Circulation Forum Minutes for August 2010

Date:  August 4, 2010

Location: Circulation Forum MLS Service Center

Present – Julie Ballou (DN), Betty Scott (BUS), Lisa Myers, (VI), Janet Bowen (BE), Rebecca Neitzel (ED), Barb Parr (SO), Tindle Arnold (CT), Crystal Suppes (MC), Ron Harrison (DN), JoNita White (HR), Deborah S. Austin-Munden (VI), Shirley Wolf (ED), Ruth Harder (VI), Jonathan Tolle (CH), Linda Jameson (DC), Regina Fields (BE), Jean-Ciar Pierce (RE), Sharon Young (ED), Shirley Henderson (MC), Cheryl Mann (CC), Barbara Beasley (WA), Becky Mason (WA), Patricia Rivas (SO), Tory Gray (DN), Shahin Asghari (ED)

Guests: Kim Terry (MAC), Heidi Johnson (TP), Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins (CAT), Stuart Williamson (PLA)

Meeting was called to order at 1:30 p.m. by Julie Ballou, Chair of the Circulation Forum Committee. Julie also passed out a survey to those attending.

Welcome—Lisa Myers, Circulation Clerk at The Village, welcomed the group to the Forum. She briefly shared the goals of the Circulation Forum: provide a time to share issues and ideas with each other, receive information to share with coworkers, and an opportunity to share major concerns with the Administration. The guidelines to be followed by the group during the meeting were: keeping an open mind, sharing freely with others, and maintaining privacy when discussing issues.

General Library Brochure—Kim Terry from Marketing distributed a draft of the general information brochure. Kim asked the group to look through the brochure and then make suggestions for changes to her. After some discussion, Kim urged the group to email her any further questions and comments.

Tour of the Service Center—Heidi Johnson, Technical Processing Manager, and Pauline Rodriguez-Adkins, Cataloging Manager, took the group on a tour of the Service Center. We followed the path a book takes from the loading dock to the black bins as it is processed into the system. The process makes use of numerous conveyors so that boxes do not need to be lifted and a compact storage unit entitled “Big Ben.”

Third Money Bag—Betty Scott, Business Office, and Stuart Williamson, Planning, discussed the arrival of a third money bag into the delivery system. Right now, someone from Maintenance makes an early morning run to Downtown from the Service Center to get empty money bags for the libraries. In 4-6 weeks, a third money bag will be added so that this extra run will no longer be needed. This means that there will three sets of keys for each library; Betty passed out tags for each library to use. The delivery drivers will still pick up the bag with the deposit at the library and take it to Downtown that day. What may be delayed would be any items from the Business Office such as cash reimbursements, mileage reimbursements, or receipt of the system credit card. Payroll checks would not be affected since they are delivered separately. Betty told the group that there was no need to label the red or blue bags with specific library codes; these bags belong to the Business Office and are interchangeable.

Delivery Queries—Stuart also asked for feedback on how the delivery system was working. The delivery drivers don’t always have enough empty red boxes to leave for the next day’s delivery; Stuart said that he would look into this issue. Also, if the driver arrives early and the delivery is not ready for pickup, he/she can wait until you are finished packing.

Special Stops—Cheryl Mann, Circulation Control, passed out instructions for handling Special Stops. There have been several problems lately with handling these, partly due to staff not reading the special stop information completely. The sections on Executive Director’s and Interlibrary Loan stops were revised to reflect changes in some of our procedures. Special Stops remain in the system for a long time. If an Interlibrary Loan customer is positive that they returned the “lost” item, have your library manager talk with Pauline so that the special stop can be removed.

Discussion on the concerns submitted to the Circulation Forum – The first question discussed involved the desire to have some method available to flag a customer’s account if they have a disconnected phone number. Several other problem situations, such as missing items from a set or incomplete information, could also be addressed if there was some way to attach the information to the customer’s record. Having a drop-down box with topics from which to select was suggested as a way of accomplishing this goal. Suggestions similar to this have been raised before, including most recently at the library managers meeting in May 2009. Privacy concerns surfaced several times during the managers’ meeting and consensus was not reached. The suggestion was made at the forum that circulation clerks might be the best group to come up with useful phrases for a proposed drop-down box feature.

Regarding the question asked about having an age limit on the Internet forms, the voiced opinion was that we can’t really set a limit for the Internet when we have no age limit for library cards. The original question arose because an adult wanted to get a two year old Internet access so the adult could use the card. Adults should not be using a child’s card to access the Internet; they should only be using theirs. On a side issue, birthdates will be become very important once the Southern Oaks Library is remodeled and the Northwest Library opens since both with have computers in their Young Adult areas; teens won’t be able to use these computers if their ages are incorrect. Double check when inputting ages so that the year doesn’t revert back to 1900 instead of the correct year. Cheryl Mann also said that the customer does not need to fill out a new application if they are only adding a birth date or updating their telephone number.

The next question involved a person who wanted to use her iPod/iPhone to check out since one of the apps on the device allows you to scan and save cards. Our equipment does not have the ability to scan this information for checkout. The customer would still need to produce identification just like those who have their number memorized.

Since employees at the Service Center cannot use “Found on Shelf” to check in their materials, and cannot erase their fines at the Center, they may call or visit your library and ask to have their fines erased. Please cheerfully provide this service to these internal customers.

The meeting adjourned at 4:08 p.m.