General Faculty
C-7 Library Committee

Report of Meeting
2004 January 21

The Library Committee of the General Faculty was priveleged to listen to Damon Jaggars' presentations on Library Instruction, Information Literacy, and Virtual Reference. Details are provided in the report listed below.

There are several issues of interest to graduate students listed at the end of the report:

• Library budget. We have not had a good review of the library budget for over a year. Since the budget directly impacts student fees, we are concerned that costs are kept reasonable but that quality is not sacrificed.
• Pickle Research Campus (PRC) feasibility study. The library is looking at the feasibility of moving additional support activities to PRC. We want to hear about this to be sure graduate student services are not negatively impacted.
• Changes at Undergraduate Library (UGL) at the Flawn Academic Center (FAC). Several campus activities are moving into the FAC (such as campus computing services) and others are proposed.such as the School of Information. We want to be sure the moves do not negatively impact the quality of services available to graduate students in the short term.
• Associated with the short term impacts, we are also concerned that realistic plans are in place for long term development of FAC.
• Using the influence of the Library Committee to affect university issues. We have a concern that the General Library administrators have a tendency to "go it alone" rather than requesting help and influence of Library Committee members to achieve information management goals at UT.

Graduate student representatives to the Library Committee will continue to monitor progress on these issues.

Melanie Ulrich
Hannnah Fischer
Don Drumtra

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University Library Committee Meeting Minutes
January 21, 2004

Next meeting: 2-3 pm , Friday, February 27, 2004

Student Library Committee (SLC):

• Currently, no need for a meeting between SLC and ULC
• Will keep lines of communication between the two groups open

Library Instruction [Damon Jaggars]:

• 2-tiered model
  • library classes or in-class instruction
  • integrating information literacy into the curriculum
• Faculty can schedule a session with a library instructor
• Instructor and faculty work together to design a session that is relevant to the class
• Subject specialists (bibliographers) do most of the instruction
• LIILS (Library Instruction and Information Literacy Services) provide support
  • http://www.lib.utexas.edu/services/instruction/index.html
  • Teach the instructors
  • Provide general undergraduate instruction
  • Class of the Day, Faculty Refreshers, Online Tutorials
  • TILT (Texas Information Literacy Tutorial) - http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu/

Information Literacy [Damon Jaggars]:

• Ability to function in society
• Able to identify and articulate an information need,
• Knowing resources are available and how to interact with them
• Can make decision as to whether information is relevant and reliable
• Able to use and cite the information
• Information literacy is not separate from education, from the classroom, it is used and performed by everyone
• Assessing information literacy is difficult
• Finding out where students are, what they know and how they learn
• 2 projects underway for assessing information literacy
• SAILS (Standard Assessment of Information Literacy)
• ETS (Educational Testing Service)

Virtual Reference [Damon Jaggars]:

• ?Ask a Librarian
• E-mail
  • Receive a response within 2 business days
  • Almost 1500 email requests in the past three months
  • Majority of questions about the map collection
  • Majority of users are off-campus
• Chat
  • Used a lot by students
  • Not yet open on weekends, evenings
  • Many questions about using the library databases
  • System can provide a transcript of chat session to an e-mail address
  • Can push web pages to users
  • Always provide the user with the source of the answer and how the answer was found

Topics for Spring 2004:

• Library budget
• PRC feasibility study
• Changes at UGL, FAC
• Using the influence of the ULC to affect issues
• UGL's vision and plan