HOPS Meeting March 8, 2002

Location: Room 411, CDL/UCOP, Oakland

Participants: Laine Farley (CDL); Catherine Soehner (LAUC, SC); Isabel Stirling (B); George Bynon (D); Susan Lessick (I); Janice Koyama (LA); David Rios (R); Marilyn Moody (SB); Cheryl Gomez (SC); Jacqueline Hanson (SD, Chair); Gail Persily (SF). Not present: Bruce Miller (M).

I. HOPS Issues in Progress:

A. Recap of HOPS-related events/accomplishments of the past year: HOPS and the Resource Sharing Committee collaborated on the presentation of two workshops for UC libraries' staff members (one at Irvine and one at Berkeley) on copyright and intellectual property issues in October 2001, and the SOPAG Task Force on Digital Reference Service, appointed at the recommendation of HOPS and with HOPS participation, completed its White Paper (discussed below) in November 2001.

B. — C. The selection of a new HOPS chair discussed within the context of the February 14, 2001 memo from John Tanno, SOPAG Chair, to the All-Campus Groups, and relative to HOPS' existing Charge and its last Goals statement. There was consensus that HOPS' future efforts should focus on its role as a forum for in-depth discussion of major public services issues affecting the UC libraries and its role as an agent for advancing the understanding of, and progress on, those same issues. Such areas might include information literacy; possible movement toward a "one-card" model of service across the UC libraries; evaluating the effectiveness of services through programs such as LibQUAL; 24 x 7 reference service; and enhanced remote access to library resources. There was agreement that HOPS' main work will be to contribute its best thinking on each of these big issues to our library colleagues and to groups such as SOPAG and the University Librarians. Isabel Stirling volunteered to become the next HOPS Chair; George Bynon the new Recorder; and Cheryl Gomez, Marilyn Moody, and Laine Farley the new HOPS Agenda Committee.

The discussion of HOPS' goals statement was begun in the context of a two-to-three year look forward, asking ourselves what the key issues are that we want to advance through HOPS. There was general agreement on a set of five goals that will be discussed and developed further by a sub-group of HOPS to be led by Isabel Stirling, new HOPS chair. That group will then be back in contact with HOPS as a whole, working toward delivery of the finished statement to SOPAG by the target date of 10/01/02.

D. Follow-up steps on the report of the SOPAG Digital Reference Task Force: Acting on SOPAG's feedback on the report, HOPS will undertake these steps to further progress on this issue across the UC Libraries: as soon as possible Janice will draft a charge to a new Digital Reference Services Group that will be created as a Common Interest Group reporting through HOPS with representatives from all UC campuses and the CDL. Janice will forward the draft charge to HOPS members for review, and when agreement is reached on the final language, HOPS will put out an invitation for participation across the UC libraries. HOPS will direct and monitor the work of the new group, which will be asked to build on the basic foundation laid by the first Task Force.

II. CDL Issues:

A. The CDL Library Instruction Workshops held in the north on 1/31 and 2/1 and in the south on 2/4-5: a round-robin of feedback from HOPS members indicated that there were mixed reactions to the content of these events. Some participants had found a mismatch between their expectations about the content to be presented and the actual content delivered, that is, some participants had expected it would focus on how to teach the transitioning databases, rather than on higher level concepts.

B. In response to George's request for an update from CDL on the status of the Fretwell Downing product and desktop delivery, Laine relayed news from Mary Heath that the product will include the VDX as well as the desktop delivery component. Users won't see anything new on their screens, but library staff will. The VDX will take the place of the OCLC software. By summer, users may be able to check on the status of their request.

C. Laine had forwarded to HOPS members in advance of the meeting Steve Toub's summary of the key points he heard in his recent visits with UC campus Web teams. HOPS members appreciated the summary and recognize the value of collaboration among the Web teams of the UC libraries. Isabel, as HOPS Chair, will convey this message to all of the participants listed in Steve Toub's summary and will urge that the group continue its informal collaboration through face-to-face meetings and other means (as needed), communicating to HOPS if a more formal structure for the group becomes important at some point.

D. In response to Susan's query to the group regarding the value of having non-UC holdings (specifically, monographs) continue to be included in Melvyl-T, the sense of the group is that these records have great value for the UC community and should continue to appear there, though some campuses mentioned specific records that they value over others. HOPS members also assume that the original principles that evolved over the years for evaluating inclusion of a non-UC contributing library's monographic records still hold.

III. LibQUAL:

A. Janice provided the group with background on the LibQUAL project, an assessment platform and philosophical underpinning provided by the Association of Research Libraries at a modest price so that individual libraries don't have to invent an assessment tool on their own. LibQUAL measures users' views of minimum service versus desired service, and current service versus desired service, and then measures the gaps among them. It also provides a mechanism for people surveyed to write in comments if topics of particular interest to them have not been covered in the LibQUAL instrument. The four areas covered in the questions are: service affect, the library as place, personal control, and information access. UCLA may be a participant in LibQUAL next year. Santa Barbara has participated in it already and found the responses useful. OhioLINK is going to undertake LibQUAL this year. The cost to acquire the LibQUAL tools is only about $2,000, but staff time is required to meet associated needs such as staff and user education; preparation of publicity and p.r.; and technological duties to acquire a list of campus users names (if survey is to be administered electronically); as well as any action plan that may be needed to address any services problem areas identified by the LibQUAL survey.

IV. Public Services Issues from the Campuses:

A. Isabel described Berkeley's interest in going to a plan of requiring users to enter their campus IDs/passwords in order to use public-access computers in library spaces. Two factors driving this are 1) security issues (that is, the need to limit the ability of people to use public-access terminals in library spaces to send anonymous threats to others) and 2) problems with non-affiliates monopolizing terminals for extended periods for non-library-related uses (games, etc.). Davis and Irvine reported similar problems. Marilyn noted that messages on listservs she monitors indicate that a number of libraries around the nation already have taken this approach to address these kinds of issues. In such cases, libraries have developed a system for issuing passwords valid for one day (or some other short time span) for use by non-affiliates with a bonafide need to use the library's computers. Example: anyone stating a wish to access government publications electronically.

B. In response to Jackie's question about current patterns in ease (or lack thereof) of access to UC library resources from off-campus locations, most campuses, except for Irvine, report a less-than-ideal current status but are managing to meet a good deal of the need through the use of proxy servers. The current efforts at the UCOP level to enable authentication through digital certificates for UC affiliates hold the promise of meeting the UC libraries' needs, but a final answer on that question is at least two years away, as far as we know. This is an issue that HOPS will address in more depth in the months ahead.

C. In response to Jackie's questions about how the UC libraries are organized to provide technical support for "hands on" electronic classroom, comments indicated that patterns vary. At UCLA, the basic level of support is provided by the home department, with higher levels of tech. support provided by Systems. Berkeley contracts with a private firm for support of its Mac labs, since its staff work on PCs only.

D. In response to Jackie's question about the UC libraries' positions on the question of users (specifically, non-affiliates) carrying out for-profit tutoring services within library spaces, the general sense was that this activity probably would be accommodated unless it became obtrusive and interfered with other library users' rights to pursue education and research in library spaces.

V. Planning for next HOPS meeting:

Tentative date & location:
Friday, September 20 at a SoCal location, probably UCLA.

Tentative agenda items:
Report from George's ACRL committee on recruitment and retention.
Report to SOPAG on "Policy on Privacy for Library-Provided Digital Services."