ACRL/NY User Experience (UX) Discussion Group
Minutes, 2/3/10 (First Regular Meeting)
Location: Berkeley College, 3 E 43rd St, 7th floor conference Room, 6:00pm-7:30 pm.
Attendees: Maureen Weicher, Mark Aaron Polger, Antonia DiGregorio, Terri Corbin-Hutchinson, Laurie Kaplan, Mike Handis, Caroline Fuchs, Carrie Wajda, Edward Keane, C. Kevin Crow.

Texting in the library: The group started the discussion by sharing their experiences on how students texting in the library and how it affects the general atmosphere in the library.

The group agreed that library users want instant gratification and texting provides that. Some libraries are offering reference services via text messages. Email reference (and emailing in general) is not fast enough for our users

Chat Reference: Colleagues discusses chat reference and the advent of text reference services. One library is thinking of offering Blackberry’s to librarians who can then provide “mobile” services to library users.

E-books: Group discussed the increase in e-books, e-reserves, and some rules that e-book providers (ebrary, Netlibrary) have. The Graduate Centre, for example, does not have any more room for paper books so their collection budget is centred around improving their e-book collection.

Web Sites for Hand-Held Devices: Group agreed that library web sites need to be re-examined. Library users expect one search interface for everything.  CUNY is now trialing EBSCOHost Integrated Search, a federated database search.

We need to consider developing “hand held” versions to web sites. There is not enough computers, so many libraries are now lending out laptops to their users. Group members each discussed their own library. Group concluded to remark that each library needs to tailor their library according to their users.

Google Apps for Education: One such library purchased a license to Google Apps for Education. Institution enhances the students experience by subscribing to resources with Google interfaces (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites,Google Chat/Video)

(URL: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html)

Millennials Article: Group discussed the article Wajda distributed on the Millennial generation. Group briefly talked about some character traits of the Millennials, people who are born after 1980. Millennials are those people who have lived most of their life in an Internet-based world.  Article link: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1437/millennials-profile

Group also discussed the importance of reaching our users via social networking sites such as Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter pages, and MySpace pages. Wajda emphasized the importance of marketing in the UX (User Experience) literature.

Trend was to weed print journals and reference titles and add more computers or add more study space.

Embedded Librarian: At the Graduate Centre, there is a librarian sitting in on selected classes (i.e. Class Librarian).  At CSI, there was a “Traveling Librarian” pilot project for a year, in which librarians would spent a few hours per week outside the library, in a high traffic study space. Some colleges and universities embed the librarian in Blackboard courses.

Meeting adjourned at 7:30pm.  Next meeting date has not been determined but it was agreed to be held sometime in the Spring (2010).