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Documents Users Group
Attendance: Dorothy Blow, Pat Broome, Camille Fiorillo, Amory Irby, Myrna Langford, Claudia Shaw, Charlie Thurston, Ruby Wehmeyer and Kathy Amen.
We were glad to meet two newcomers to our group: Pat just started at Palo Alto this week as the documents clerk (Chris Fau's position) and Charlie came representing Jacque Crinion at UTSA. He is their Education Librarian.
A general information sharing session opened the meeting. We were glad to learn that none of us had too horrific flood stories to tell, although Dorothy apparently narrowly missed some bad stuff at the Galaxy Theater and Myrna reported that the new bottom floor at Trinity was slightly damaged from taking on water.
A couple of libraries did not received the 40+ CDs of tobacco settlement documents a couple of weeks ago and were curious about them. Kathy did get them, but said they came without any software or documentation. Some of the CDs have text files on them, although they don't look like they have been massaged in any way for easy access. Others have TIFF image files of the documents, which require a graphics program to view.
Claudia brought copies of Bernan's Internet Connection, which they use a lot at TLU. It is a monthly newsletter of reviews of internet sites, often government-related, that costs $89 per yearly subscription.
Kathy said that for various reasons she probably would not go to the FDLC Conference next April (hopefully someone else from S.A. can go), but plans to attend GPO's Interagency Seminar for the first time in June. One of the highlights of that meeting is to be a day-long session on Census Bureau products, including the 2000 Census. Some speculation about the "publications" from that census ensued, with Tina expressing the idea of our putting on a workshop about it as the time grows nearer. It could even be a web-based, "distance-learning" type of workshop (less money for refreshments that way!).
There may be a collective howl of protest emanating from San Antonio next semester as St. Mary's, SAC and UTSA at least tentatively are planning to start charging for printing from their computers. Palo Alto has always charged on the honor system and Camille says most of their kids are very honest about paying. Dorothy told us about SAPL's system, which requires registration by library card number.
Exciting news may be in the offing from Palo Alto sometime next year, as both Texas Tech and A & M are vying for the opportunity to open a 4-year institution next door to them. Camille doesn't know whether there would be a new library built or whether theirs would just be expanded. Another possible expansion for Palo Alto is to have a satellite campus in Pleasanton, where they have many students. The next session of the Legislature will be one to watch for us!
We briefly discussed the receipt of two copies of the NAICS Manual and what we are doing with it. UTSA has one at the Reference Desk, as does St. Mary's. The latter's other copy is on permanent reserve.
Charlie announced the availability of some San Antonio documents that UTSA will be glad to give away to good homes (they have one copy of each):
Contact Jacque if you'd like any of these docs.
We moved the meeting to the Academic Library's Multimedia Instructional Center then to see the ERIC full-text pilot documents. This database includes only the 10% or so of ERIC docs that come on the depository selection, those that come out of the Education Department or some other federal agency. St. Mary's became a participant in the pilot project by virtue of our selecting the ERIC docs on fiche through the FDLP. The project is a joint venture of GPO, the National Library of Education and OCLC (the search interface is FirstSearch). They wanted to experiment with a large-scale conversion project of text-to-online version of docs and see how they would be used.
Kathy says that they have not been used much at St. Mary's, mostly because of the limited nature of the collection, but that she would certainly prefer to have access to these docs online instead of in microfiche. During the course of the pilot (since summer) St. Mary's has continued to receive the fiche.
As far as Kathy knows, there are no restrictions on the use of the pilot documents database, so that if any of you want to take a look at it, follow these directions:
You need Adobe Acrobat to view the documents.
Charlie was also impressed with Columbia International Affairs Online, one of St. Mary's databases. Their homepage is: <http://www.CIAONET.org/> if anyone else is interested. Apparently they offer a 30-day trial.
Our next meeting will be our annual Christmas "party" (lunch) at Trinity's Faculty Club at 10:30 on December 11.
Respectfully submitted,
Kathy Amen, Secretary/Treasurer
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