Public Services Committee Meeting: January 3, 2019

Conference Call / Adobe Connect

Members attending: Rachel Bicicchi (Millikin University), Marissa Ellermann (Southern Illinois University Carbondale), Aaron Harwig, co-chair (College of DuPage), Chad Kahl (Illinois State University), Joanna Kolendo, co-chair (Chicago State University), Nester Osorio (Northern Illinois University), Reina Williams (Rush University)

Members absent: Katherine Sleyko (Prairie State College), Nancy Weichert (University of Illinois at Springfield / Millikin University)

CARLI staff attending: Elizabeth Clarage, Denise Green

Decisions

• Our breakout session for the Change Management forum will focus the impact to public services with a change to a catalog. A focus of the presentation will be on the transition to Alma.  Each member of the committee should think about possible questions for the panelists for our next meeting.  Elizabeth and Denise will begin reaching out to contacts at Northwestern and Loyola to find panelists as those two institutions have migrated from ExLibris Voyager to ExLibris Alma.  
• Nestor will begin working on a document that will identify the goals of our annual project.  (See below for details).

Announcements

• Member Announcements:
  • Chad/ISU: The concrete for the plaza repair has finally been poured, which will allow portions of the library that had been closed because of water issues to re-open.  This area will be repurposed to include some new offices such as an Office of Student Research and Innovation.
  • Nestor/NIU: In collaboration with university administration, the library is hosting Orange I, a research/innovation lab, in their basement.
  • Aaron/COD:  Dr. Brian Caputo, previously VP of Administrative Affairs, has been appointed COD’s interim president, and a search for a new president is underway.
  • Marissa/SIUC: Dr. John Dunn is currently serving as interim Chancellor, and Dr. Kevin Dorsey is currently serving as interim President.  
• CARLI Announcements:
  • There were no announcements from CARLI.

Tasks Assigned

• Minutes taken by Rachel.
• Nestor will pull together a google document to outline a proposed structure for the annual project.  He aims to have this done by 1/22, but absolutely no later than 1/30.
• All members should review Nestor’s document before the meeting on 2/7.
• All members should be thinking about potential questions for the panel at the Change Management forum.  We will compile at the February meeting.

Discussion

• Change Management Program
  • Event is April 2, 2019.
  • The topic of the panel we are organizing will be about the impact to public services when migrating to a new catalog with emphasis on ExLibris’ Alma but may also include someone from a library that has changed to New VuFind.  
  • Both Northwestern and Loyola are already using Alma.  Elizabeth and Denise will reach out to contacts there to find panelists.
  • Some ideas for discussion topics include:
    • Can you share a general overview of  of the switch on public services?
    • How does the new system improve (or not) issues with link resolving?
    • Staff training: what materials are available to train both library staff and student staff?
    • Customization: how much did you choose to do and why? (e.g. customizing language, turning off public links that you can’t directly manage, etc).
    • Do you use single sign-on authentication?
  • We will compile additional question ideas at our next meeting.
• Annual Project
  • Several folks have added notes about their own institution to the Google doc.  Please consider adding to the document if you have not already done so.
  • Nestor suggested a database of survey instruments that could be used for public services assessment.  
  • Who is the audience for this project?  Each institution has a different structure and different people are involved in assessment.  We settled on aiming the project towards the person/people who are in charge of assessing public services at any given academic library.
  • Nestor suggested identifying key areas that can/ought to be assessed.  
    • The broad categories of public services were identified as reference, reserves, circulation, interlibrary loan, and space utilization/new spaces such as makerspaces.  (We also identified instruction as a public service, but they have their own committee and there are more resources available on assessing instruction).
    • For each of these areas, Nestor suggested identifying 2-3 core activities that deserve assessment.  So, for example, what are the 2-3 things that need to be assessed at circulation?   How do we use our data to demonstrate the value of our services?
    • If we identify 2-3 things per area, that would give us a set of 10-15 types of measurements that libraries can use.  
  • Nestor is going to pull together a rough outline/proposal of sorts.  (see task assignment).  

Next Meeting dates and Deadlines

• Next meeting is Thursday, February 7, 2:00 – 3:00 PM CST.
• Deadlines are as noted above in “Tasks Assigned.”
• Deadline to submit the annual project and annual report is May 31.