Reference Librarians' Page

The link to our web page with the information on our Dissertation Abstracts request policy is

http://www.knox.edu/library/Library-Services/Interlibrary-Borrowing.html#dissertations

This may be useful if you want to include it in an email to patrons.

We continued our discussion from the last meeting concerning what we are truly trying to assess (students retaining and applying the skills we teach throughout the course to create a final paper/project vs assessing what students remembering at the end of our sessions) and some of the obstacles we face attempting to do that (we must have faculty and institutional buy-in if we are going to be able to assess student learning at this level, since we are at the mercy of what faculty want and will allow us to do).

We decided that we were going to go ahead with determining our 3-5 goals, and then present them to depts/faculty/administration. If we can get faculty/admin to validate that our goals are important learning outcomes, we thought we would have more support when we actually began trying to assess them during our instruction. We thought this might also lead to a larger institutional effort to include/adopt information literacy education in a more structured way. Additionally, we talked about using faculty surveys as an assessment tool -asking faculty we did instruction sessions for (at the end of the term?) if their students were able to find good sources and use them in their research. If we decide to do faculty surveys, we talked about coming up with a standard set of questions so we have consistent responses from faculty.

**Homework: Before the next meeting, we are all going to look at the list of 10 outcomes we came up with and determine which (in our opinions) are the top 3.

Next assessment meeting will be Wed, May 19th at 9am.

During this meeting, we began discussing the ten learning outcomes we had previously identified and tried to determine their priority level and methods for assessing them.

#1 -By students’ second year at Knox, they will be able to find a book in the catalog, retrieve the call #, and find it on the shelf.

• Generally, this was thought of as a relatively high priority, but there was some disagreement.
• We discussed how this was hard to access, but how that shouldn’t necessarily stop us from choosing an outcome like this. This outcome is a specific skill/task, opposed to the other outcomes, which were more general. We also noted that this was the only outcome talking about student library skills across the board, instead of just the students we teach in our instruction sessions.
• Methods discussed for assessing this were: 1) pre/post test, 2) tracking reference questions with more of an emphasis on student level, 3) orientation and extended orientation activities, 4) tutorials, having students complete a library portfolio, 5) tracking students to know which students have heard certain library instruction sessions before

#2 - Recognize/understand different source types / formats (ie databases, catalogs, reference)

• When we started discussing this one, we were thinking it was a high priority. We determined that in order to assess this one, we would need to look at individual bullet points to decide which to access. We also said that this outcome has the potential for getting into disciplinary outcomes.
• Assessment methods discussed were: 1) pre/post test, although we said this method would be problematic to assess if students got the larger theory, 2) look at students’ bibliographies to see if they used a variety of sources, 3) library assignment to find something in every format
• Laurie brought up how teaching students different information formats may not be helpful in the future with discovery tools / federated searches. Instead, it would be more useful to focus on teaching students how to evaluate information sources to determine if they are scholarly vs popular, primary vs secondary, disciple vs general. It would be more useful for students to understand how information is produced in the scholarly community. We talked about teaching/assessing this possibly by having students identify different types of sources in our instructions sessions.

At the end of the meeting, we started discussing how we needed to assess the product of our instruction sessions, not just the skills during or immediately after our sessions, to really assess student learning. If we could see the final product in the courses we do (such as the final paper), we would be able to see if students retained and applied the skills we taught to accomplish a goal. To assess student learning at this level, we would really have to make a push in our sessions to get the faculty to show us student assignments. We said that if we could align our student learning outcomes with departmental goals/outcomes, we have a better chance of faculty buy-in, which is what we would need to succeed in our assessment program.

We briefly started discussing the possibly of surveying the faculty regarding student information literacy abilities and what they wanted their students to do. This would be on a course level, so we would be working with what we already have.

We set ourselves a deadline of the end of May for decided which 3-5 learning outcomes we would pursue.

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, May 12th at 9am.

List of learning outcomes we discussed:

1. By their 2nd year at Knox, students should be able to find a book in the library catalog, retrieve the call#, and then find the book on the shelf

• Fits with Standard II, Goal 3, Bullet 1
• Notes: Could be difficult to assess. Is it a problem that it is not necessarily achievable?

