will distribute the needs assessment survey results to the survey participants and Bob Burger. *Sue has done this, but there was no feedback other than thank-yous.

3. On Going

1. Helen Sullivan and Mary Schlembach will further discuss methods for updating the aids and guides database.
2. Lori DuBois is still weeding GEN handouts. She is still waiting to hear from the Circ Team about circ documents that are no longer being used. Units are still letting her know which are obsolete.
3. Everyone should look at the web’s “Help” pages www.library.uiuc.edu/help/default.asp. There is a link to Lori DuBois. Send her any suggestions.
4. Lexis-Nexis handout: Lori provided a copy of this handout to the committee a few meetings ago. If units that are using Lexis-Nexis have any search tips or other problems that users have encountered that should be included in the handout, let Lori know.
5. Web Interface will be updated this summer. In the fall the web version should be the preferred interface. PAC is planning training sessions for staff at the end of July/beginning of August.
6. Gateway Reconfiguration Task Force is looking at models of other commercial and educational sites to improve the current library web site. The task force will create some prototypes and hopefully use real user feedback to make improvements.

4. AGENDA

Continuing Education / Professional Development

• Deb Gilchrist Program-Beth is waiting for details before announcing the Deb Gilchrist program. In the announcement she will ask people who think they will be attending to respond to her so she can have a rough count for handouts and possible lunch. She will ask Ms. Gilchrist if there is anything participants should read before the meeting. Beth will check with Sue regarding the audiovisual requirements and will make arrangements for parking. She also thought it would be nice for some committee members to ask Ms. Gilchrist to go out to dinner on Thursday evening. She will see if Paula Kaufman would like to come. Beth will also ask Sue to forward the announcement to the faculty at GSLIS.
• Monthly lunch: Thirteen people attended the lunch at the Ballroom on April 27 from 12-1. Jane Wiles thought it was difficult to hear discussion and would like to see a more formal topic for general discussion planned. Others enjoyed the informal discussions. We decided to try to reserve a small room to make discussion easier, and add a discussion topic at a later time if it seems necessary. Julie will e-mail those people who came who were not on the committee and get feedback on what they liked and did not like. She will also reserve the room for the next lunch.

5. Report and statistics on Workshops

Lori DuBois handed out comparative summary statistics regarding the centralized workshops during 1999-2000 academic year. Members were encouraged to read through the information and let Lori know if this information was adequate or if there is other information which might be helpful. Some ideas for changes for next term are:

• Divide the Internet Workshop into two workshops.
• Offer workshops for TAs only at the beginning of the semester so that they will know what is covered in the workshops.
• Survey Rhetoric and Speech Communication students to find out what they want and need from the workshops
• Develop some type of pre-assessment test for students to find out what classes they might need. This is especially needed for the two different Internet workshops.

6. Student Competency Survey

Lynn Rudasill reported on the results of this survey of political science and sociology students. Some of the results showed: students did well on research questions, had problems with the terms truncation and Boolean, knew the Library Gateway well, identified scholarly journals, understood what particular citations referred to. In the fall she plans to expand the survey with the help of OIR.

7. Moms Association and Dads Association

Beth spoke to both associations at the suggestion of Roxanne Fry. They are pushing for a 1 credit freshmen experience class which might include library instruction. The organizations publish a brochure that is handed to freshmen in the fall. This might be a place to include information about the workshops. It is completed for fall 2000, but maybe we could put something in fall 2001. We also discussed the need for magnets (or other promotional items) with the library Information Desk phone number, URL, etc. on it to promote the library during Quad Day and other events.

Meeting was adjourned.