Ann Waldeback, Maitland City Library; Ann Crump, Lake Macquarie City Library; Susan Manahan, Wyong Shire Library; Michelle Goldsmith, Wyong Shire Library; Margo Pavincich, Willoughby City Library; Ben Hartley, Gosford City Library; Andrwew Powell, Cassnock City Library; Jeff Stonehouse, Port Macquarie-Hastings Library; Elizabeth Walter Upper Hunter Shire Library; Kieran ODonoghue, Newcastle Region Library; Laura Bush, Singleton Public Library; Sharon Tollard, Gunnedah Shire Library; Louise Chapman, Newcastle Region Library; Cynthia Methven, Hornsby Shire Library; Marisa OConnor, Wollongong Library, Jennifer Wilson, Fairfield Library; Ellen Forsyth, State Library of NSW

Laurence McDonald

or followed the twitter stream #vala2012 - what was your big new idea?

• · Really useful information sheets from vendors
• · Huge professional development stream – need to be up to speed with the new technologies, emphasis on the rate of change
• · The future is now
• · Twine and ambient measuring – giving inhouse measurement use a new meaning http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-your-world-talk-to-the-internet
• · Brimbank Library revisiting their space
• · Imagine there is no desk – UNSW session
• · Vendor presentations useful
• · Frankston City Library on web 2.0 activity and Trove use of social media
• · Content creation
• · It is about working out what you can do in your area
• · Make sure you look at the videos on the VALA site when they are available, and when the papers are available check them out too
• · How reliant we are on technology and the pace of change – need to work with IT, and keep enhancing skills
• · We need to be educating our IT departments too.
• · Many of the services reliant on working technology – and on working with other people to get it to work
• · Libraries offer unique experiences and we need to value/build on this
• · Lending telescopes? Raised by Eli Nieburger

Papers from all sessions and videos of keynote speakers will soon be available from http://www.vala.org.au/vala2012/vala2012-programme-grid Wikis and blogs

• · People were encouraged to join the RISG wiki http://referenceandinformationservices.wikifoundry.com/ (join the wiki and ask to be a writer)
• · Reference staff are encouraged to follow risg blog http://nswrisg.blogspot.com.au/ and risg new technology blog http://risg-newtech.blogspot.com.au/ (or you can follow them both on twitter via https://twitter.com/#!/nswrisg
• · Participate in the discussion by adding information to the wiki (no need to ask permission), or commenting on a blog post.

Ideas for the Reference and Information Services Group (Steering Group) survey results from Google docs

• · These were addressed in a preliminary way and will be covered in detail at the Reference seminar in May.
• · The results highlighted that people really appreciate the range of work being done by this group.

The following suggestions will be included in the discussion for planning the seminar this year – feedback from the 2011 seminar will also be critical to the discussion. · * What are people doing in terms of roving reference, who is doing it – is it wonderful customer service _ as it is all customer service – possibly ask UNSW? How do you motivate people to do roving reference? Roving reference as a big theme

• · How are people’s reference enquiries going to be dealt with in changing environment?
• · Have people being evaluating roving reference?
• · Why did you make changes to your reference service?
• · How do you optimize staff training for roving reference – and change in philosophy
• · There is always an outcome for a reference enquiry which involved getting information
• · Training, training, training
• · Database apps and mobile options for databases
• · Core reference collection, print and e-resources – possibly including themes rather than specific titles?
• · What social media are libraries using other than facebook and twitter and is it working – does social media work for libraries
• · Use of library hack or similar avenues to disseminate local studies content to a wider audience
• · Getting reference out into the community – outreach reference? Anyone getting the message out well? Getting off site with information
• What are the biggest opportunities for reference and information services - how can we rise to these challenges
• · Being visible, being the place for people to go when they have a question
• · Staff training, getting and keeping staff trained, keeping staff being motivated – using ref-ex
• · Keeping count of how many staff are being trained, and the hours training/content – showing the weight of the training and the commitment needed
• · We are information professionals and this needs to be shown
• · Need the right staff – staff who like change, or deal well with change
• · Responsibility to foster an environment of positive approach to change
• · Change as a usual environment?
• · Fostering positive view on being proactive in communication with customers
• · Budgets as challenge, lots of new resources and the budgets don’t always stretch
• · Council as a customer – surveying council staff – making sure they know what is possible already – resources and services. Going to their work places often works. Council book chat? Journal awareness too
• · Remind people about remote access to databases
• · Local content as critical – work with your community on this – consider history pin, Trove,
• Slam the boards http://referenceandinformationservices.wikifoundry.com/page/Slam+the+boards
• · Reminder to keep doing this as a way of professional development and exploring how ideas are done
• · Highlighting the need for continuing reference training for professional development
• · Time as an issue for participating in this
• · Perhaps people could think about one question a month?
• · Encouraging staff to do it as a group
• · Could be a meeting theme – slam the boards with people from other libraries

