Reference Services Committee Meeting Minutes
August 13, 2014 9:30-11:00am
Alice Moulton Room – Gerstein Science Information Centre
Present: Patricia Ayala (Gerstein); Patricia Bellamy (Robarts, on behalf of Debbie Green); Maria Buda
(Dentistry); Chad Chrichton (UTSC, via Skype); Margaret Fulford (Laidlaw); Lucy Gan (East Asian); Angela
Henshilwood (minutes, Engineering); Holly Inglis (Rotman); Vanessa Kitchin (UTM); Marc Lalonde (ITS);
Judith Logan (Chair, Robarts); Courtney Lundrigan (Trinity); Sara McDowell (Robarts); Irene Puchalski
(Architecture); Natalya Rattan (Fisher); Nalini Singh (Inforum); Rita Vine (Library Admin); Karen Wishart
(Emmanuel/TST); Dawn Wong (Canada Hong Kong/East Asian); Stephanie Orfano (Scholarly
Communication & Copyright Office); Tim Neufeldt (Music); Nich Worby (Robarts); Heather Buchansky
(Library Admin); Michelle Spence (Engineering); Lisa Gayhart (ITS); Klara Maidenberg (Scholars
Portal/Ask Chat, via Skype).
Regrets: Agatha Barc (Victoria); Allison Bell (Gerstein); Joan Links (Media Commons); Patricia Serafini
(OISE); Kimberly Silk (Rotman).
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Selection of a minutes taker - Angela Henshilwood volunteered.
Minutes of last meeting accepted with no changes. Thank you to Jesse Carliner.
Business arising from the minutes: None.
Report from ITS – Lisa Gayhart
 Update re: website redesign
 Completed first round of user consultations
 Ready to start shopping around example pages for feedback – will be circulated this
week and taking suggestions/feedback
 Then will be sent around to wider community – if you have suggestions for who to send
to please let Lisa know
 All information about website redesign is on ITS website
 Many ways to provide feedback: button on right side on ITS website; Email:
web@library.utoronto.ca ; or reply to emails/calls that come to you.
 Links to sample redesigned pages: Homepage draft design & Sample interior page draft
design
 Selected details about website changes:
 Trying to provide similar look and feel across U of T
 Blue band will always be across top of page
 UTL Web search will be more robust
 On homepage:
o Top Three buckets: Research, Services, Libraries and contain most
popular content
o Bottom three buckets: Collections, UTL News, Events & Workshops
o Very bottom: Featured Titles
o Redesigned the footer
o On side: Ask Chat, Banners/highlights, Boundless Campaign
 Interior Page:
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o Banner and search box all the same as homepage
o Grouping info better; Research on the side
o Persistent banner ads
Judith regarding her placement with ITS:
 Part of Judith’s role was to go through every single published page on UTL
website
 Compared web pages with the UTL style guide and will start meeting with
content providers regarding how to update pages soon.
Questions for Lisa/Judith:
 Tim Neufeldt: Question about mobile display: Lisa responded that it will be
responsive and the information will be stacked. There will be a menu button (3
lines, “hamburger button”) that will produce a list of menu options. Also, there
will be a persistent search icon. It will behave similarly to catalogue which is
now responsive.
ITS report continued: Mark on updates to Blackboard (Bb):
ITS redesigned Library Resources feed that users see when they logon to Bb
Wanted to bring the redesign in line with website redesign & catalogue redesign
Same info that you would currently see in Bb but redesigned:
 Generic Boxes – for subject (e.g. Anthropology)
a. Article databases
b. Quick Links
c. Research Help
d. Search box
 Librarians will be able to customize boxes
 NB: Article databases – same as what you would see for Subject A-Z, so if there
is a database you want to feature you have to put it in a custom box
Heather Buchansky additions:
 Changes are a result of consultation with students, faculty and librarians
 New additions to quick links: e.g. Assignment calculator
 Research Help more prominent
 Search box is similar to what you would see on UTL website
Question from Chad Crichton (Skype): Will the library website link in Bb always go to
UTL by default and then we can custom or might it go automatically to UTSC for a UTSC
course, etc.?
 Rita Vine – the course code can point to the campus but couldn’t be
more granular than that.
 Courtney Lundrigan – some courses typically come to Trinity Library but
not always clear by course code
 Rita – not a great idea, e.g VIC 170 is a scientific/bio course so not useful
to point them to VIC Library
Marc: we will send the sample redesign links for Bb to the listservs and please use the
“Bb Feedback” link on right side
5. Michelle: LibGuides 2.0 Update:
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Transition to LibGuides 2.0 has been delayed
Transition should take place in Spring 2015, which gives us time to clean up our guides
Springshare recommends cleaning up and consolidating guides before migration
795 published guides in our system
We all have to review our content
Michelle/Sarah Forbes, had a practicum student from the iSchool look through all
published content
Student Advisory Committee had feedback from students saying that they couldn’t find
the guides that they needed to use
Michelle showed “History General” section as an example: lots of “history general”
guides and very hard to determine which one to use
Recommendations from practicum student’s findings:
 consolidate similar guides – there is a lot of duplication – both in subject and
course guides
 Update links; practicum student found lots of broken links
 Remove copied content that’s not appropriate or useful (e.g. “use menu at top
of page” but there is no menu on top of page)
 A lot of guides are text heavy. We must use the “Web Style Guide” to revamp
guides
 Multiple guides still refer to “Scholars Portal” search
 Multiple guides with instructions on how to use the old 360 link
 Provide more information about why a resource is useful / more useful than
another
 Review guides from the perspective of the user – may have been migrated from
old guides or print guides – doesn’t need to be a bucket list of everything that is
available for a particular subject.
