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Documents Users Group

September 22, 2006

Trinity University Library

Attendance: Jeremy Donald, Amory Irby, Tina Petimezas, Christina Ramos, Ruby Wehmeyer, Rita Wilson, and Kathy Amen.

Congratulations (condolences ? ) to Rita, who will be taking over as Documents Librarian at UTSA when a replacement is hired for her current position. They have many librarian vacancies out there, some as the result of new positions, and so are quite busy with search committees and interviewing candidates.

Jeremy and Rita reported on their attendance at the Interagency Seminar at GPO this summer. Some of the presentations were quite good, most notably the one about the Federal Register, put on by NARA. Some of the other presentations were sub-standard, and the room where the meeting took place, in GPO's antiquated building, left a lot to be desired. But in spite of this they both said the seminar was worthwhile and they learned a lot.

Rita asked how we publicize our collections, since one of her main concerns is getting students to use documents. Both SAC and St. Mary's do displays (you can see photos and resource lists from St.Mary's displays, including our recent "Happy Birthday, FOIA" display, here) as a way of calling people's attention to docs. Kathy also mentioned doing some faculty workshops. One of those upcoming for her concerns copyright and fair use, which led to a discussion of what various libraries do about copyright questions, and a sharing of horror stories. We all agreed that it is a very murky area and that individual, specific, copyright questions are very difficult to deal with.

Jeremy asked what other libraries were doing about recent revisions to the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). They would seem to require guest identification that could be connected to a guest login for any non-students using campus computers. (Here is the EDUCAUSE website that has a lot of background information on the subject.) Here is a summary of how each of the libraries represented at the meeting handles guest computer access:

After their Interagency experience, Jeremy and Rita thought that hosting a STAT-USA workshop might be a good thing for our group to do. Jeremy will see if he can get testimonials from other libraries that have hosted the workshops (which cost about $600) to be sure that it would be a valuable and useful event we could promote to our faculty and other interested persons. We should all do some preliminary checking with our staffs to gauge potention interest in such a workshop, probably with registration cost of between $10-30 per person. Rita said that the downtown UTSA Library's electronic classroom could be used as a venue.

Jeremy wants us to save the date for San Antonio GIS day, at UTSA in November. The higher education day with be Nov. 14, with the next day devoted to K-12. Presentations will be free of charge.

Tina remembered we needed to elect a new president and since Jeremy volunteered he was quickly elected by acclamation.

Our next meeting will be held November 3 at St. Mary's Blume Library. Kathy (and possibly Rita, if she is able to attend) will report on the October FDLC.

Respectfully submitted,

Kathy Amen, Secretary/Treasurer


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