Present - Karen Hunt, Linda Dixon, John Dobson, Jackie Mikolash, Anne Cramb, Janet Johnson, Ken Fox, Lois Macdonald, CJ deJong, Linwood Delong, Tim Allen, Michael Hohner
Regrets - Peter James, Christine Cullingworth
1 January – March 2006 Reference schedule - GroupWise appointments were sent in December 2005 and have been received by Reference staff. Rescheduling of these appointments has been done since last meeting by notifying J. Mikolash. She has been finding replacements and using the Group Wise calendar to send appointments
2 Weeding of Reference Collection - CJ and Janet have started with bibliographies. They have received feedback on this and will develop further strategies based on this feedback Discussion re feedback on the project will take place at Library Council.
3 Kids in the Library – Grant may be placing an eMac in the Kids Korner. It was noted that teens prefer the regular workstations. A list is being kept and 41 children and adolescents have used them since January 1, 2006. Following a discussion regarding policy for ages 12-16 using the workstations, it was agreed that a consistent policy was needed.
ACTION- Karen and Janet will draft a policy and send it to Library Council. For now it was decided not to log adolescents in.
4 Journals from Storage Update – Elaine Morris now has access to Reference emails and is handling the requests for journals from storage.
5 Tech Update- Discussion about ABCCLIO and new databases: CSA and Globe and Mail. Links have been added to the website. There was discussion regarding loading of images from Globe and Mail.
ACTION John Dobson may be able to provide training.
6 Library Catalogue – Linwood pointed out examples of search option inconsistencies. Different options appear depending where in INNOPAC one searches. Linwood suggested a standardized list of search options be in place.
ACTION John and Linwood to work on the matter.
7 Michael’s Updates
7.1 Michael reported there are 11 new iBooks and 11 new Dell laptops that will be loaned out from Circulation. The laptops will connect to the secure wireless network. Both sets of computers will have DeepFreeze on them and will have a “Thaw Zone.” Deep Freeze protects and preserves original computer configurations, eliminating routine IT maintenance while allowing complete unrestricted access to a workstation. Regardless of the changes made to a workstation, a simple restart or reboot of the system will reset the computer/laptop to the original state. The “Thaw Zone” on each system will allow users to store documents locally on the system in spite of system reboot/restarts and crashes until they can move them to another storage medium. Eight of the iBooks are ready to go. Carmine has finalized the image for the Dell laptops and will image the other laptops the end of next week. Both the Dell and Apple laptops will have a generic login. With the Dell laptops, students/faculty/staff can use their Novell username/password to login. If users login with their Novell username/password, they will be able to print to the print hold queue and release their jobs to the printers in the 4th floor Reference Room (just as the wired PC workstations in the Library and Learning Commons do). The Apple laptops will only have a generic login. As with the eMacs, printing is not yet available. The goal is to have these Dell and Apple laptops made available and promoted to students during Reading Week as workstations become in short supply at the end of term. There’s still quite a bit to do to organize and provide appropriate documentation and training. One thing that will be on each laptop is a pop-up warning about DeepFreeze and options for saving one’s work.
He mentioned they’re are looking into moving 16 workstations that are affected by glare from the sun
7.2 Big Mac problems – Grant is working on them, Tim Allen will do a how-to page for scanning. Karen Hunt requested a demo when ready.
7.3 Accessibility workstation - has been relocated from the Stimpson Media Gallery to the 4th floor reference area adjacent to the Reference Desk and the 5 stand-up workstations. This workstation is for Special needs persons only. Password is issued by Jess Roebuck in Student Services. An LCD monitor and a network connection will need to be setup before this workstation is made available again. It should be ready in the next couple weeks. There is also a scanner for this workstation for use with the JAWS software. Signage is needed for the workstation. A demo was also requested when the workstation is fully ready.
ACTION - Tim Allen will work on them.
7.4 Work Station reimaging- Michael Hohner has been in contact with Dave Bell regarding this. There have been problems with network and computer speed. Priorities are to upgrade Acrobat Reader (to v. 7), OpenOffice, Firefox and RealPlayer.
7.5 DVD/CD Duplication – Michael noted that he’s working on getting a vending machine for selling DVD, CD and other media and useful products before we promote a DVD/CD duplicator that we recently purchased. The DVD and CD duplicator is currently in the back of media.
I have not been able to get page images on the Canada's Heritage site to load in I.E. 6.0. I had to use Firefox for testing. Can anyone confirm this, or say whether this is an acknowledged issue?
Reference Meeting
January 20: 2:30 to 3:30
Location: 5th Floor Meeting Room
Jim to cover Desk.
Agenda:
Most of the Reference staff probably know by now that Simon Fraser University did a server migration in December, and that it took several days before the U. of W. campus domain-name server picked up the new IP address for CUFTS. SFU has acknowledged having some problems with the new servers, which have intermittently caused the CUFTS searches to time out or to display server errors.
On a different note, communication between GODOT and OpenILL, which depends upon email, has been interrupted recently by a number of spam attacks. Although Heather Mathieson and Dave Kisley have been working hard to overcome this, Reference staff should encourage patrons to verify that requests for any urgently-needed items are showing up in their OpenILL orders list in myCybrary. Receiving an email confirmation of the request through GODOT provides no real guarantee that the request has been read into the OpenILL system. However, we should be somewhat circumspect about how we present this information to the public, as we don't want to undermine confidence in OpenILL.
These two problems are totally unrelated, and it is just bad luck that they have both hit us at the same time. I'll try to do a better job in keeping staff abreast of similar problems in the future.
When browsing by Publication in EBSCOhost databases, users may have noticed that for most titles, a journal ID (JID) and database name (DB) are given. These can be used to create persistent links to the title. For example, the link to Windspeaker in the Canadian Reference Center is http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?db=rch&jid=GN5.
I wondered why some titles, such as the Winnipeg Free Press, did not have a JID displayed, and this is the answer I got from the company:
The Winnipeg Free Press is a newswire title and due to the way we receive this content, we are unable to provide full publication details for this title. Because this full content is not displayed on the “Publications Details” page, you cannot link to this page via an EBSCOhost persistent link. We are looking into ways to refine this process. We can, however, provide a persistent link that will bring you to the Result list. This will display results for all issues, but users may then refine their search from this page.
The persistent link to the Results list is: http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&bQuery=so+winnipeg+free+press&db=rch
The display given by the first method leads to a hierarchical (drill-down) display of volumes and issues, while the second leads to a results-list of all articles in reverse chronological order. The first method seems to me to be greatly preferable, so if it becomes available for all titles, I hope to implement it consistently on our site.