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September 22, 1999
Attending: Sarah Thomas, Elaine Engst, Lenore Coral, John Saylor, Christian Boissonnas, Diane Hillmann, Lee Cartmill, Ross Atkinson, Lynne Personius, Susan Barnes, Pat Schafer, Linda Westlake, David Corson, Gordon Law, Ann Gray, Susan Markowitz, Susan Currie, Paul Constantine, John Dean, Steve Rockey, Jean Poland, Jim LeBlanc, Peter Hirtle, Kathy Chiang, David Block, John Hoffmann
Sarah Thomas announced that her annual report to the Provost will be made available on the Web. She asked that staff continue to send her information about their achievements. In response to her Executive Letter which is distributed to over 7,000 friends of the library, and which she will distribute to the staff, Sarah received a hand written note back from Hunter Rawlings in which he thanked her for the letter and for the "good work" of the library. Sarah thanked the Council members and, through them, the entire staff for their contributions.
Lynne Personius reported on the status of the Voyager implementation. The Sun hardware is up and running; pointing your browser to http://library7.library.cornell.edu will allow you to connect to the training database. Endeavor has held two training sessions: a technical session for technical staff and two planning session, one for the Implementation Steering Committee and the other for the Implementation Management Team.
Pat Schafer, the Library's representative on the First Year Experience Committee (originally the North Campus Planning Committee) distributed the Committee's charge and membership. The goal is to blend academics with social life more effectively on North Campus in order to enrich the intellectual life of freshmen students. One way to achieve this is to provide more opportunities for the freshmen to have contact with the faculty. The Committee created several subcommittees over the summer. Pat is a member of the Resource Center Subcommittee. The Subcommittee is working to set up a North Campus Resource Center staffed by upperclass students to disseminate campus information in a high visibility/high traffic location. Pat believes that the Library could help provide training and resources for this venture, perhaps some Library Kiosks and "chat" reference.
Ross Atkinson reported on the West Campus "post-freshman" initiative. Dean Ford's report to Susan Murphy called for more faculty involvement outside the classroom. Isaac Kramnick is chairing the West Campus committee Ross said that the Library should work closely with the faculty who will be involved in this effort. We should also be considering residential instruction programs and training student assistants to provide basic information support on West Campus. Ross said that the Public Services Executive Committee is working on ideas for proposals/suggestions to Kramnick's committee.
Paul Constantine said that O/K/U Reference is planning a "chat" reference experiment soon. Also, Martha Walker and Michael Engle had done some "traveling instruction" programs and that their experiences might be helpful. Lynne Personius said that the Library should consider offering undergraduate or graduate assistantships programs for students willing to be trained and serve as student assistants. Lenore Coral mentioned that student assistants in the Freshman Writing Program get paid while they are trained over the summer; the Library might consider this approach.
John Saylor reported on the wireless networking used in the Engineering Library. Two hubs in the Library provide network connectivity to laptops and hand-held devices fitted with wireless networking cards (on loan at the Library/computer center) and with drivers loaded (done by computer center staff,.) The hubs cost $1000 each and the cards $299. One hub can support multiple users but there is degradation in service when the load gets too high. Both low and high-end users appear to be satisfied with this set-up. "Nomadic" computing decouples instruction and research from location. John offered to lend a hub to other units that want to try out this approach.
Ross Atkinson reported that a growing number of research libraries are lending laptop computers for use in the library. This allows users to put print and networked resources side-by-side in library carrels and reading rooms. Ross noted that some institutions reported that this service is staff intensive. When laptops are returned, a program must be run to restore the drive to its original state. He also noted that this type of service is likely to be short term in that over time, most users are likely to come to the library with their own laptop or other portable device.
Lynne Personius reported that Sun Microsystems will soon make available a networked computer ("Corona")--a thin device that when plugged into a network gives it full capabilities. Files and applications reside on the network and are downloaded as needed. The computer has lots of memory and processor power.
John Saylor presented the draft Report of the Computing & Information Science Brainstorming Group, available through the Staff Web page or directly at http://www.englib.cornell.edu/cul/cistf/cistf.html. Sarah formed the brainstorming group to recommend ways the Library can support and participate in the initiative to advance Cornell's leadership in computing and information science. Sarah will bring the recommendations to the Task Force on Computer and Information Science, of which she is a member, for possible incorporation into the Task Force's final report. Members of the Brainstorming Group include: Susan Barnes, Kathy Chiang, Paul Constantine, Anne Kenney, Tim Lynch, Zsuzsa Koltay, Peter Hirtle, Jim LeBlanc and John Saylor, the chair. The Group's draft recommendation calls for creation of a sub-unit on Information Science within the proposed Faculty of Computing and Information Science, The IS sub-unit would serve as the "locus for theoretical and applied research and education programs in information science" around the university and in particular for the "research and teaching efforts of the Library." Librarians would have the opportunity for adjunct appointments so that they could teach or co-teach courses. Librarians would also collaborate in teaching and research with other faculty members in the IS subunit. Comments from Council members about the recommendations were supportive and John asked that additional comments and suggestions be sent to him or the other brainstormers.
Edward Weissman
Assistant to the University Librarian
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