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Notes from the 12/10/97 meeting
Attending: Ross Atkinson, Lee Cartmill, David Corson, Janet McCue, Ed Weissman
1) Brief items Ross reported on the progress of the Public Work Station Replacement Group. One question that has arisen is the extent to which LMS proprietary clients might affect the recommendations of the Task Force on the most appropriate platform(s) for public workstations. He also reported that Tom had authorized the ordering of 43 15" multiscan monitors with the $10,000 made available for this purpose. This will insure monitor upgrades on all of the Library's Web-capable public work stations.
We discussed the formation of the Electronic Resources Council. Ross expects to name the members of this body shortly.
Ross discussed the possibility of creating a steering group for the Instruction and Reference Program Committee, similar to the one recently created for the Access Services Program Committee.
2) Library Gateway User Support We reviewed the user support proposal from the Library Gateway Steering Committee and the discussion about it that took place at the Public Services Program Committee meeting. We affirmed the recommendation that reference desks serve as filters for user questions associated with the Library Gateway. When necessary, queries can be forwarded to a listserv subscribed to by appropriate staff in LTD and Mann ITS who will be responsible for responding to the user about connection and other technical problems. We agreed that this list should be open for subscription by any interested staff so that they can become familiar with the issues being addressed. Ross said that a subgroup of the Instruction and Reference Planning Committee will create a list of the kinds of questions reference desk staff can expect to receive along with responses to common problems. This group will also work with Zsuzsa on the content of a public services training program to be held in January prior to the start of the spring semester.
3) Access to non-CUL Campus Library Resources
We discussed alternative ways to provide access to the resources of non-CUL campus libraries, such as the Alternatives Library. We want CUL users to discover unique materials of value that are available to them on campus. On the basis of discussions in the Technical Services Executive Group and the Public Services Planning Committee, it is clear that adding non-CUL catalog records to the Library catalog would impose an added burden on both technical and public services. The maintenance of the catalogs and the catalog records should be the responsibility of the owning units. We agreed, instead, that the best approach is to provide links to these catalogs through the Library Gateway. We discussed the idea of developing an informational document on issues associated with creating and linking library catalogs, e.g., the value of Z39.50 compliance to allow for better integration with the CUL catalog.
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rev. 12/23/97 dih