Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes April 2012

Date:  April 19, 2012
Location:  Service Center

Update on Past Action Items-All

• Janet will create procedures for libraries to use when requesting replacements for damaged AMPs and forward to MS Managers for review.
• Janet prepared guidelines and forwarded to managers. A few minor changes were made and Janet sent out the guidelines to library managers.
• Upon further examination of the guidelines and because several vendors besides Playaway and Recorded Books require the damaged players be returned for replacements, Heidi decided to handle all replacement parts. Janet modified the guidelines and sent them out to the library managers. They are also posted on the Intranet.
• Pauline will follow up on the need to update GPO budget for FY13.
• Pauline forwarded information to Karen and the budget has been updated.
• Heidi is waiting on confirmation from the Fire Dept. for a May 7, 2012, 9:00 a.m., fire extinguisher safety class with demonstration. Once confirmed, she will notify the other depts. in the Service Center with the details. Patrick will provide some fire extinguishers to use for the hands-on part of this safety training.

New Business-All

• Janet asked if MSL needs to report to Donna or Karen when an item is purchased from the local, staff owned Forty-sixth Star Press.
• Karen will check with Donna about the need for this information.

Cataloging/ILL Updates-Pauline

• Pauline, Jill, Jenny, Alice, Heidi, Clyde, Mary, Ursula, and Brittany all attended portions of the OLA Annual Conference in Norman March 28-30. A staff meeting was held for both departments on April 4; those who attended OLA shared information and ideas that they had learned there with the rest of the staff.
• Brittany coordinated a very successful HeartWalk cook-off/bake-off fundraiser for the Service Center on April 2.
• Chip Whitworth of the Federal Transfer Center at El Reno contacted Pauline in March about updating MLS’s ILL agreement with the center. Chip and Kimber Hendrickson visited the Service Center on April 10 to finalize the agreement. The only major change is that MLS has agreed to lend only materials from MLS collections, and not to borrow from other libraries for the Federal Transfer Center.
• Pauline completed inputting of budgets for CAT and ILL before the April 16 deadline.
• Clyde is attending the April 19 Commission meeting to receive his 30 year service certificate.
• GPO has launched its new Depository Selection Information Management System. With this new system, depository libraries are able to add or drop item numbers from their selection profiles at any time, instead of waiting for the annual selection cycle as in the past.
• Several leaks have been discovered in the ceiling of the CAT/ILL area over the past month. At least one area leaked between rains as well as during them. MTC has had the roofing company out twice to try to resolve the issue. At this time, the ceiling tiles have been replaced and no leaks are evident.
• Pauline is in the process of contacting library managers to update CAT’s list of contacts for AV replacement parts as well as ILL’s list of contacts at each library.
• It appears likely that Amigos, the regional bibliographic network that MLS is part of, will be merging with MLNC, the Missouri regional network. The merger will be presented to a vote by members of both groups sometime in May. This merger could be of great benefit to MLS as it would enlarge the community of network members providing ILL services free of charge, and possibly expand the size and scope of the Trans-Amigos courier system. Pauline will be voting in favor of the merger when the time comes.
• As preparation to serve as the CAT representative to the Tech Support Group, Mary job shadowed at MC Circulation on April 19.
• Lisa attended basic Periodicals training on April 13 at MC.
• IT has installed the newest version of Connexion client, the software used by the Catalogers on Clyde’s PC. He has reported no issues with it; Pauline will request that it be installed on all other Catalogers’ PCs.
• Cataloging remains current in cataloging and barcoding newly received titles.
• During March, 1,873 ordered titles were forwarded to the Catalogers, for an average of 85 titles forwarded per day. 2,020 titles, an average of 92 per day, were cataloged. March marks the sixth straight month in which over 2,000 titles have been cataloged. 18,685 barcode labels were printed, at an average of 850 labels per day. This is the lowest daily average since August 2011; the daily average for the fiscal year is the highest ever recorded.
• In March, ILL received 893 requests to borrow materials for MLS customers, was able to submit 828 to other libraries, and filled 659 requests. The department reviewed 1,802 requests to lend MLS materials to other libraries and filled 1,039.

