Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for April 17, 2008

Materials Services Managers Monthly Meeting

April 17, 2008; 8:00 a.m.; Downtown 3rd Floor Director’s Conference Room

Attending: Janet Brooks-Chair, Heidi Johnson, Karen Marriott, Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins

Cataloging Update - Pauline

Meetings and training attended:

Jill – OLA SSRT, March 20, April 17

Aaron – Staff Recognition Committee, March 25

Jana – Leadership MLS, March 26

Denise from MSL visited Cataloging on March 27. She helped to prepare transfers for reprocessing.

All Cataloging staff helped with the RFID project at Capitol Hill April 1-4. Margaret also helped with the project at Choctaw April 14-16; Veronica helped at Choctaw on April 16. IT much appreciates all the assistance, and staff enjoyed the opportunity for something different.

Pauline taught a session of the Collection Management workshop on April 8. It was her first time to teach the ILL segment, along with the regular catalog searching segment.

The Leadership MLS group visited Cataloging on April 9. They toured the department and viewed the cataloging and barcode printing processes, then met with Pauline to discuss management philosophy and ideas.

Ruby and Susan from MSL visited on April 10. Ruby and the catalogers discussed changes to genre headings, while Pauline and Susan talked about their upcoming presentation on serials.

Kim from MSL assisted Pauline with interviews for a part-time MSD Tech April 8-10.

On April 11, Pauline attended a meeting with Studio Architecture staff to talk about furniture requirements for the new Service Center.

Cataloging’s spare computer and Jill’s computer have been replaced. The spare was the third computer damaged by water in February. Replacement of Jill’s computer gives all the Cataloging Technicians the same PC setup.

Memory sticks were stolen from Paula and Veronica’s computers in late March. Fortunately, the culprit has been identified and disciplined appropriately, and the memory has been recovered.

Jana will be attending an OLA preconference on April 21. Pauline and Jill will attend OLA April 22 and 23; Aaron, Clyde, and Ursula will all attend on April 23 as well. Jana will be the cataloger in charge during OLA.

Cataloging’s output for the first three quarters of the fiscal year is nearly identical to that of last fiscal year. However, the number of barcode labels printed for materials added to the collections is up 5%; the number of copies per title is up 6%.

Interlibrary Loan Update - Pauline

ILL staff are happy to report that there have been no significant changes in operations, staffing, workflow, processes, etc.

It appears that more MLS customers are using ILL services. The number of requests to borrow from other libraries has gone up from 3,900 for the first three quarters of FY07 to 4,397 for FY08, a 13% increase. The number of filled requests has jumped 40%, from 2,481 to 3,482. The percentage of requests filled has increased from 64% to 79%. ILL staff have noticed more borrow requests coming from smaller MLS agencies.

MLS is also lending materials to more libraries. Overall, the number of requests to borrow from MLS shows a slight decrease, from 19,178 in FY07 to 17,148 in FY08. However, no requests were received through FirstSearch during July and most of August 2007. Even so, the number of requests filled has increased 16%, from 6,163 to 7,390. In fact, MLS has already filled more AGent requests in FY08 (2,241) than in all of FY07 (2,027). MLS currently fills 43% of all requests to lend materials, up from 32% a year ago.

The new ILL forms will be available on the Intranet Forms list when it is updated. In the meantime, they can be obtained by calling or e-mailing Lisa Walker in the Business Office.

Technical Processing Update - Heidi

So far, the runs in April have been on average 660 labels per day which is slightly more than March’s average of 632 labels. Technical Processing currently receives an average of 35 boxes of materials a day which is about the same as March’s overall average of 37.

Many thanks to all TP staff who helped out with the RFID tagging in CH or helped take up the slack in the dept. so others could go to CH. Heidi also helped out on 4-14-08 for one full day at CT.

MSL is in the process of setting up a Rush account with Baker & Taylor Entertainment. Often, when MSL places regular orders for BTE during a given week and then also phones in telephone orders during that same week, these orders are shipped together on the same invoice. Whenever there were more than 75 titles ordered from the same vendor during an order week, more than one p.o.# would be generated. Most the time, when TP receives these orders, multiple p.o.s were shipped on the same invoice. TP then has to split the invoice by p.o.# which is fairly time consuming. Having a separate account for telephone orders will hopefully negate any future need to split invoices due to multiple p.o.s.

Due to help from Cindy in Customer Service, most of the old credits have been applied and cleared off MLS’s accounts with B&T.

All Ingram accounts continue to be current.

All TP staff will make a trip DN to try out the sample furniture choices for the new building.

TP has discovered a new leak in the receiving garage. During the recent heavy rainfall, water was dripping and also running down the wall by the door to the south parking lot.

Heidi finished inputting items for the FY09 budget, including the vertical lift module.

Heidi met with Jim Welch on Tuesday, 3-18, to discuss setting up a form to use as binding slips when sending MLS’s materials to be rebound to the HFGroup. After the actual account numbers were set up by the HF Group for all of the branches sending materials to be rebound, Heidi and Jim met again on 4-11-08 to finalize the new binding slips to be used. Also, Jim showed Heidi how she now can print bindery list on her PC without the need to call IT to generate the list.

Also on 4-11-08, Heidi attended a meeting DN with the architects about TP’s furniture needs and selection for the new building.

Denise from MSL visited the dept. on 3-27-08 and helped TP file invoices. On 4-10, Ruby and Susan came for their annual visit. The discussion centered around possible workflow changes and its effects on MSL once TP has moved to the new building.