2.  Recognize/understand different source types / formats (ie databases, library catalog, reference material, bibliographies,etc)

• Fits with Standard I, Goal 2: identifies variety of potential sources of information, distinguishes the purposes of different types of resources (Popular and Scholarly), recognizes how different formats vary in use and importance with each discipline
• links to Standard II, 3 - retrieves info from a variety of formats
• links to Standard III,2 -evaluating info sources
• links to Standard I, 3, 4 -exploits efficiencies in databases, catalog, indexes, etc. Understands value of specific types of resources

3. Recognizes how information in a field is organized.

• Standard I, 2 - recognizes that knowledge is organized into disciplines that influence the way information is produced, organized, disseminated and accessed

4. Search Terms / Conscious Search Strategy

• Standard II, 2 - identifies keywords, synonyms, related terms

5.  Citations - Reading, Creating, Using.

• Standard II, 5, 2 - recognizes the elements of a citation
• Standard V, 3 - uses appropriate documentation style
• Standard V, 2 - student understands ethical, legal and socioeconomic issues surrounding information

6. Citation Management - Ref Works. *This could be included in #5

• Standard II, 5, 3 - uses various technology to manage information and organize

7.  Using Bibliographies & footnotes from found sources to further research. *This could be included in #5

• Standard II, Goal 4, bullet 3 - examines bibliographies

8. Evaluating information

• Standard III - We discussed how this is often something we mention tangentially in intros, etc., but that only comes up substantially in some instruction sessions - for example if Evaluating Websites is one of the concepts covered.

9. Understands Plagiarism *Included with #5?

• Standard V, 2, - student understands ethical, legal and socioeconomic issues surrounding information

10. Ethical issues related to finding and using information *Use in combination with #9?

• Standard V, 1, all bullets - demonstrates understanding of laws, regulations and institutional policies
• Note: Again we often refer tangentially to some of these things, but not frequently.  Not sure how we could incorporate due to the practical,faculty chosen focus of most of our instruction

I.Subs
a.Sharon needs someone 12:10 on Friday – Jeff will do
b.Sharon needs someone Monday at 1pm – Laurie will do

II.Miscellaneous

a.PSA Job Search

i. Sharon gave a brief update

ii. Jeff requested a summary on each of the PSA candidates that we were interviewing

b.Sharon asked Laurie about using Ref works for footnotes in Chic Manual of Style format.  Turns out you must use the word footnote feature to create the footnotes, and then place your cursor next to the footnote to use Write ‘n cite from Ref works.

III.Ref Desk Issues / Assignments

a. Someone had a student saying they needed to find a 15 page paper all on one specific painting for S. Lindquist’s class.  We talked about the oddness of the assignment, and some strategies for using the Ebsco interface to limit size of article.

IV. Interlibrary Loan

a.Everyone had not had a chance to review the finalized cancel reasons, so folks will try to do that by the next meeting

b.Laurie asked if we could add a reason for Item not in English.  Sharon said yes, and that she will do that (it has now been done)

V.WOS / Scopus trial

a.Laurie has not yet heard back from Scopus, so that trial has not been set up yet.

b.WOS trial has been set up and started

c.Advertising steps

i. Right now we’ll wait a bit to see if we can get both up

ii.Soon after both up we will set up a training/exploration session for ourselves

iii. Sharon will contact the Science Departments (w/Anne when relevant) and try to arrange demos for them. She’ll also try to see if there are a couple of classes she could work with.

iv. We will send a general notice to Fac – Staff list

v. Sharon & Jeff will work on getting Office of Institutional Research, Center for Undergraduate Research, and maybe other offices involved.

vi. Other liaisons will contact individual faculty / upper level students as they see appropriate when they think someone would benefit from the increased indexing in a subject or from Citation Searching.

vii. We will create a survey to gather input after the trial

d.Springer E-Book Opportunity

i. CARLI has not loaded records yet – so access is via the links we received for now.

ii. We need to read Laurie’s email before the next mtg, and start planning on how we want to handle this locally and notify our patrons.

VI. Guest Wireless in the library – We need to flesh out a policy – some issues to be decided

a. Invited Guests - connecting invited guests with their sponsors – clearer sense of how we will do this, and what PSAs will do when Ref Libs not avail.

b. Invited Guests after hours – set criteria when we will act as sponsor if sponsor has not done the appropriate thing ahead

c. Library Guests –

1. Students and faculty from other institutions wanting wireless – draft criteria are below,

2. Working on something academic / education related

3. Public machines won’t meet their need because they need to use software not on those machines, or they need to use the internet for an extended period of time.

