Naval Postgraduate School, MontereyCall to order:
present: Mary Housel (MCFL), Pam Downing (SCPL), Bjorn Jones (SPL), Jean Chapin (HML), Erika Johnson (MIIS), Irene Berry (NPS), Heather Geddes (WPL), Frank Gravier (UCSC).
Additions/Changes to the Agenda noted.
Adoption of Feb 2009 Meeting Minutes.
So adopted: these minutes are minimal, because the meeting was taken up with Judith Sulsana’s visit with the committee. Now posted to the MOBACREF Minutes page.
Reports:
Tech committee’s hands-on workshop is coming up April 8 at MPC library. The topic is Cloud Computing.
ILL committee’s workshop is going to be on Tuesday, April 13, at NPS a MOBAC Resource Sharing Workshop on ILL systems, with three systems featured.
SPLAMBA is heading into summer reading with the theme, Make a Splash! theme.
Old Business:
Recent job-seekers workshop. Heather acknowledged the technical problems with the recent hands-on workshop, “Helping Your Job-Seeking Patrons Thrive During Challenging Times”. Tip for future workshops: bring your own laptop, if you can. Overall, attendees agreed that the information on job-hunting resources was very useful and it was noted that the Webinar contained additional information. This workshop provided information on web sites, classes, lectures, job boards. Could this kind of material go to a dedicated terminal in the library? Noted during the workshop: the EDD form CAN be saved, but you need about two hours to fill it out properly.
New Business:
Plan of Service for this year. Admin informed us that a plan of service is no longer required under PLP. Pamela suggested a focus on Reference for the Future which could take in a variety of topics and services of interest. Ideas included The virtual library, databases and marketing them, the 24/7 model, issues with electronic and audio books and collection development that includes these materials. (How to get just one eBook title, for example). The role of devices like amazon.com’s Kindle. Loss of content when vendors of electronic content change hands. Self-check, single-point service desk, service model that uses rovers on all floors of library.
Locations for future meetings: please go to the wiki to sign up your library for a future MOBACREF meeting: we are only accounted-for up to May of this year.
Noted: $1700 was left over from program money. Pam asked about using some of it to pay for the refreshments at the MOBACRAF meetings, but we agreed that it was customary that each library provide a modest amount of food and drink as part of the responsibility of hosting. The group didn’t conclude discussion of what to do with the $1700.
Gale databases have lost some significant content. Eleanor Uhlinger, library director at NPS spoke briefly to ask the group to investigate what percentage of this content has been cut because Admin would like to have that figure in hand for negotiating a price for access to Gale’s The group discussed this new development and determined that Califa should be involved in finding out the answer to the question about the actual percentage of titles dropped. It was pointed out that numbers of titles aren’t the whole question: significance counts, too. The dropped content includes Time and Forbes publications. Mary Housel agreed to call Heather Teysko at Califa to get the ball rolling. Related discussion: are we interested in shifting to EBSCO or ProQuest? If the price was right, perhaps. EBSCO’s practice of a long embargo is a deterrent, some said, though the content may be better.
Reference Sources:
Gale’s Career Resource Center useful, and contains a resume-builder feature and lists of jobs. This information came out of the recent workshop the presenter gave it a B.
Irene reported on use of Library Thing to generate bibliographies of recent reference purchases, to keep them organized and present for librarians at the desk. Imported a comma-delimited list of ISBNs for reference purchases in last five years to generate a very nice list of new reference sources, with book covers displayed.
News from Libraries followed.
Minutes taken by Pam Downing, transcribed by Irene Berry