AdminUsers Group

Meeting #3, 5 April 2000

Present: Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, Jim Eggleston, Jonah Jenkins, Nora Murphy, Mary Pensyl, Caleb Tucker (IMPS facilitator)

Absent: Michael Finigan, Diann Smothers

Preliminary discussion: Membership: Megan announced that Liz Andrews is officially off of the group and Nora Murphy is officially a member of the group.

Ground rules: Those in attendance agreed that after the draft of the minutes is distributed to members of the group, the minute-taker can assume no corrections or amendments are necessary to the minutes if there is no feedback from the group members after three days.

Jim affirmed that he is willing to develop a web page for the group, and will find out the rules for establishing such a site.

Those in attendance amended the ground rules slightly to indicate that decisions by consensus would be made by those present at the meeting; decisions did not need to await approval by the entire membership.

I. Approval of last meeting minutes

Those in attendance approved the minutes of 3/17/00 as distributed.

II. Mission statement

Those in attendance approved the mission statement as amended for the poster session.

III. Report from poster session on 27 March 2000

Some of the comments received verbally and in writing included the following:

The library staff should learn who the administration is: what are the offices, who are the people, how can we provide services (maybe take on the responsibility to educate library staff)

Staff assistants in academic offices do not know how to use the libraries (maybe include some training as part of staff orientation)

The libraries should consider the needs of the News Office

The libraries should consider the needs of President Vest's research assistants

IV. Open discussion of issues/future projects

As noted on the poster boards, there was some discussion about:

Definition of administration/administrators:

Decisions were made on several issues:

Instruction Team: Request from Instruction Team to help with orientation (Nora willing to serve)

Web survey: What do library staff know of the administration Registrar

Bursar

Career planning folks .. some databases to share

Facilities

Web survey for library staff about who we interact with

Beginning stages of group? Gather info?

What offices do you have contact/work with?

What offices do you want to have contact with

May know function, but not office

General themes of what public service library staff needs and knows

Use a web form for survey

Ask ps-lib rather than all-lib to focus on public service of Libraries to administrative offices

Contact Public service staff first

Use web.mit.edu to find administrative offices or contact communications@mit.edu (Jonah volunteered to track down) Ruth Davies and Sheelah Britt good to keep in mind as excellent resources

Some issues (from anyone) may not be appropriate for this group; survey may get a different response than we anticipate if questions are not appropriately phrased; need to be clear that we are dealing with administration/administrators outside of libraries, not within.

How can libraries be put in a better light to the administration? (an Ann Wolpert concern)

Budget - people we interact with are in positions to affect the Library's budget

This group's relations with administration need PR attention

Director's office may have issues also, as well as Document Services

Matters for ongoing discussion, and to be considered later: Archives-related issues:

What does the archives do, give to the Libraries - dealing with administration an everyday archives issue

Archives things may pop up for this group to deal with

DLG TSAC a possible issue: in the process of cleaning out faculty offices, library and archives staffs can work together to see that books and records (and manuscripts material) are referred to the appropriate place.

Do other departments want a web page or a link to libraries similar to that developed by the alumni users group

Quantifiable

Far away product

Outcome

Group members present decided to proceed with designing a survey of library public services staff as outlined above. Jonah will determine if there is an existing list of administrative offices already on the MIT web site which can be used as a reference for staff completing the survey. The survey needs to ask: 1. what offices/people/functions do library staff come in contact with, and 2. which offices/people/functions do they feel they would like to be in contact with.

V. Next meeting date: Wednesday, 10 May 2000, 3:15 pm, in the Institute Archives.

Respectfully submitted, Nora Murphy Mary Eleanor (Nora) Murphy