4.Will be using library resources in some way – either print or online.  i.e. can’t just go to Kaldi’s and do what they want to do.

5. But we need to clarify how we’ll determine these things and to what degree

d. Prospective Students / families after hours & on non event wireless weekends.  There was agreement that it is not really the library’s role to provide wireless for these constituents.  However, it was pointed out that there could be times when the college would feel strongly that these people should be accommodated even though the correct people had not set it up in advance.  Sharon suggested that Jeff should contact Admissions & the computer center to make sure they were aware of this situation, so that they could plan for it.  If they wanted the library to step in for situations like this – we would want to hear that specifically from them – and that they had agreed together (Admissions/Computer Center) that this was important and not to high of a risk.  They would need to give us specific criteria to decide when it was appropriate to provide this access.  There was still some feeling that we should not get involved in this type of access at all.

Notes – Reference Meeting 1/21/2010

I.                   Substitutions

a.      Sharon & Anne will switch AM/Aft on Monday 1/25 (note : in the end they switched back)

b.     Heather & Anne will switch AM/Aft on Thursday 1/28

II.               Assignments / Ref Questions to be aware of

a.      Art has an assignment – see lib guide

b.     Ed 207 has to use Refworks to share their bibliographies.  Instructions are included in their libguide.

c.      To get to department folders on public terminals go to My computer – type in //departments.knox.edu

III.            ILL

a.      Cancel Reasons – Sharon indicated that she had changed the cancel reasons and asked everyone to look at them and make any suggestions or corrections.  Off the bat it was suggested that the reason wording, not just the note be differentiated for the Knox subscribes online reason where a print out of the article has been made and the Knox subscribes online reason where a link has been provided.  Sharon indicated that she would do this.

b.     Sharon indicated that she would also send out a detailed email about the status of the ILL manual for reference librarians with info on what we should be looking at / reviewing next.

IV.            Ebsco News – Sharon relayed what she had heard about Ebsco getting exclusive rights to full text from numerous Popular magazines including News magazines like Time, Newsweek etc., Political magazines such as The New Republic, Health Magazines, Business magazines, etc.  What we don’t know is if these will be in Academic Search Premier or just Academic Search Complete.

V.                Web of Science /Scopus – We will have a side by side trial for these in February.  Jeff and Sharon will work on a plan to involve The Office of Institutional Research and the Center for Advanced Study.  At next ref meeting the librarians should decide how to advertise to faculty & students.

VI.            Database procedure – At one of our December meetings we decided that each subject librarian should add to a spreadsheet Jeff would create databases or digital products in their subject areas that they thought Knox needed to meet the needs of students in their departments.  Jeff had created this, and there is also a tab for general databases.  Everyone will try to do this by the end of January.  (Note after the meeting it was decided by email that librarians would just put whatever general pricing they knew, but that we would not get actual price quotes at this time).

Ref Mtg Notes

11/19/09

Attending :  Anne, Heather, Jeff, Laurie & Sharon

I.                   Subs – none needed

II.               Extra Reference during finals?

a.      Reported on “On Call” service last Saturday

                                                              i.      Only one call was made, and SCs phone was not working properly so she did not get it.  The PSA then passed on the query to the 1^st Sunday Ref person.

                                                            ii.      Kathy reported 3 folks who needed help, but declined to have her make the call

b.     Discussed if should repeat this weekend, or have actual staffing Fri or Sat.

c.      It was decided that Jeff would staff the desk from 6-9pm on Friday.

III.            Reference over the break – it wsa decided to go with the same system used this summer, for there to be an on call schedule given to PSAs, and that person will be on call for reference questions, and also be expected to process the ILL requests that day.  Jeff will not be responsible for the ILL requests on his days, but Sharon & Anne will alternate checking on those days.

IV.            Assignments to be aware of  -

a.      Sharon noted that on Sunday there were 3 folks working on papers that they needed secondary sources for .  In the main these were classes where  most of the folks had already done their research earlier :

                                                              i.      A Classics Course

                                                            ii.      Civil Rights Course

                                                          iii.      Fairy Tale Course

b.     Laurie noted that the ENVS local projects/papers were already handed in, so we shouldn’t get any more of these students.

