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L-Net Services Team meeting

6 January 2005

present: Valery King, Jenny Takeda, Emily-Jane Dawson

The group attempted to discuss each of the recommendations presented in our charge. First we checked in about our communication methods, and decided that if we produce documents we would like to share with other L-Net people, we could make use of the wiki Caleb has set up. But for now we feel like communicating through email and the occasional phone or in-person meeting would be sufficient.

Recommendation #5: Explore appropriate roles for academic, public and school libraries and whether a tiered reference system is needed.

Pros and cons of tiered system:

Many academic library staff fear that if they designate their library as specialist in topic X, other librarians will forward all questions on topic X to them, even those that can be answered with resources that other libraries already have.

A tiered system will only work well with a process and guidelines in place.

We need guidelines for how email questions (in Ref Tracker) are handled. Do we use print resources? Can we fax materials to patrons? If we do introduce a formal, tiered reference system, how do we make sure that libraries across the state know to use L-Net rather than emailing or calling directly to the library they need? Would librarians across the state be able to direct their questions to a specific library, or only to the next step in the tier?

How would the technical part of a tiered reference system work? What does the Ref Tracker form say now? Can librarians check and see what qualities patron has indicated (e.g. high school student v. middle school student v. general interest etc.), instead of patron going into a designated queue?

Can we add a drop-down menu so patrons can indicate that the want a short answer or lots of resources to read or whatever?

With Ref Tracker now, does patron get an email notification when their question is referred to another library? Can we add this if it’s not in place?

LINK was mediated by a librarian – tiered service via L-Net may not be, as questions can be initiated there by users.

Academic, public, school libraries do different things, serve different communities, so it’s sometimes touchy for them to work with each others’ users. How do we make sure that librarians in all libraries have a system for getting help working with users they’re unfamiliar with (e.g. a high school student needing resources for homework that only OSU had, but resources used vulgar language – librarian wasn’t sure how to navigate the question and successfully got support from other L-Net librarians).


Recommendation #6: Among participating libraries determine librarians and collections that can provide specialized knowledge.

Depository libraries? ORBIS has a list of participating libraries’ collection strengths – that could be a place to start. Other ideas are: similar list from PORTALS, depository libraries (both federal and state).

Does Caleb have some of this collection strength information already?

How would we refer a patron to a non-L-Net library, either in Oregon or elsewhere (e.g. Oregon Historical Society or U Washington)? Should we mediate that referral, or just give the patron the information about how to get in touch with them? Guidelines?

How else can we find out reference expertise, other than noting what specialists academic libraries have?


Recommendation #9: Create a process for categorizing e-mail and chat content to provide clues as to what the current user-base looks like. Include categorization of subjects of questions. This can also be the first step in describing the subject specialties for which experts and special collections need to be identified.

Can this information be gleaned from some kind of report?


Other Things

We need a policy for dealing with mass questions like when there is a middle school scavenger hunt.

L-Net services for schools brochure has good information about making appointments etc., can we connect with the marketing team to see if they can promote this information more? Perhaps through OSLIS [http://www.oslis.k12.or.us∞] listserv?

Can we get a new scripted message to address busy times such as scavenger hunts?


Technology is a barrier for Beaverton Public Schools, as they are primarily a Macintosh system.


Ideas for gathering information for Recommendation #5

Focus groups?

Email seems like it is too easy to ignore – perhaps we should look at how many people we’d need to contact and see if we can call them on the phone instead? It would be easier for folks to commit to responding if we don’t make them do all that typing.


"Action Items"

Jenny will:
- ask Caleb about putting together a list of L-Net participating libraries & their level of involvement, a list of librarians with names & contact info., or related. Perhaps he already has this?
- will look through information on L-Net policies page, see if any of it can help us

Valerie will:
- get the ORBIS-CASCADE list of collection strengths
- get list of participating libraries and point-persons from Caleb, for surveying purposes
- find whatever evaluation was made of Reference LINK prior to or at the time it was disbanded, so we can examine for pros & cons of a similar system

EJ will:
- try to find information about collection strengths in non-academic libraries, perhaps from PORTALS or other consortia

And we will all start thinking about what questions we'd like to ask L-Net libraries about their needs regarding a tiered reference system.