Judith is updating the LibGuides guide for authors and she will send that out when ready
Author guide includes a flow chart to help with deciding if you need to create a new
guide
Sarah McDowell: number of different people contributing to the same subject:
important to have cooperation between the various contributors
Michelle: thank you for bringing that up – we do need cooperation between various
groups because all the LibGuides appear in the same place, even though they may be
created in different libraries
o Example: Mindy created a great guide for Patents and Michelle used
this guide for Engineering & Computer Science Library – instead of
creating a whole new guide. Collaborated with Mindy to make it useful
for ECSL users as well as UTM users
o For similar subjects/topics, there should be one guide with many
collaborators
More important suggestions:
 Don’t associate course guides with subjects
 Don’t associate guides with subjects only peripherally related to the subject
 Course guides are not always being dealt with properly, e.g. naming formats are
not always being followed properly
 Add the guide link directly into Blackboard
 If you have a course guide make sure it has a “course” tag
 Remove course tag or unpublish the guide for courses that are not ongoing
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Question from Chad C: If we aren’t associating research guides with subjects will
Blackboard still be able to pull them in correctly.
 Judith: in Blackboard “Fixit”, custom boxes appear first on the page – so put the
link to course guide there instead of leaving it to appear in the “Research
Guides” bucket.
 250 guides unpublished, lots of guides with very few hits
 Springshare has a migration checklist for guides and Michelle will share with all
 Sarah M: sounds like a great initiative and we appreciate all the work you’re doing on
this
 Rita: We must think about new people coming into the fold and ensure adequate
training. Is it a good idea to have a semi-regular training session for new staff? Maybe
bring Blackboard “Fixit” tool and LibGuide training together?
 Michelle: We usually have training sessions in August and we may do something
in August/September
6. Stephanie Orfano re: update on Syllabus Service
 Memo sent out to faculty in mid-June
 We offered copyright compliance checking and licensing services
 Any syllabus sent to us before August 1 has a guaranteed completion date before
September start of school; syllabi submitted after August 1 are being completed on a
first come first serve basis
 In discussion with reserves staff: the service seems to be working
 Memo directed faculty to send course syllabus to course reserves or Office of Scholarly
Communication & Copyright office inbox
 Course reserves are scanning more material and uploading to Blackboard – because we
can buy licenses now, through the Copyright Clearance Center
 But not all items have licenses that can be purchased and so those items are going to
course reserves (but majority of things can have license purchased)
 $10 000 spent on transactional licenses this year
 Also a lot of faculty’s requests falling within fair dealing
 Contact Stephanie or general office email for more information
 A lot of the copyright questions are coming from liaisons – which is good.
 Question from Margaret Fulford: what kinds of things are you getting licenses for?
 Stephanie: a lot are for books that an instructor wants more than one chapter
for, scanned and put on Blackboard
 Question from Courtney Lundrigan: how often have you not been able to get licenses?
 Stephanie: there have only been a few and it’s usually because the instructor
wants to use such a huge portion of the book – but we haven’t had to turn
down many requests for licenses
 Canadian material is definitely lacking on the Copyright Clearance Center
 Question from Patricia Bellamy: does your office handle e-books that only allow one
user but professor wants to require it for a class of 200?
 Stephanie: no, so we will have to talk to Caitlin about this
 Holly Inglis has come across this problem and emailed Weijing Yuan
(weijing.yuan@utoronto.ca) who usually responds quickly.
7. Rita Vine re: Internationalization at Universities and Libraries (report from ALA Heads of Public
Services Meeting):
 Information from a presentation at ALA Conference about internationalization of
universities and libraries
 U of T is not the only institution increasing international student rates
 Paper by Steve Witt – from University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana
 Steve took a survey that had been administered to university provosts and
conducted the identical survey with senior library administrators
 52% of campus administrators said international students are a priority but less
than 20% of library administrators said this
 Paper shows that the library may not be serving internationalized students well
 Heather B. & Rita V. will be talking to various groups around campus to increase support
 Paper Title: “Mapping Academic Library Contributions to Campus Internationalization”
in College and Research Libraries, accepted May 27, 2014.
 Patricia B: this is an important issue and our own institution places a huge value on the
institutionalization of our student body
8. Heather Buchansky: Update from Student Engagement Librarian
 looking for volunteers/participants for orientation activities:
 T-Card line up in September – long line ups, and long waits
 So library staff asked to help out for first week of September
 Answer questions, and make it a welcoming environment
 General orientation
 Club Fair
 Giveaway – buttons from Heritage U of T (includes hashtag)
 New event: grad BBQ
 Sept. 2 – grad fair
 August 29 – International Student Event
 Two sessions both with 75 students each in Blackburn room
 Please contact Heather B to participate
9. Judith Logan: Ask a Librarian for Fall 2014
 Jeff Newman stepped down as coordinator and Judith has taken over
 Inviting those willing to contribute to Ask a Librarian – minimum shift is an hour
 Training on September 19, 2014.
 Ask usage is very strong at U of T
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Very busy and there are a lot of U of T callers so it’s important for us to have a strong U
of T contingency of operators
 Email Judith L. if you would like to contribute
10. Other Business – Courtney Lundrigan
 Guide on the Side
 Thanks to Lisa and ITS it is now up and running
 If you have emailed Courtney to get access as of this morning you should be able to
access and start working immediately
11. Meeting adjourned.