Minutes - 2009 08 24

In attendance: Barbara O’Neill, Emily Papagni, Stephanie Debner

Note: The team decided to leave meeting scheduling flexible, with each meeting day/time determined at the previous meeting. The team’s next meeting will be on Tuesday, September 29 at 3:00 p.m.

1. Policy page follow-up
a. Emily has heard from some libraries about their policy pages, either that they have been updated or that an update is planned.
b. The team divided up the list of policy pages to check for updates and update ourselves if necessary. If there are contact people missing, the team is to e-mail Emily for that information.
c. Barbara asked what L-Net staffers (Oregon) should do if Ohio librarians send a question into follow-up that could have been answered had they looked at the policy pages? Emily would like these transcripts to be sent to her or Caleb for follow-up.

ACTION ITEM: Team members will review/update policy pages by the next meeting.

2. Virtual reference research
a. Spurred by the difference emphasis given to the reference interview by L-Net and Oregon librarians, Emily proposed that we investigate the literature on virtual reference and the importance of the reference interview. In her own research, she found that not much was currently being written about the reference interview; rather, she found research about the importance of establishing rapport with the online patron.
b. As a follow-up to this, Caleb had suggested that L-Net librarians do their own research about the reference interview and its place in chat reference; this research would serve as an update to Caleb and Loree Hyde’s 2006 article.

ACTION ITEM: Solicit interested parties to conduct/write up research. Possibilities: Stephanie Debner, Michele Burke (Chemeketa). Emily will contact Michele about her interest in this.

3. How to and how not to staff L-Net: videos
a. No more than 2 minutes each
b. 2 companion videos: one on best practices (what to do) and one on what not to do
c. The team will need to recruit actors and create a storyboard or script that lays out the main ideas we want to get across.
d. Videos can be posted on the L-Net site and used for trainings.

ACTION ITEM: Team to brainstorm points that the video(s) should make by the next meeting.

4. Mentoring program
a. The discussion of this topic has good timing, as Emily has a number of trainings coming up and she would like to be able to announce that the program is starting up.
b. The team determined initial parameters for the program:
i. The mentor will not work at the same library as the mentee.
ii. New L-Net staffers will be enrolled in the mentoring program as soon as they have completed L-Net training (with Emily) and assigned to a mentor.
iii. The mentor should be initially available as someone with whom the mentee can practice.
iv. The mentor should be available during the mentee’s first few live shifts and/or the mentor should read through transcripts and give feedback to the mentee (this is especially important if the mentor is not able to be available during the mentee’s first few shifts).
v. The mentor and mentee will both commit to 3-6 months in the mentoring program. Since traffic and number of shifts vary quite a bit, we thought that this timeframe would provide ample time for the mentee to feel comfortable staffing the service and for the mentor to provide feedback and other pearls of wisdom.
vi. At the end of the 3-6 month period, both mentor and mentee will complete a short evaluation/survey of the mentoring experience. Feedback will be used to improve the program so that it can best meet the needs of L-Net staffers.
c. Since this is a new/pilot program and we’re not sure about levels of participation, the team decided to prioritize L-Net participants for mentoring: (1) new staffers at partner libraries; (2) new staffers in the volunteer program; and (3) people staffing their own service.

ACTION ITEM: Stephanie will draft a mentor recruitment e-mail to be sent out to the list.

5. The item on screencasting was tabled.

6. Homework assignment pages.
a. With the goal of building up the list of homework assignment pages as a valuable resource for staffers, the team decided to solicit memories of assignment topics from the list.

ACTION ITEM: Emily will send out a message to the list to solicit assignment topics.

7. Notable transcripts.
a. While this recognition program is currently on hiatus, it was suggested that we might start reviewing transcripts for e-mail answers to acknowledge the excellent, in-depth work that is done on these kinds of questions. This suggestion came from Laura Orr in response to the excellent work done on a patron’s e-mail question by another law librarian.
b. This item is under review and will be kept on the agenda for future meetings.

8. Policy pages for libraries who are not partner libraries
a. As a follow-up to the L-Net statistics of number of questions by library compiled and sent out by Caleb on 8/14/09, Emily made a list of all non-partner libraries with over 40 questions. She thought it would be helpful to develop policy pages for these libraries, if possible, to assist L-Net staffers; she was also thinking about contacting these libraries to see if someone would be available for e-mail/follow-up work with their patrons.
b. This item will be revisited at the next meeting.

ACTION ITEM: Emily will set up/update policy pages for Cornelius, Forest Grove, and Tualatin (Washington Co.) and for Lake Oswego, West Linn, and Wilsonville (Clackamas Co.)