Instruction/Reference Program Committee (IRPC) Meeting Minutes, 11/25/02

1. ENCompass: Karen Calhoun and Nan Hyland presented updates on the development of the e-Reference collection using ENCompass. Much of the discussion focused on the Find Articles feature, which allows searching across multiple databases. The second round of user studies have been completed and CUL volunteers are also testing they system. The ENCompass Team will be back in the Spring with more updates. Powerpoint slides from the IRPC presentations are available at the project web site: http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/encompass/

2. LexisNexis: After a brief discussion, the group decided to keep the "Quick News Search" as the default home page, rather than switching to the "Guided News Search" as the default.

3. CUL Events Database: Kornelia Tancheva and Thad Dickinson presented a prototype for this database. More details about the project and prototype screens are available at the project web site: http://www.library.cornell.edu/events/. [Nan subsequently forwarded a message from the Events Database working group to IRPC -- please take a few minutes to look at the web site and submit your feedback to the group.]

4. Census 2000: Bob Kibbee reviewed Census 2000 and previous census data availability. Some highlights: Summary File 3 is now available online in American FactFinder at www.census.gov (as well as on DVD, which is "first-release" data and in a CD-ROM product from GeoLytics). Summary File 4, which includes data with "characteristic iterations" (e.g. race and ancestry) is scheduled for release April-Sept 2003. Reminder that although 1990 data is available online, some of the tables are still only available in print. Since we also had a brief discussion about Census humor, the following is for anyone who didn't think there might be something humorous to be found in the census: http://www.theonion.com/onion3612/us_population.html .

5. Announcements: IRPC Retreat will be March 17th, 2003 with the theme of "Reference Services in the Digital Age". The Steering Committee is accepting ideas for 15-20 minute presentations.

6. Next Meeting: Monday, December 16th, 2002, 8:30am