Present: P. Bischof (co-chair), N. Brailo, A. Concepcion, L. Demsetz, C. Lee (co-chair), C. Lunde, C. Tarr (recorder), R. Tennant, B. Whitson
Announcements
1. Four library employees will attend the RUSA conference on Users in a New Millennium. They are Nensi Brailo, Phoebe Janes, Pat Maughan and Debbie Sommer.
2. Corliss, Phyllis and others attended the Brown Bag on One Time Investments to Improve Library Operations. Draft ideas need to be in by Nov. 6 so that like proposals can be consolidated and the final proposals are due Nov. 20. Jerry Lowell will then review them with LPG. Roy Tennant discussed his proposal to attach digitized tables of contents and indexes to records in Pathfinder. His draft proposal can be seen at: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/~rtennant/pep.pdf.
3. Michael Shepler, Acting Chair of PSAG-TS, will be a "virtual" member of the task force. He will be on the PSTF reflector and will follow our work via minutes and other electronic discussion, sharing it with his committee as appropriate.
4. Bernie Hurley has been speaking with different units to discuss digital library planning. There is a call for a steering committee to develop the process and framework for digital library planning. The Committee will also set up criteria for ranking additions to the digital library and will define its scope. Bernie predicted that the Committee's work will be done in 3-4 months. The focus is to be on end-user service. As Bernie sees it, the problem with the digital library is not the technical infrastructure, but the need for intellectual organization of digital materials. He wants the end users to set the agenda. The PSTF may be the forum through which users and public service staff set public service priorities which the Digital Library Steering Committee can use in their planning.
Issues
1. We discussed scheduling for our brainstorming session. Mid-March may be a good time because of spring break, but we are contemplating having it earlier for maximum impact on the Digital Library Planning Steering Committee.
2. We discussed our plans for "Our Users Speak" [held Friday, 10/23].
3. Regina Minudri is scheduled for Nov. 18th in the Lipman room. We discussed what we wanted her to talk about. John Ober and Laine Farley will speak on Dec. 15. Both events are "early birds," scheduled from 8:30-10:00.
4. We discussed the visit of Katherine Mitchell at our last meeting. We agreed to use her services, and agreed with her suggestions to limit our brainstorming session to a) focus on users who use us now; b) concentrate on needs we know about; and c) focus on campus users. We then categorized the patron needs we had come up with at our last session as a practice for the larger, library-wide brainstorming session. Looking at the needs in categories allowed us to see the needs in context and as pieces of larger needs. Among many other things, we noted that study space in Doe and Moffitt has decreased substantially over the years, and that study space is a key need (perhaps the main need) for many undergraduates. We noted a need for browsable shelves, a need which has to do with compact shelving and storage, but also with the arrangement of the stacks. We noted a need to have books on the shelves, which is a need for enough copies of certain books, plus perhaps a reevaluation of recall procedures and loan periods, and possibly a reevaluation of how books are sorted and reshelved.
We decided to look at these needs further at our next meeting and compare them with the needs noted in the reports we have been studying.
5. Laura Demsetz, Professor of Civil Engineering and member of the Faculty Senate Library Committee, shared with us her "Day in the Life" faculty library-use study, giving us her own "Day in the Life." She noted that most days she doesn't go to the library, but on a day she does, probably once every six weeks, she: puts material on reserve for her midterm exams; browses the new periodicals; scans 15 books on a new area of study (either for herself or for a new class); and checks out about 5. She would have searched Melvyl at home, using the Ten and CC databases, and she would have checked the availability of about 20 items in GLADIS. She would have requested 5 articles from Baker. Her only interaction would probably be with the circulation staff.
Our next meeting will be on Nov. 5.