• Do the statistics you collect reflect your libraries goals?
• Do you go beyond simply counting numbers to get more meaningful insights into how your library is performing?
• Do you put your numbers into any context to assess your performance?
• Could libraries be measuring their success in better ways?

This session generated more questions than answers, but it was useful in showing a range of options which could be considered for demonstrating the effectiveness of reference and information services. · * How to you reflect the different workloads in particular areas?

• · Do you meet benchmarks? Does it promote the library? How can the statistics be measured? What can you track?
• · How to work out time efficient ways of measuring statistics? And of telling the stories of the statistics
• · Performance based statistics
• · Statistics for storytelling to the council and community (true stories, not made up ones)
• · Looking at where the statistics are coming in to the website – links to and from the site, and building on when they are popular
• · Statistics directed to the outcome of the service delivery – are you meeting/exceeding goals of community engagement
• · explore cost/benefit analysis on what it takes to get some events happening, ROI
• · explore different ways to collect/use statistics
• · don’t be shy about tracking time/performance
• · you might want to write on the blogs about creative ways you are using statistics (ask one of the steering committee for writing access)
• · observation of how the spaces are being used in the libraries – observation on use/and change over time

Next Meeting 14 August 2012 - Ryde Library, Wallumetta Room, 2.00pm - 4.00pm. 1 Pope Street, Ryde NSW 2112

Don't forget to go back to your workplace and share the ideas from this meeting. Make sure you tell others about it, including your manager.

Pinterest

• · Pinterest is a bookmarking tool to highlight different subject/collection areas. The Smithsonian is doing very interesting things with it http://pinterest.com/smithsonian/pins/
• · You can explore more here http://pinterest.com/ - To try it out, request an invite – you might want to write on the reference blog about how you are thinking of using it in your library

QR Codes

• · QR codes – library tour, can use a QR code generator http://qrcode.kaywa.com, scan the code and it will take you there, don’t forget to evaluate
• · This session involved a lot of scanning of QR codes for people who had not tried them before

Storify

• · for bringing together hashtags, ideas, local stories, you can add comments to your own story. Could be a good way to bring together social media traffic about a local event.
• · An example of how the reference group has been using it http://storify.com/ellenforsyth/risg2011/
• · You can join at http://storify.com/, or use facebook or twitter loging

Cowbird

• · Your community can use this to tell their stories about anything http://cowbird.com/

Historypin

• · Location based story telling site www.historypin.com

Google+

• · https://plus.google.com/
• · Social site for information – some of Google plus is public without login, some not, starting to be used by libraries.

Quora

• · http://www.quora.com/
• · This is a question site for professional development.

How do you find out about these things?

• · ALIA professional development publication Future lab http://www.futurelab.org.uk/, and xtranormal http://www.xtranormal.com/
• · Zillions of rss feeds
• o Ilibrarian http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/
• o David Lee King http://www.davidleeking.com/
• o Gizmodo http://www.gizmodo.com.au/
• o American Library Journal http://lj.libraryjournal.com/
• o Computers in libraries http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/
• o Library renewal http://libraryrenewal.org/
• o Tara Calishain http://researchbuzz.me/
• o being inspired by what the clients are looking at,
• o American Library websites – key libraries doing exciting things,
• o twitter as rss feeds and lists function

Newcastle Library was thanked for hosting the day, and for providing lunch for all the participants.

Don't forget to go back to your workplace and share the ideas from this meeting. Make sure you tell others about it, including your manager.

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