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Lansing Community College Library Services

Library Teams: Reference

All the teams in the LCC Library, a description of their purpose, and a listing of their charges and responsibilities

Description

The Reference Services Team (RST) provides a forum for library staff to plan, communicate, exchange ideas, and share information relative to all aspects of reference services and collections. Subcommittee work teams may be formed to bring work results to the RST meetings for final decisions.

Charge

The Reference Services Team develops recommendations, guidelines, processes, and procedures to achieve high quality reference services. The team addresses reference service issues and concerns.

The Reference Services Team has responsibilities for the following areas:

  1. Monitoring trends in the delivery of reference services.
  2. Implementing and experimenting with ideas that lead to improved reference services.
  3. Evaluating the effectiveness of reference services and processes.
  4. Developing in-service sessions to help reference staff build core competency skills.
  5. Sharing, communicating, and experimenting with new tools, techniques, and resources which will assist library staff to hone their reference skills.
  6. Addressing collection development issues relative to collection planning, selection, withdrawals, ordering, organization, use, and access.
  7. Implementing department goals, policies, and procedures that fall within the team's purview.
  8. Taking action on business referred by DIT.
  9. Making policy recommendations regarding reference services and collection development matters.
  10. Evaluating the team's effectiveness.

RST Roles

  • Review meeting agenda prior to meeting
  • Complete prep work prior to the meeting
  • Engage during the meetings
  • Follow through on team assignments
  • Poll team members of topics / time needed to add to the meeting agenda they are to facilitate
    • Must be done a minimum of 7 days prior to schedule meeting
  • Collaborate with Reference Lead Librarian to prepare meeting agenda
    • Preparation and distribution of finalized paper agenda with attachments to team members and department staff notified of agenda access will be done by the Reference Lead Librarian
  • Check meeting room a day ahead of time to work with Access Services to arrange room so all members can be seated and visually see one another
  • Review previous meeting notes to determine if clarifications needed or to identify if specific topics need updates.
  • Get meeting started and keep meeting on track
    • Possibly ask for timekeeper
  • During the meeting determine agenda priorities
  • End every meeting with topics for the next meeting and adding to the future topics when appropriate
  • Gather handouts for absent members and provide them with a brief overview until meeting notes are distributed
  • Use the meeting notes / minutes form to summarize topic discussions, decisions / outcomes, and next steps
  • Complete notes within a week of the meeting
  • E-mail all department staff a link to the completed notes
  • Corrections / clarifications shall be noted and dated in the meeting notes of that meeting
    • By the note-taker of RST meeting reviewing previous notes
    • Include a notation in the notes area, such as:
      • *Corrected by (initials) (date)
      • *Updated by (initials) (date)
  • As a best practice, the note-taker of meeting notes reviewed shall display notes and quickly ask for possible updates or status reports regarding next steps.  Those updates will be captured in the next meeting notes so to provide follow-up info on the next step topics identified.
  • Team member may choose which meeting to lead a Professional Development (PD) topic
    • Notify the Facilitator which meeting so it will be placed on the agenda
  • Prepare a concise 15 - 20 minute reference services professional development session
  • Topic examples may include:
    • Sharing knowledge of a specific research database
    • Review specific book(s) or periodical article(s)
    • Apprise team members of a specific website
    • Share experiences from a webinar or workshop you attended
  • PD leader may contact team members prior to RST meeting with information relating to their PD session
    • This is helpful to have team members review PD top information ahead of time to have meaningful topic discussion
  • PD leader may prepare informational handouts for team members to reflect upon after meeting
  • Facilitators and Note-Takers must find your own sub
  • Notify Reference Lead Librarian of change
    • Who will update agenda grid

Team Communication

Team meetings are open to all staff. Members of the team share in meeting facilitating and note-taking duties. Agendas and meeting notes are available in the department shared network workspace. Reference Lead Librarian will prepare and distribute meeting agenda to members' mailboxes with attachments, plus send an e-mail with agenda network access to all staff. A link to the meeting notes shall be e-mailed to the library distribution list (SS-LIBRARYSTAFF@lcc.edu) no later than one week following the meeting. The meeting facilitator will give absent team members' copies of meeting handouts.

Team Representation

  • All members of reference and instruction services
  • Library Director
  • Library Technical Services and Systems Manager
  • Electronic Resources Management Librarian
  • OER Coordinator
  • User Services Representative, as needed
  • Representation and expertise from other departments, staff, and students on an as-needed basis