Instruction and Reference Program Committee (IRPC) Meeting Minutes, 10/20/03

Announcements: 

• At the time of the meeting, there was a problem with "permission is denied" when using ILLIAD. Users can try to reconnect or move to another machine. If that doesn't work, report to LIBIT-L
• Ken Bolton has been hired as Reference Specialist in the Management Library.
• Lynn Thitchener has been promoted to Reference Specialist in IRIS Reference.

Instruction Survey:
Ira Revels presented some preliminary results of the Instruction Profile that she created using data gathered from CUL unit libraries this past year. The goals for the Profile include:

• disseminate final report
• identify data elements that are important for evaluation of instruction programs and necessary for reports to various agencies
• propose a tracking model for capturing these data elements.

It was suggested that preparation time is an important element related to instruction and that perhaps a standardized evaluation form should be created that could capture some of the desired data elements.

Electronic Document Delivery Service: 
Terry Kristensen and Jesse Koennecke made a presentation and handed out a program description about MyDocumentDelivery, a service that will be tested during a pilot program in Spring 2004. Mann, Vet, and Entomology will be the participating libraries, but users from anywhere on campus may request documents. The pilot will be targeted to faculty, staff, and graduate students and materials provided will include paper format journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, conference papers, parts of musical works, and manuscripts. This is a fee-based service and scanned documents will be placed on a server for access. An online form will be available from the MyLibrary home page or through the Interlibrary Loan page.

Factiva Interface:
Lynn Brown and Angela Horne demonstrated recent changes to the Factiva database interface. They have created a temporary user guide (temporary because they hope that Factiva will change some of the more problematic new features of the interface), which helps with Factiva searching.  It is available on the JGSM library web site http://www.library.cornell.edu/johnson/library/databases/factiva.pdf.

IRPC special session:
The group discussed the possibility of sponsoring an open session to discuss the role of commercial (or perhaps broader than just commercial) reference services in academic reference settings. It was suggested that this could be framed as part of a larger discussion about the underlying principles of academic reference services what criteria need to be met for a successful academic reference service. People seemed to think that a regular meeting, rather than a brown bag lunch session, would be better attended. Framing the issues and providing a literature review ahead of time was advised.

Bob Kibbee reminded the group that IRPC Steering is considering the topic of "Strategies for Outreach to Academic Units" as the Spring Break 2004 IRPC Retreat topic. Any suggestions are welcome.