Technical Processing Updates-Heidi

• Statistics show the number of barcodes brought to TP on average per day in March was 823 items for a total of 18,101 items; the average for April so far is 1121 items per day for a total of 11,211 items through April 13. Materials receipt has increased quite a bit over the last few weeks. The processors are still current on processing all “rush” materials; they are processing non-rush materials from April 6th which is from the run nine working days ago. Study guides and dated materials like continuations are also current.
• During the month of March, TP received an average of 52 boxes of materials a day, for a total of 1148 boxes. The average in April up to 4-17-12 is 58 boxes, for a total of 695 boxes.
• The lights in TP have finally been fixed. An electrician came by on Monday to replace a light switch in TP.
• TP has continued to receive a steady trickle of malfunctioning Playaway units from the libraries. However, there were several sent to TP which turned out to not be malfunctioning. Heidi does not know whether staff at the libraries do not verify the problem before sending to TP, or whether players can reset themselves if without battery for a certain period of time. If a Playaway was sent to TP and defect cannot be verified, she usually sends it back to the library manager with an explanatory note.
• Heidi has finished inputting TP’s budget requests, including 50 additional black book tubs, another trash hopper, and an outdoor bench to be shared between several SC department budgets.
• Susan Poole from Cisco-Eagle has provided feedback and a quote for fixing TP’s problems with the flex conveyors in the loading dock area. Since it will only cost
  $500.00 to install a wall bracket rod system outside TP’s opening into the dept., Karen gave permission for TP to use leftover FY12 money from the 408 account to get this rod system installed now instead of having to wait until August. The rod system should help to support the weight of heavy boxes and not allow the flex conveyor to sag and deviate from its desired 30” height. Not having to lift boxes to bridge gaps in height will greatly improve the process of moving shipments from the loading dock conveyors into the dept. and onto the dept.’s main conveyors.
• The company that installed the sorter was here on Friday, April 13, to install updated software. Jim Welch from IT will be testing his NW sorting program prior to the start of NW materials sorting on April 23, 2012.
• The Business Office was in the Service Center on April 5 to perform its annual inventory.
• Heidi attended the Safety Committee meeting on April 10 at the Service Center.
• On April 11, testing of the Service Center sprinkler and alarm systems took place. During this process, 5 books were discovered in the bottom of Big Bin; so far, TP has been unable to find a way to retrieve them. MSL has been notified.
• Heidi has contacted Todd Olberding’s office to inquire about the status of emergency exit signage information for the Service Center. J.R. is to find out from Todd and get back with her.
• Ruth Harder and Josh Lewis came to TP on 4-17-2012 to job shadow the processors and find out more about repairing lose and torn pages of books. Ruth and Josh were very excited about the information they learned, esp. about the best supplies to use to repair materials with.

Materials Selection Updates-Janet

• Library Visits:
• In March, Selectors completed annual visits to ED and HR. They also made a 6-month visit to DC.
• In April they are making annual visits to MC and NP and a 6-month visit to VI.
• In May, they are scheduled to do annual visits to SO and LU and a 6-month to RE.
• Northwest
• Tracy Stone and Rondia Banks have been moving NW items stored in the MSL basement.
• Karen transferred some of NW AV funds, which selectors felt were overfunded in relation to remaining shelf space and availability of materials, to Selectors’ Funds or other NW funds.
• Workshops/Meetings Attended
• Melissa, Amy and Janet attended OLA on March 29th
• Melissa attended the Children’s Services meeting on April 4.
• Janet assisted with the DC Manager Assessment Center on April 9th.
• Susan attended the Oklahoma City Special Libraries Workshop on April 11.
• Janet is scheduled to attend the YA Services meeting on April 25th

Administration Updates-Karen

• Karen referenced items from the April Commission meeting.
• Karen informed Janet of a balance in Grant #944: LET/Gift Materials and asked her to finish the grant.
• DC carpeting is installed. WA’s carpeting is being installed.
• BE will close May 14 for HVAC replacement.
• IT has implemented the iFind application which replaces the tracer lists.
• NW:
• The sorter, security cameras and wiring have been installed. Computers are scheduled for installation the week of April 23.
• Jimmy ran a test on the sorter at the SC with the new program for sorting NW materials. A test run will be conducted April 19th after 4:00. The program should automatically switch back to TP use at 6:00 a.m. NW will run shifts for sorting material at SC between 4:00 and 10:00 each evening.
• Donna received plans for ED to receive 55 additional parking spaces. The plans are going to the Edmond City Council.
• Diane reported that this year’s Literary Voices dinner was the best year, excluding the year Laura Bush came. They grossed $144,000. Mary Higgins Clark referred to our library as the “Taj Mahal of libraries” during an interview.
• Friends
• Friends membership meeting is scheduled for 7:00 on May 15th at BI.
• The Friends approved the “wish list” of projects for next year.
• Karen, Diane, Donna, and Steve Bolton, Friends President visited Kansas City Library System to view how they handle booksale. They have bookstores and online book sales. Our system might be interested in doing online booksales, but are not interested in doing the bookstores at this time.
• The Literacy Council has moved out of the offices on 2nd floor of the DN Library. They are now housed with the Opportunity Improvement Council.
• Angela/DN has also moved her office from 2nd floor to the 1st floor.

Miscellaneous-All

• No miscellaneous items were discussed.

Next meeting scheduled for May 17th. Heidi Johnson is chair.