September 17, 2015 Meeting of Area Studies

Time and Location of Meeting

September 17, 2015

Agenda Details

Agenda

Agenda not yet available.

Minutes Details

Minutes

IAS Staff Meeting

Reference User Services

September 17, 2015

Present: Atoma Batoma, Kit Condill, Shuyong Jiang, Lisa Renee Kemplin, Joe Lenkart, Laila Hussein Moustafa, Antonio Sotomayor, Mara Thacker, and Steve Witt

Announcements & Accolades:

  1. Strategic Planning Deep Dive follow up at 1pm today. Please attend if you are able and report back to IAS.
  1. Several trainings scheduled this afternoon see emails from libnews.
  1. IAS potluck is Thursday, October 8 from 12-1 in RM 323c. Please come and bring a dish to share.
  1. IAS is hosting a panel lecture on Tuesday, October 13 from 11-12 featuring Marta Terry who will be discussing libraries in Cuba.
  1. Chai Wai is scheduled for Wednesday, September 30 from 3-4:30. 
  1. Latin American Film Festival begins Friday at the Art Theater. 

Discussion:

  1. The second staff meetings of the month (third Thursdays) will be dedicated to Reference User Services. All IAS staff are now part of that committee. This meeting will establish an agenda for the year. Robert Sarwark will be working with this committee as well.
  1. Goal setting from our last staff meeting was summed up in three areas: collections, campus engagement, and summer lab programs. 
  1. Reference statistics are used to determine funding for libraries. Our stats are down and we have some subject specialists that have not entered any data. Please use desk tracker for all reference questions. Mara suggested a follow up with patrons to gauge satisfaction with services. Antonio suggested making sure that you include the IAS reference email in out of the office messages. These are also good to have in any sabbatical messages.
  2. Discussed the Bento Box Interface and limitations with regions, languages, and areas of expertise of IAS staff. Some changes have made the searches better but still could use improvement. This has not yet gone public. Steve had invited Bill Mischo to this meeting but he was unavailable. May invite Bill for a future meeting to further discuss this issue. Steve suggested that we may want to have Rob work on finding scripts that have issues with this interface.
  3. Ongoing projects carried forward from last year include the organization of the IAS Reference Collection and review of serials and space.