COLD Public Services Group: Academic Year 2017/2018

Dear Cold PS Group,

I apologize for the late term activity but I do think we have enough time left to cover two topics that are of interest to me at this very moment.
After the holiday break, I'll send out a request for topics to be discussed or ideas you want to pursue as a group for the
rest of this academic year. I appreciate the responses (9) to my pre-Thanksgiving email about group membership. With that information, I updated our LibGuide (http://librarysubjectguides.svsu.edu/coldps) and placed in bold  (names on our member list) those that responded that they were representing their institution this academic year. I'm guessing others will let me know one way or another when they receive future group email.

My first topic of interest is what can you tell me about your experiences with study room scheduling. Please respond to the questions below and share any knowledge you have from the experience. We are just getting into this and perhaps you can help us with best practice with this service. We are going be using "College-Net".

My questions.....

1) Are you using any study/meeting room scheduling software? If so, what is the name of the company/provider?

2) Do you let students schedule rooms without mediation/approval

3) What are your policies for the rooms   (number of students, time slots, how many times a semester might the same person schedule the room)

4) What procedures are in place at your institution?

(who does the approving/mediating if that is part of your procedures?)

(how much time is involved with approving/mediating?)

5) Current status and past experiences

Thanks for your time with this topic discussion. I would like to have any responses by Dec. 6th. I will

summarize responses and post to our LibGuide.  My second topic discussion will be introduced Dec. 7th with

a timed response of a week (topic closed after Dec. 14th).

Best Regards,

Scott

Scott Mellendorf
Head, Research Services
Melvin J. Zahnow Library
mel@svsu.edu
989.964.7052

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Dear COLD PS Colleagues,

Good morning. I received an update from Stacy Anderson at Ferris (Congrats on the National Basketball Championship!)

regarding their Room Booking Situation (thanks Stacy). I also forgot to include our plans here at Zahnow Library.

Below is the updated summary.

-Scott
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Ferris St
Stacy Anderson
LibCal  (Springshare)  with mediation
DIBS  (exploring DIBS)
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SVSU
Scott Mellendorf
Hoping to pilot Libcal with mediation next month
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CMU
Tim Peters
DIBS  (January 2018)
Students book-no mediation
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EMU
Sara Memmott
LibCal (Springshare)
Students book-no mediation
http://www.emich.edu/library/services/studyrooms.php
We only started room reservations for study rooms a few years ago. Our experience has been positive.  Students appreciate the service and once we set up the software and policies it has taken minimal time to supervise.
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MSU
Terri Miller
LibCal  (Springshare)
Students book-no mediation

 Libcal has worked fairly well for us, and we’ve done some customization work with it with our Four Winds signage, but that has been bumpy.  It doesn’t have all of the features that our home-grown system had, but the cost of updating the old system just made it untenable.
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NMU
Mollie Freier
Home Grown Software

Students book-no mediation
https://library.nmu.edu/about/policies/conference_room_guidelines.php
https://library.nmu.edu/about/policies/conference_room_use.php

 Things are working fairly well, although occasionally our home-grown product develops some glitches
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GVSU
Brian
Currently Home Grown-Will move to College-Net

Students book-no mediation
https://www.gvsu.edu/library/group-study-rooms-5.htm

 We would benefit from improvements with the online reservation system.  It has glitches that allow for double booking our staff have to reconcile on occasion.  I’d be interested in some sort of “check-in” system that would free up a reserved space after a period of time if the original party who reserved the space does not check-in to indicate they are there.  During peak times, rooms showing up as reserved with no one actually in them can become problematic.

The COLD Public Services group met on May 7th at Saginaw Valley

State University's Zahnow Library for the annual Spring Meeting.
Attending from the PS Group were...

-Scott Mellendorf, SVSU

-Tim Peters,  CMU

-Sara Memmott, EMU

-Pam MacKintosh, UofM

-Terri Miller, MSU

-Kristine Condic, OU

-Paul Streby, UofM Flint

All PS group members met with the other groups for MCLS updates. Our group than broke away

for a 45 minute meeting about the status/effectiveness of our online discussions each year.

We were all in agreement that we find our discussions very useful. The morning was completed

with a tour of the library by Scott and Ashley Blinstrub, Research and Assessment Librarian. The

tour focused on the space renovations that were completed a year ago.

After lunch, we conducted a two hour meeting discussing several current issues for Reference Services.

Issues presented were...

-Declining stats

We discussed the state of continual declining stats.

Although this topic can be difficult to address, our conversation was very positive and
focused. It quickly moved to sharing what new services (see last topic listed below)

were being deployed to help with increasing Reference Services statistics at our libraries.

SVSU shared that with declining enrollment as one obvious variable, they were in the midst
of a 4 year decline in total stats by the department. Details were given about a few new services
added this academic year and a push to be more proactive at the desk. They reported
an increase in stats over the past two years with two months left in the academic year. Also

an effort to be sure to track all activity was another mentioned as another likely factor that
contributed to the increase.

Other members had stated they did not know yet the impact of any new service but they

stated the new services being implemented had been well received.

-Most concerned stat in decline

The following list was made by the PS librarians.....

*Two members mentioned stats that were not being tracked.

*Reliable database usage numbers

*Reference Desk stats

*Distance Learning Stats

-Database/Resource cuts

A few librarians mentioned facing upcoming database or resource cuts due to shrinking library budgets.

*SVSU facing several database cuts

*Oakland U is cutting Lexis/Nexis

-Reference Desk Staffing

The librarians were asked if they staff the Reference Desk with Professional Librarians,

Students, or both. Most libraries (4) in attendance said yes. One does not and one uses a blend

of students and professionals.

-Department Staff
Many librarians stated concern about staffing issues in their department.

SVSU reported a student budget cut (campus wide) took place last August that

took their two students. Oakland University reported using mainly part time librarians when
staffing the reference desk. 

-New services in place that could help increase stats

The following list of new services introduced recently by the seven libraries present
included....

*Outreach Information Desk (across campus desk located where active programs exist)
*Scaffold approach to library support (100, 200, 300) in nursing program producing more questions and library use
*Proactive approach (leave the desk and ask students if they need assistance)
*New metrics introduced (conversations, conversations-liaison)
*OER
*Data Management
*Digital Scholarship Lab
*Virtual consultations
*4 credit, online course (general education)
*Workshops covering new software, VR, Unity Gaming, Citation management
*Student success