Department Meeting Minutes 10-19-10

1. Links added to website (Bill) - a number of links have been added to the department website, most coming via The Sunlight Foundation presentation during the 6-state virtual conference. Included under Federal Contracts are fedspending.org and USAspending.gov. fedspending.org is also under Economic Crisis and Stimulus. Under Contress and Legislation, opencongress.org (covers 111th Congress) has been added. Under Legislative Process, two URLs have been added for Govtrack.us which allows you to keep up with Congressional activities and Politiwidgets which has widgets you can add to your websites. The new version of the Federal Register has been added to Regulations as well as GovPulse which is an independent source offers mapping of regulations by geography. The National Data Catalog link has been added under the Non-governmental section of Statistics, but "in progress" will be added next to this link since it seems to be still in development.

2. Changes to the department Blog (Bill) - the blog software has many new features that we plan to incorporate to create a new look to the blog. The two columns will be reversed (folks think anything on the right is advertising, so that info needs to be on the left). The left column can also include sections for Popular Posts (based on number of hits) and we can add widgets from agencies such as Congress, CDC, EPA to highlight particular blog posts. Bill suggested we review the test blog and send him feedback. It is available at: http://testgovpubs.blogspot.com

3. Tiny.url/Bit.ly Demo (Bill and Jennie) - these are simply ways to shorten URLs particularly for mobile devices which limit the number of characters. It is more convenient for users. It can be done individually at either website, or, it can be automated with a Firefox add on. Jennie uses when she is sending a URL to a user via email. You can create an account at the website and customize shortened URLs.

4. Twitter Introduction (Bill and Jennie) - Twitter is simply another means of communication that allows you to send messages (limited to 140 characters) to your account and to follow the accounts of others. It can be used by Gov Info as another way to publicize what we do. At a meeting yesterday, a Libraries-wide Twitter was discussed which we can contribute to as well. Bill showed us the Twitter account that Deborah Fink has set up that is separate from what the Libraries will do. Our own Twitter account can be very automated to pick up blog posts so little extra work is required.

5. ICPSR (Jennie) - Jennie and Peggy attended a presentation by Jani Little, the Director of IBS on the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) that provides access and maintenance of archived SAS, SPSS and STATA datasets in the social sciences as well as online analysis using SDA. It was founded by the Poli Sci department at the University of Michigan and institutions pay for membership. ICPSR maintains the data and migrates it forward. They also maintain access through authorization, fees and rules. You must create an account to access datasets. All CU Boulder students, faculty and staff have privileges. You can search the site to see if datasets exist for your topic and filter your search by categories provided. Jennie showed UN Roll Call data that she found for a student. There is a resource record for ICPSR in the Libraries' catalog and it is included under Statistics in Find Articles and More. Users will need to have some skill with research statistics as well as with SAS, SPSS and/or STATA to use. If needed, users can get assistance from IBS (see their website).

6. Due to the time, it was decided to postpone discussion of the new OECD iLibrary interface.

Technical Services Meeting, 10/5/2010 - Minutes

1. Peggy's announcements:

* Jennie attended the PS meeting this morning.
* We will not make a formal announcement for Linda's retirement until we have more information about filling her position.
* We will arrange to go out to lunch in Linda's honor on the last Tuesday of October (October 26th).
* The monthly Research Desk meeting is at 10am tomorrow.
* Please give your comments about the IMF data in Lexis/Nexis datasets to Peggy by next Tuesday.

2. Tassanee - questions and comments

* How many uncataloged GovInfo titles? somewhere between 1-2 million (not including the 3 million titles in NTIS microfiche)
* We are still sending out UN materials with call numbers to cataloging.

3. Y 1/Serial Set discussion

* These decisions were made:

1. Y 1s with a PASCAL offsite location: Suppress all items and checkin records
2. For Y1 checkins, use: Latest in the checkin record. 866 0 |80|aLatest
3. When students item convert the last Y 1 in a report series, they will need to
notify Sheila? Deb? so the checkin record can be deleted.
4. Several language options were suggested for a public note in Serial Set checkin records
(on Y1 records) to notify library users of Serial Set year and report year
discrepancies. We'll think about them and decide at a later date (next
technical services meeting?) The public note would be in a 863|z field.
The options are:

1) Year of this report may be earlier than year of Serial Set volume

2) Serial Set volumes may contain reports for previous years

3) Report year may be earlier than Serial Set year

4) Serial Set year and report year may not correspond

5) Serial Set year and report year may not be the same


4. GovInfo email cleanup: We will move all resolved emails to a Resolved folder. Pat volunteered to take care of this.

5. Linda shared some questions/comments from Michael Dulock about the ERIC documents load:

* do we want an 049 field?- Probably not
* records may have 099 and 086 fields - ok
* most records have one 655 form entry - take them out

6. Oversize issue: There are two call number sequences in the oversize areas: one sequence for the upright books and another for the ones lying flat. Decision: we will make labels referring people from one section to the other both in the federal area and in Norbase.

7. Preservation: Sheila brought us several concerns from Preservation about disbinding items and tipping material in. She will post procedures to the wiki for disbinding materials and adding single issues (mainly items received from the Offers lists). Sheila will approach the Preservation team about training someone in GovInfo to tip in single sheets and ask them to provide us with supplies.

8. Security Issues were discussed and a field trip was taken. A key will be given to staff who need one.

Leanne Walther, Recorder

Department meeting 9/28/10

Department meeting, September 28, 2010
A. Peggy’s report
1. Staff were urged to attend the police session on active shooting incidents on the campus. Students were encouraged to attend the sessions on harassment.
2. Linda Rogers will be resigning as of October 31, 2010. Peggy has submitted a support document to the cabinet outlining the urgent need to fill this position ASAP.
3. Proquest, not Readex will be issuing the British parliamentary papers on microfiche in the future.
B. Meeting adjourned to view a U.S. Census Bureau Statistical Abstract 2010 demonstration by Leanne. Leanne also announced that the American Community Survey Fact finder had been reloaded. Jennie will demo the OCEDiLibrary in the near future.