| January 15 2008 Council Meeting Minutes |
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GRES Advisory Council Minutes
January 15, 2008
8:30-11:30 am
Present: Chane Griggs, Sandra Allen, Kathi Riddell, Jim Scheppke, Robert Hulshof-Schmidt, Arlene Weible, Crystal Knapp Chris Bell, Perrin Damon.
Absent: Kate McGann. (Chane, Jim, and Perrin left at 10:15)
Facilitator: Chris Bell
Recorder: Arlene Weible
Review and adopt minutes
The minutes were adopted with a correction of the spelling of Kathi’s name.
News and updates The Council has a web page: http://www.oregon.gov/OSL/GRES/advisory.shtml.
Sandra reported that the Legislative supplemental session will be challenging because of building renovation, and it may be difficult to find legislators and their staff. The renovation will be done in Nov. 2008. More info about the renovation can be found at: http://www.leg.state.or.us/restoration/
Jim and Kate met with the executive team at the Dept. of Employment, and Jim suggested more opportunities like this should be pursued. Kathi mentioned an Employment Research Team retreat could also include a library training component.
Chris reported that the new Oregon Transportation Commission chair has an interest in environmental issues and is emphasizing more sustainable practices for the agency. This includes increased emphasis on some non-road issues like public transit.
Robert reported several OSL personnel changes. Business Manager Keith Adams retired in December, and the new manager, Marilyn Wachal started at the beginning of January. HR manager Susan Payseno has left the agency, and recruitment for her replacement closes at the end of January. GRES Automated Services Unit coordinator position was filled with the promotion of Chris Adams. The open vacancy created by his promotion starts recruitment today, and will close in February. The position will include customer support, although Chris will continue listserv support in the interim.
The next State Library Board meeting is on Feb. 15, 2008 in Portland . The Budget committee will meet on February 14, 2008. At its last meeting, the Board approved the AskOregon policy package. Robert will send the detailed project plan to Council after it is completed.
Kate coordinated a program proposal for the SUMMIT training conference on using Web 2.0 in training. It was accepted as one of the keynote programs of the conference.
Review GRES draft Outreach and Training Plan Robert explained that the distributed draft contains strategies from previous plans plus data gathered during the brainstorm session at the last Council meeting.
Council comments on specific strategies:
Continuous Feedback - Council members commented on the negative perception of “at the point of contact” surveys. The real point is to know if the service is liked or disliked. It was suggested that a regular feedback form on the SEIC page could be used for users wanted to complain or give immediate feedback. Council suggested this is a low priority activity.
Letter to Agency Heads - Council suggested using letter to help identify library champions within each agency. Letter should go out in Spring 2008, after the supplemental legislative session.
Presentation at Small Agency Heads, Other Venues - Council suggested that large agencies should also be included, and emphasized the need to get to the smaller groups within agencies and not rely on the initiative coming from agency heads. A strategy for getting on the agenda of meetings would be to focus presentations on statewide topics of interest, such as agency histories, plain language, etc.
Develop Agency Champions - Council’s recommended strategy for identifying champions is to use networking opportunities, such as Leadership Oregon. Timeframe suggested: July 2008.
Listserv Advertisement - Council did not support strategy and suggested deletion.
Strategic Partnerships - Council suggested a future Council meeting should devote time to brainstorm session to identify more groups that could be targeted and have good networking opportunities.
Expand Lecture Series - Council supported adding additional programs, but warned that many state employees have inadequate technology or bandwith to access video streaming. Trying a pilot webcast for one of the lectures should help to identify all the issues and assess feasibility.
Newsletter - Council suggested a quarterly publication schedule and a timeframe for investigation in Fall 2008.
New State Employee Letter - Council supported the revised letter from Jim as an interim step, but emphasized the need for more personalized contact from Research librarians. The suggested timeframe for launching more personalized contact for new employees is July 2008. It was also suggested that library info should be added to the new employees’ packet from DAS.
Awareness Tool - Council suggested deleting this strategy, and place emphasis on developing more dynamic and engaging training sessions.
Hands On Training and Desktop Learning Session - Council suggested varying schedule of Desktop Learning Session, offering more morning options. “Lunch learning” sessions were also suggested.
Custom presentations - Council suggested pursuing staff development opportunities to improve presentation style of trainers. Training sessions need to be exiting and relevant. Trainer could ask for questions ahead of time to help personalize sessions. More emphasis should be placed on customized sessions, rather than pre-packaged sessions.
Oregon 150 Workshops - OSL is planning several large training sessions for agency history research. Each agency will determine which staff will be responsible for agency histories.
Virtual Training - Council suggested tabling this strategy because of concerns with access and bandwith issues.
