IRWG is undertaking a review of how we think we as a group are doing.  As well as revisiting our Terms of Reference, questions we’ve asked ourselves include: what’s working well, what’s not working well, what is the value of this group and what alternatives or potential ideas for change might we suggest?

Some of the things we have identified that could be improved were as follows.  Waiting for a month or longer for decisions making us less agile, we can make things disempowering for staff working in these areas eg subject librarians and information resources coordinators, do we have equity in decision-making, a tendency to focus on operational rather than strategic matters, thinking about the best use of everyone’s time (LAC staff, subject librarians, IRWG members, IRAG members, academics participating in the annual review), some difficulty getting consensus on various topics (one recently being the Library’s role in providing access to eTextbooks).  On the plus side, we saw value in a cross-library team group such as IRWG existing that discusses matters of mutual interest.

We are discussing potential ideas for how we move forward.  These include:

• IRWG becomes more strategic in its focus for example looking more at OERs and trends in scholarly communication
• Using email for discussion and having less face to face meetings
• Moving away from IRWG making decisions about individual subscriptions.  One idea discussed was having a default Yes to all new subscription recommendations that meet agreed criteria.  With the proviso usage would be reviewed eg mid year and if usage is not cutting the mustard the resource would be cancelled by default at the end of the current sub
• Revisiting the criteria for cancellation and implementing a default cancel for resources getting little use (on the assumption we can’t continue to keep everything if we want to be responsive to changing needs at UC eg new research clusters)
• Reducing the number of managers on the group particularly if the focus of the group was to stay the same

No decisions have been made at this point in time, we are discussing ideas in the spirit of any idea is a good idea at this point.  If you would like to comment on the role of IRWG and any ideas you have you are welcome to discuss these with any member of our group (Helen, Sara, Dave L, Fiona T, myself)