This summary will be submitted to the Public Service Council for future discussion.
Issues raised by the group for discussion:
* Future of second floor Doe--physical space and reference collections.
* Relationship between GSSI, Information Center and reference in the Doe-Moffitt complex.
* Electronic and internet reference.
* How do you do good reference when you don't do a lot of reference?
* Coordination of and integration of circulation and reference, as evidenced at Yenching Library at Harvard.
* Use of voice mail at reference desks--and complaints concerning its use.
* The role of library assistants and reference.
* People's views on who should do reference? All selectors, for example?
* How do we learn about the various branches and services around campus libraries?
General Discussion:
*Various options for Doe Moffitt were discussed. G.Lowell indicated his personal preferences, and plans to share these with the soon-to-be-appointed Doe/Moffitt Task Force.
* One well-supported desk (on 2nd floor of Doe) could maximize staffing and provide improved access to interdisciplinary resources.
* One way in which staff can help each other is to avoid giving negative responses to queries without first checking information with at least one other staff member.
* Mentoring is very important. If we have a number of people working at a desk at the same time, they can learn from each other. If tools are all in one place, and people who love doing reference are working together, there is a synergy. Although we have more and more to keep up on, with a high priority on training and keeping current, it is easier at a desk where varied people bring varied expertise to their work.
* There was discussion about whether there should be a minimum number of hours/week for an individual serving on a reference desk. Some participants felt that if reference staff serve only a very few hours a week, then they are not able to maintain the level of expertise necessary for good service. Others felt that the opportunity for staff from other units to serve on the reference desk was so valuable and enjoyable that a minimum should not be imposed.
*Although provision of excellent service depends upon constant training and upgrading of skills, it can be difficult for staff to attend whatever training is proferred if their jobs are too demanding to provide for time away from immediate responsibilities.
*It is important to convey the expectation that reference is important to us--that being on desk is a wonderful benefit to staff. It can enhance collection development and technical service work in that it provides the context in which our collections are used. Whether staff willingly provides reference depends in part on our culture; how is reference valued? Although there does need to be some flexibility in terms of who does reference work, if high value is publicly assigned to that work , it will tend to be a preferred activity.
* If we had a core of people doing reference, teaching, web work and guides, their expertise could be shared with others whose primary work is different. At Stanford and USC about 75% of queries are handled by general reference staff, with referrals to specialists providing third tier reference.
*Roy Tennant asked staff to think about tools which might help reference staff do their jobs. For instance, it is currently very feasible to create a web-based reference database to collect frequently needed information; this is an electronic descendant of the reference card/directory files which reference departments formerly maintained. Results can be edited immediately and easily. ENVI and Ed/Psyc also have online reference databases.
It is already possible to search all messages sent to the refstaff, risstaff (Info Center) and infogate (Information Gateway) reflectors (http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Reference). These reflectors are now being indexed automatically. We can index any kind of text we have, and can also create customized data bases.
Roy recently crawled the UC library web sites and indexed them. UCB's web site is by far the largest of the nine campus sites.
Lisa Weber discussed email to webman; she looks to the forthcoming Public Service Council to come on board and to deal with a huge complex of issues.
Ideas we'd like to try:
*Reference card --online-- files, as at ENVI and Ed Psych
*E-mail reference: Bancroft already provides it routinely. When the Sunsite gets questions from non-campus people it refers them back to their local public libraries. Webman gets queries which are routed around library to appropriate persons. Will be available as part of the experimental mode of Pathfinder 2. Roy Tennant has at his desk a copy of a dissertation on email reference done by the creator of AskEric.
*Chat room emails can be accomplished in real time.
*Roving reference.
*Coordinate with faculty to create reference advice via guides to be mounted on web on such topics as Japanese or Chinese names, or specific bibliographies.
*Revamp our web page. Dawn Talbot of UCSD is working on a portal project to make their page more user friendly, with a Yahoo-type search engine. An allocation of $100,000, part of which is undoubtedly for released time, supports this project. The University of Washington's web page is especially good in not using library jargon on its homepage.
*Future brown bags on specific public service-related topics.