V.                Tech Day

a.      We will have a meeting to touch base and make sure everything is set on Thursday Dec 3^rd at 3pm in the Staff room of Seymour Library

VI.            Discussion of Agenda Items for Ref Meetings During the Break

a.      Agenda Items Tabled or to be dealt with in a different way

                                                              i.      Shifting Project – no Ref Mtg discussion needed.  JD, AG &SC will arrange, but will let Ref staff know once planed what will be moving and the time frame, and then again when it is complete – so they will know for helping patrons and so Laurie can update the online maps

                                                            ii.      Ordering - What will the ordering deadlines/system be for faculty depts this year? – SC & JD will decide and communicate to Ref staff – hopefully soon

                                                          iii.      Chat Ref Pilot – Heather will work on this, with Laurie’s help for the tech end, and let us know the plan at one of the winter Ref mtgs – but the Ref staff in general will not be planning.  Then after Winter Term, we would want to discuss in depth, decide if we want to add Chat Ref, etc.

b.     Agenda Items Selected

                                                              i.      User Satissfaction Feedback Issues

1.      Review Library issues reported in SLC Survey

2.      Review our current Suggestion Box program

3.      Look at the option of an online suggestion box program if Laurie here’s back from web folks that we could add a form

4.      Consider if we want to do anything else along the lines of obtaining user satisfaction feedback.

                                                            ii.      Digital Licensing Process Review

1.      Review revise our current system for reviewing purchases for the next year

2.      Figure out a way to do more earlier in terms of figuring out trends and needs and issues, so that in the Spring that part is done and we can focus on final decisions and prioritizing then – rather than just starting.

3.      Right now we say that starting in the Fall Liaisons should be reviewing digital products and needs in their departments, and checking out things via Try It Illinois – and continue to monitor and assess this in Winter, but without some sort of scheduled feedback – this tends to happen to sporadically.

                                                          iii.      ILL Guidelines for Reference Staff

1.      SC will have reviewed and potentially revised some (mostly removing duplicates or errors only) the draft document by Nov 23^rd.

2.      SC will assess which issues are incomplete in the document, and which issues have not yet been addressed in the document, and make an outline of this by Nov 23rd

3.      SC will email everyone pointing to the revised draft document and the list of issues

4.      Ref staff will then meet about this at one of the winter meetings, and potentially divide up tasks and/or figure out which ones need to be addressed as a group etc.

5.      Goal – by start of Winter term to have something better than what we’ve got now – but not necc having all the issues resolved.

VII.         Meeting Schedule for Winter Term

1.      Dec 1^st 9:30am – Agenda items : Brief outline of Chat Ref proposal; ILL guidelines for Reference staff

2.      Dec 3^rd 3:00pm – Agenda item : Touch base on Tech Day

3.      Dec 8^th 9:30am – Agenda Items : Digital Licensing ; User Satisfaction

4.      Week of Dec 14^th – TBA if needed, knowing some will not be here.

If you get a patron who tries to log into ILLiad and they get a message saying they have been ‘disavowed’ and they can go no further in the system, here’s how to fix the problem:

1. Log into the ILLiad client.
2. Search for the customer and bring up the customer record.
3. Reset the password — just click the reset password button on the right.
4. Tell the patron what the new password is and have them login to ILLiad. You should also suggest that they change the password to something they choose.

Irene explained that this problem happens when the patron has created two ILLiad accounts and then we merge the two accounts.

Please place a comment below indicating any ideas you have for topics for individual sessions at our tech day over break.  These don’t have to be ones the library would do - also include ideas for ones that the Computer Center or OIT or visiting speakers might do - any ideas for content, you don’t have to have a presenter in mind.

I’ve been asked to post the procedure for finding items in the cataloging backlog.  I will put it as a post here,  link it as a word document in the resource links on the blog, and print it out and put it in the Reference Binder at the desk.

Cataloging Backlog Items

When you see an item in the OPAC (the web/public version of the catalog) and it has no call# or no location or the call# is obviously incomplete it is an indication that an item may be in our cataloging backlog.  Because Voyager in the OPAC only shows certain status designations, and considered something in “Cataloging Review” to also be “Available” there is no way to tell from the OPAC if something is in the cataloging backlog.

