2005 Annual Meeting Minutes
RUSA Reference Services Section
Ethical and Legal Issues in Reference Discussion Group
Palmer House Hotel, Room
June 25, 2005, 3:00pm
The first meeting of the RUSA Reference Services Section, Ethical and Legal Issues in Reference Discussion Group was called to order by co-chairs Anne Cottongim and Chip (Charles) Stewart. After brief introductions, discussion on the topic Ethical Issues and Chat Ref ensued. Three questions were posed: 1) Does your chat service provide answers to questions from users outside the traditional user group? 2) How does your chat service handle technical and medical issues? 3) Who staffs your chat service?
Some of the above issues were addressed by Beth Woodard in her article “One-on-One Instruction: From the Reference Desk to Online Chat,” Reference and User Services Quarterly, v. 44, no. 3, Spring 2005, pp.203-209. She described how the
The topic of understanding site licenses was also raised and someone suggested that it be a discussion topic at a future meeting. Folks are interested in what makes a model licensing agreement as well as learning about techniques to use when negotiating licenses. It was pointed out that there is software available which can be used to understand site licenses.
Plans for Midwinter were briefly discussed. It was suggested that another time might be better and that the session might be scheduled to run one and one half to two hours. Ideas regarding future topics as well as preferences for times and length of meeting should be forwarded to Anne AL7470@wayne.edu or to Chip cstewart@ccny.cuny.edu Information will be available on the RUSA Reference Services Section website regarding future plans for the group.
Jan Fryer, note taker
