Friday, October 19, 2001

Session V: Highlights of the Breakout Discussion Groups

Session 1: Surprises and Strategic Issues

 

Detailed notes from the breakout groups are transcribed in a separate document.
The highlights are the points reported back from the groups in a plenary session.

Report 1

• We need to learn more about users. Develop and encourage library staff to work more closely with teaching faculty.
• We mustn’t forget the importance of primary source materials.
• What are the roles of and relationship between discovery tools and the library catalog? Evaluate their currency, breadth of scope, and quality of resources.

Report 2

• There is a need for in-depth user studies.
• There should be more collaboration on collections and access issues.
• We need to define exactly what the role of the library is in this.
• Collection Management/Knowledge Management vs. Access: What does it mean? And building collections vs. building access?

Report 3

• We need to study users’ information-seeking behavior.
• There is a need to ensure quality control of both access and resources.
• Train new librarians for this area.

Report 4

• We need to study how users use information. Know when to shut up.
• Mein Über-philter: a library should be embedded within other portal development.
• Born-again digital: i.e., print.
• Communicate positive role for libraries. Involve IT folk.

Report 5

• Surprise: The lack of consensus on innovative, creative, agile solutions.
• Strategic Issue: We need to learn to prioritize what we should be doing.

Report 6

• Use studies should deal with use, usefulness, and usability. We should also ask "Why?" when there isn’t use.
• One of the barriers to collaboration seems to be ranking; a call is made to abolish numeric ranking schemes.
• We need to collaborate on building tools.

Report 7

• With all the changing and/or blurring boundaries, we should leverage the ambiguity and act.
• We need to learn both from and about users.
• There is concern that the collections budget is being "violated," but in this changing environment, what programs and/or activities should be supported by the collections budget?

Report 8

• We are spending less time on collection management (partly due to aggregate purchases).
• We should be willing to have more experimentation and risk.
• We should pay attention to ease of access vs. quality of information.
• There is a lot of duplication of effort.

Report 9

• Managing change: within the organization.
• Managing change: radical, heterogeneous plurality across the university.
• Multiple models of scholarly communication.
• Assess the use, utility, and impact of electronic and print.

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