So, when this  happens, or if you have looked for a book on the shelf an can’t find it.  The next step is to see if it is in the Cataloging Backlog.

To Check if An Item has a Status of “Cataloging Review” i.e. in the Cataloging Backlog

1. Look the item up in a Voyager staff module - either Circulation or Cataloging will work for this part - but only Cataloging will work for the 2nd part - so it is best to start in cataloging unless you just want to quickly find the status.
2. To look it up in Circulation, follow these steps :

• Click on the Item Icon
• Click on the … next to the barcode entry box
• Search for the item using whichever index you want
• When you have the item on the screen, click on the Status Icon - this is the one that looks like a graph.
• This will list all the statuses in the top half.  If one of them is “Cataloging Review” then the item should be in the cataloging backlog

3. To look the item up in the Cataloging Module

• Click on the Search Icon (Magnifying Glass)
• Search for the book/film
• When you have the bibliographic record up on the screen, click on the “Get Items” tab
• With the item record up on the screen, click on the Status Icon - this is the one that looks like a graph.
• This will list all the statuses in the top half.  If one of them is “Cataloging Review” then the item should be in the cataloging backlog

Finding the item in the Cataloging Backlog

1. Find the bibliographic record in the Voyager Cataloging module
2. Click on the history tab of the bibliographic record
3. Check to see who created the record.
1. If it lists load - then it is pre-Voyager - follow those steps below
2. If it lists a person - then it is post-Voyager - follow those steps below
4. Find the correct bib number
1. Pre-Voyager - look for an 035 field that has a subfield 9 - the number in that subfield is the Horizon Bib number.  That is the number you need.
2. Post-Voyager - look at the bib number at the top of the screen, where it says bib…. followed by a  number.  That is the Voyager bib  number, that is what you need.
5. Check the size - look at the 300 tag at the subfield c for the centimeters.  If it is over 30, then you will want to look in the cataloging backlog oversize.  If it is under 30 it should be in the regular cataloging backlog.  If it is blank, then you should start with the regular backlog and check the oversize if not found there.

Finding the item on the Cataloging Backlog Shelves

The cataloging backlog is in Sharon Clayton’s office

The items in the Cataloging backlog are in order by either their Horizon or Voyager bib numbers depending on whether they are pre or post Voyager (see above).

The bib  numbers are written on yellow slips that stick out of the items.
The regular Cataloging backlog section starts in the open bookcase on her South wall that is closest to her door.

It continues through till the 2nd to the last shelf of that bookcase, and then jumps over to the glass fronted bookcase along that same wall, but closest to the window.  It continues in that case until the 3rd to the last shelf.

The Oversize Cataloging backlog section starts on the last shelf of the open bookcase on her South Wall that is closest to her door.

It continues through to the glass fronted bookcase along that same wall, but closest to the window.  It continues in that case on the last two shelves.

What to do when you find an item in the Cataloging Backlog

About 95% of these items are special collections materials, so they cannot be just given to patrons.  It is not easy to tell if something is not for special collections, so we treat everything in this backlog as if it is.

If it is during special collections hours, you may bring the item up to the special collections reading room for the patron to view.

1. First, write the bib number and the title on a slip with a note “Taken to SCA Reading Room” and put that note in Sharon Clayton’s mailbox.
2. Bring the patron and the item up to the SCA reading room
3. Give the item to the SCA person on duty, who will then give it to the patron and record the regular things they record for readers.
4. Tell the SCA staff person that it should be returned to Sharon’s mailbox or office chair when they are sure the patron no longer needs it.

If it is not during SCA Hours

1. Notify the patron that they will have to come back during SCA Reading Room hours to view the item, and tell them when those are.
2. Write the bib number and the title on a slip with a note “Taken to SCA Reading Room” and put that note in Sharon Clayton’s mailbox.
3. Bring the item and your master key up to the SCA Reading Room
4. Write a note indicating the patron’s name and that they will come back to see sometime soon when SCA is open
5. Leave the item with the note on the end of the first long table in the reading room.

If the patron indicates that she/he cannot come back and so is not going to view the item - then leave it on the shelf in the backlog, but make a note of the bib number and title and leave that in Sharon’s mailbox saying that a patron wanted, but could not wait.