Organizing or Rejuvenating Local Documents Interest Groups

Founded late 1980's

• Made up of depositories in 2^nd and 4^th Congressional districts

• 11 libraries

• 8 academic, including UALR Law
• 1 public
• 2 special - State Library and State Supreme Court

• Faded out as several people left the state, retired, or absorbed additional duties

Rejuvenation - 1999

• Why

• Large number of people new to state and several new to documents
• Most in state overdue for inspection
• Frustration with electronic conversion

• How

• Called the documents librarian at the public library and she liked the idea
• Picked a date and sent letters to each library in region
• Updated constitution at first meeting and started brainstorming

• Expanded to include all depositories in the state

All but one library in the region regularly participates, most sending multiple attendees to meetings

Membership includes librarians and paraprofessional staff who work with documents in public service and technical processing roles

Aim for two meetings a year

(Some programs opened to non-consortium members due to their nature)

1. American FactFinder training - Fall 2000
• Arrangements made via our State Data Center
• Half day sessions for documents and non-documents librarians/staff
• Had a full house for all sessions
2. Tour of Presidential Materials Project - Spring 2001
• Tour of facility
• Preview of plans for Library and Museum
• Display of gifts to president
• Volunteer opportunities
• Cooperative collection development plan for Little Rock libraries
3. MARCIVE meeting - Fall 2001
• Several libraries ready to sign contracts so we made a special plea to the VP for Marketing to allow an on-site workshop
• Sales presentation and tips from current user at Fayetteville
• Postponed by terrorist attacks in September
4. Self-study workshop
• To be arranged by our regional

Projects

1. Policy exchange - documents and general library use
• Internet use & electronic access
• Collection development
• Cataloging and Circulation
• Student/Page training guides
2. Serial Set inventory to be added to national files
3. Template for electronic discard lists
4. Promotion ideas (some of these sound simple and obvious, but many of our members were not very active in promotional activities for their collections)

• Library newsletters
• Campaign to contact congressional delegation about legislation &
• Need for links to libraries from Representatives’ or Senators’ own Web sites
• Incorporation of documents into instruction programs
• Bibliographies
• Demonstrations of specific databases and web sites
• In-house training
• Displays in library
5. Reports from conference attendees
• State Data Center users group
• GPO/DLC meetings
• Documents programs at national conferences
6. Creation of task force to assist with tracking the conversion of State documents to electronic format

• Headed by regional librarian, coordinator of state depository

• Establish policy for access in libraries if formerly a depository item

• Investigate the need for cooperative arrangements to assure long-term historic access