Tutorials Online - OSL currently has pilot tutorial on how to order materials. Council will review and provide feedback. Other suggested topics for tutorials: how to find newspaper articles, how to do an e-survey, how to set up a listserv.
Instructional Design - Council thought a consultant is good idea, but probably not a high priority.
Computer Lab Feasibility Project - Council supports the concept, but recognizes the challenges. The relationship with DAS training was discussed, and Council agreed to devote a portion of a future meeting to a discussion with DAS staff on how to promote awareness of library services in their training sessions. The possibility of having OSL staff do a brief overview for each class was suggested.
Improve instruction techniques - Council endorsed more staff training and suggested moving the timeframe into FY 2008 to get maximum benefit for the biennium.
Software for Tutorial and Virtual Instruction Design - Council indicated this is not a high priority if existing tutorials (designed in PowerPoint) are sufficient.
SEIC Training Page - A clearinghouse for tutorials, both from library staff and vendors, will be created when there is a critical mass of tools to be listed.
Other ideas generated:
- Find creative ways to use fund raising drives to encourage library registration. For example, library could contribute a dollar to the food drive for every new library registration.
- Allow groups like PMA to use library facilities for meetings and waive fee if library can participate to promote library services.
2008 Needs Assessment Plan The goal of the needs assessment is to discover what services really matter to current and potential library users. GRES needs feedback on questions to ask and who should receive the survey.
Council agreed that the following questions should be asked about specific services of primary interest to state employees.
- Do you know about it?
- Have you used it?
- Do you like it?
- Comments?
- Want to learn more about it? (for follow-up)
In order to get more useful results, options for potential new library services should be listed, allowing survey participants to rank choices. It was suggested that just one open ended question for additional comments was needed; the fewer open ended questions, the better.
A subset of both registered and unregistered users (randomly generated) should be surveyed. The survey will ask a question about registration status, and the Library will be able to parse results based on the user’s real status. This should provide insight on the accuracy of users’ knowledge with their registration status. The survey will also have a drop down menu for participants to indicate their agency, and the list will be edited for better readability.
Council would like to review the draft survey to assess how much duplication with the earlier Advisory Council survey exists. It may be desirable to avoid sending the survey to the same agencies that took the earlier survey. Another option would be to add a disclaimer thanking for previous participation and explaining that this is a more detailed survey.
The goal is to send the needs assessment survey in March-April 2008, so the results will be ready by the Council’s June meeting.
GRES 2009-2011 Assessment Overview Robert explained the calculations for OSL’s agency assessment. Usage statistics are based on the 2005/2007 biennium. Some GRES services are weighted in the usage calculation to recognize level of staff effort to provide the service. FTE count for each agency is based on DAS numbers generated on June 30th of the previous biennium.
The overall assessment is up 13.9%, and is based on inflation, personnel costs, and the requested funding for the AskOregon policy package.
Agencies are presented the price list, and a cover memo explains what services are included, and how the prices are calculated. Agencies with large increases may question the increases, but in general, most agencies accept numbers without a lot of questions.
GRES team members can also provide anecdotal feedback about how agencies may be increasing their usage of services.
2007 GRES Customer Satisfaction Survey
The results of the survey show high satisfaction with services. Council discussed possible reasons for lower satisfaction in the staff expertise category. Staff turnover in high contact areas (Document Delivery and Outreach) could be a factor. Since many users answer questions on their own, they tend to ask library staff harder questions, and may not always get satisfactory answers. Another factor could be the concerns expressed about the quality of presentations by trainers.
Next year’s survey will include an option for rating overall satisfaction with all library services.
The survey allowed people to enter contact information if they wanted more information about library services. 64 people responded. Kate sent and initial acknowledgement of their requests for assistance, and GRES staff will follow up with all requests by March 1, 2008.
Future Meetings
The next Council meetings will be scheduled for April 15, 2008 and June 10, 2008. The meeting time will change to 9:00 am-12:00 pm.
Issues for Future Discussion (Parking lot) Concerns about limited technology and bandwith among agencies.
Action items
- Robert will send URL for tutorial for how to Order materials to Council.
- Robert will send URL for accessing Board minutes to Council.
- Kate and Robert will draft needs assessment survey and seek Council feedback via email in in late Feb, early March.
- Kate will finalize Outreach plan and distribute to Council via email in February.
- Robert will invite staff from DAS Training to a future Council meeting to discuss promotion of library services.
- Chris/Robert will schedule time in a future meeting for brainstorming to identify more groups that could be targeted and have good networking opportunities.
- Robert will send the detail project plan for AskOregon to Council once it is completed.
- Robert will schedule ½ hour of next Council meeting to meet with GRES team members.
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