October 14, 2002 Meeting of User Education Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Members Present: Cindy Ashwill, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (ex officio) – Chair, Karen Hogenboom, Jing Liao, Allison Sutton, Joseph Straw

Members Absent: Paul Callister, Cindy Shirkey

Additional Attendees: Ely Anderson (User Education GA)

1. September 9 Minutes

Approval procedures for meeting minutes were discussed by the committee. The committee decided that minutes would be approved via email, unless there were corrections that needed discussion, and then placed on the committee web page for viewing.

2. User Education Materials for Voyager

The MyAccount handout is nearly ready for print and has been reviewed by Betsy Kruger (Main Stacks) and Lynn Wiley (IRRC). The General Overview handout is available from Printing Services, but is not on the website yet.

Joe has drafted UIUC and ILCSO Requesting handouts. These handouts will also be reviewed by Betsy and Lynn. Lisa encouraged any members of the committee to volunteer to review the handouts if they desired.

Graduate assistant, Ely Anderson, has drafted six handouts: Title Searching, Name Searching, Subject Searching, Numerical Searching, Keyword Searching, and Boolean Searching. All handouts will be available by the end of October or early November.

3. Additional Information about Voyager

Cindy Ashwill shared her contribution to E-Week. The information placed on E-Week described how the new system may be experiencing delays during this transitional period. In addition, the information on the “What’s new and different page” needs to be updated. Lisa will discuss this update with Sue Searing, the original creator of the page.

4. Five Year Vision

Lisa distributed a draft version of the document “Five Years of Vision for Information Literacy Services and Instruction.” Lisa explained that all units have been asked to include a five year vision in their annual reports. The document under review by the committee will be incorporated into the Office of Services Annual Report. Possible revisions of the Vision Statement were then discussed.

A concern was expressed about the inclusiveness of the vision statement for general units, such as government documents or reference. Some wording changes were made to address the concern. The committee also discussed that the vision is focused on user learning and that future documents are needed for discussing implementation.

In general, the committee found the statement useful as a flexible and broad mission statement that emphasizes the goal of instruction throughout a student’s academic career.

The committee also discussed adding one or two sentences emphasizing faculty collaboration. In the end, it was decided that collaboration was already mentioned in the vision statement and that other venues would be more appropriate for addressing faculty reluctance to collaborate with librarians.

Lisa will send the revised vision statement to committee members via e-mail.

5. Committee Charge

Lisa gave a brief history of the past and present committee charges. The committee itself has existed for quite some time, but has gone in and out of existence. During 1998-2000 the committee was suspended, and a task force on user education was put in its place.

Lisa reviewed the current and previous charges of the committee. She proposed to the committee that its responsibilities should be re-visited now that her position has been created. In particular, Lisa believes there is a need for more strategic planning by the user education committee.

The committee also agreed that considerations related to revising the membership of the committee will not be considered until after the creation of the new committee charge.

Lisa will have a new committee charge drafted for the November meeting.

6. Curriculum Mapping Workshop

A discussion took place concerning the number of workshops and the targeted participants for each workshop. It was decided that there would be several workshops that target librarians serving certain academic disciplines, but that librarians from other disciplines would not be excluded for attending.

During the November or December meeting, a prototype workshop will be conducted.

The workshops are planned for February 2003.

7. Information Literacy Standards

The committee discussed adopting a set of information literacy standards as a teaching tool. Lisa will look into whether the library has adopted any instruction standards in the past.

8. Events

Lisa encouraged committee members to either email or discuss with her any possible Teaching Alliance event ideas for this coming spring. Programs should relate to undergraduate education, which is the Teaching Alliance theme for the year.

User Education Lunches were endorsed as an activity the committee would like to continue. The format will include a guest speaker who will speak for a short amount of time. Lisa will look into reserving on of the rooms in the Illini Union for Thursday, November 7, 2002. The committee requested that Lisa speak about the Vision Statement and the Future of User Education at UIUC.

Respectfully submitted,
Ely Anderson