The Leadership group came through TP on 4-9-08 for a tour and overview of the dept.

Juanita Mendoza’s car was vandalized on 3-19-08. Some teenagers, when walking by her car which was parked along the west side of the building, picked up a rock and smashed her window with it. The police was called and a report filled out. Unfortunately, the identities of the culprits could not be determined when viewing surveillance footage.

Loretta is back after having surgery on her thumb. She has temporary weight lifting restrictions, and will go back to her doctor for a follow-up later in the month.

Heidi participated in the MSD Collection Management workshop on 4-15-08. It was well attended and students were very interested in the information presented.

TP has requested agencies to send their books for rebinding to TP by April 25. The bindery will pick up the materials from TP on May 12.

Materials Selection Update - Janet

Library Visits

During March Selectors made an annual visit to ED and a 6-month collection review of DC.

During April Selectors are making annual visits to MC and a 6-month visit to VI.

During May Selectors are scheduled to make an annual visit to SO and a 6-month visit to RE. Karen recommended that we postpone the RE visit until we know more about their temporary location.

Spotlight On

Selectors updated the Spotlight on Asian American material. The bibliography has been forwarded to Teresa/PLA and should be up on the website in May.

RFID

Janet and Marilyn helped with the RFID tagging at Bethany

Janet helped with RFID tagging at CH.

Janet hopes to help out at CT on April 18.

Staff Training

Janet worked with staff at RE reviewing weeding processes and discussing general collection maintenance activities.

Janet, Marilyn and Susan conducted the selection portions of the collection workshop on April 1, 8, and 15. There were 8 participants. Evaluations from the participants were very good. Janet forwarded copies to Pauline and Heidi in the event they didn’t receive them from Stu.

Budget

Janet has begun to set up budget worksheets for each library and looking at areas that need increases to meet the demands.

Selectors will begin meeting to discuss budget allocations as soon as we get figures from Karen.

Workshops/Meetings Attended

Selectors, Janet and Kim attended the Excel workshop on March 18.

Julie and Ruby attended the True Colors Communications Workshop on March 20.

Julie attended the Children’s Services meeting on April 2.

Julie attended the True Colors for Supervisors Workshop on April 3.

Ruby attended the Adult Services meeting on April 9.

Kim assisted Pauline with the interviews for the MSD Tech opening in CAT.

Various MSL staff visited TP and CAT during the month.

Janet, Ruby and Julie are attending sessions at OLA. Janet is presenting a session on weeding during the conference.

Kim is scheduled to attend the Prepare Training: Respect, Service, Safety workshop on April 24.

Janet and Karen will be conducting the Materials Mentor’s Training on April 29.

Janet is scheduled to attend the Young Adult Services meeting on May 7

Staff Recognition

Selection staff had lunch at the Art Museum Café for the department recognition on March 28.

Administration Update - Karen

Service Center

Staff have been having meeting regarding furniture for the new service center. Chairs on display in the Director’s conference room for staff to try out.

There are still a couple of hold ups to the plans including issues with the driveway and roof.

Jimmy is working on the programs for the sorter. Jimmy, Donna, and Anne visited the Fayetteville, Arkansas library to see their sorter.

RFID

IT reported RFID is just over 72% completed. They hope to complete the project by the first of June.

RE is scheduled for the week of April 28th.

DC is scheduled for the week of May 5th

Work at the extensions should begin sometime around May 12th. IT hopes to be able to do work at the extensions on the days they are closed.

Exterior Library Signs

Signs for BI, VI, and WA have been installed.

Other libraries will receive theirs in the next fiscal year.

Materials Mentors

Janet and Karen are working with Planning to train library staff to serve as mentors for the materials processes.

Karen would like other managers to think of portions of the collection workshop that pertains to their areas that could be handled by mentors.

Managers will discuss in more detail at the May meeting.

Commission

Various committees are scheduled to meet in the upcoming months due to the budget and several policy revisions.

Various policies being revised include the maintenance on call procedures that impact the overtime and wage policies, mileage guidelines, rules of conduct and government documents. Karen asked Pauline to review ILL and Cataloging policies.

The Long Range Planning committee meets at the end of the month to review the progress on the service center, northwest, Ralph Ellison.

A&P committee will meet about benefits, cost of living raises and merit increases.

Friends Grants

A subcommittee met to review Friends Grant applications.

Vendor Evaluation

Karen is beginning her annual evaluation of our major vendor. She requested data from managers to help with the evaluation.

Budget Meetings

The Deputy Directors will begin their budget review meetings soon.

Tech Support

Karen reported on several key items from the Tech Support meeting. She suggested managers look at several websites mentioned during the discussion regarding RSS feeds: www.bookletters.com and www.libraryelf.com

Jimmy is preparing some samples to allow us to begin cataloging our E-media titles.

There was a request to have ILL requests submitted online. Karen is not in favor of this at this time. There are a number of issues that need to be worked out and she wants librarians to do reference interviews with the customers to see if there is something else that meets their needs from our collections first.

Miscellaneous - All

Managers discussed the issue of using the generic cardboard covers for DVDs that are received with artwork that won’t fit in our plastic containers. It was decided that Heidi will request a color copier for TP in FY09. If material is received with a cover that cannot be easily cut down to fit into our existing boxes, they will reduce the size and copy the original artwork on the copier. Heidi indicated that this will be much easier to do than trying to cut down some of the items. Until this process can be accomplished, library staff may download artwork from the Internet and copy on their color printers.

Next meeting scheduled for May 15 at CH. Heidi will chair.