Materials Services Division Minutes - August 10, 2015

Cost of Shelf Ready Materials - All

• Tim wants to get a better sense of what our actual costs are to assess, select, acquire, receive, catalog, process, and otherwise make our variety of materials shelf ready.  
• He would like to know the average cost to make every content type ready to use by a customer.  In addition to cost, it would be good to be aware of the time involved to make each content type ready-to-use from receipt through shelf availability.
• Managers discussed processes and studies conducted previously and what changes would need to be made to the analysis.
• Managers are to identify what data is available, what data is missing that we need to gather, what processes are in place, what will impact a shelf ready study.  They will compile what is needed for the analysis and will discuss to ensure the data is consistent and not redundant. 

Department Statistical Updates

• For the first month of FY16, Materials Selection input a total of 17457 items, for a weekly average of 4364 items. As of 7/29/15 the total number of titles input for FY16 was 2806.  This is a weekly average of 701.5 titles.
• During June, TP received a daily average of 50 boxes of materials a day, for a total of 1,107 boxes.  During all of FY15, TP received a daily average of 44 boxes, for a total of 11,070 boxes. In July, the start of FY16, TP received a daily average of 46 boxes of materials a day, for a total of 1,002 boxes for the month. 
• In June 2015, TP received a total of 20,109 items from Cataloging. The average daily run for June was 914 items. The total number of items processed in FY15 was 192,540 items; the daily average run for the year was 764 items. In July, TP received a total of 18,384 items from Cataloging. The average daily run for July was 836 items.
• During FY15, 25,260 titles new to the collection were cataloged, including 4,393 e-media titles.  Approximately 2,000 records for mass market paperbacks were added during that time.
• About 195,000 new items were added to the collections, including browsing collections.
• 10,705 requests to borrow materials through ILL for MLS customers were received; 10,314 (96%) were submitted to lending libraries; as of June 30, 8,771 titles have been borrowed, for an average fill rate of 80%.
• Staff in ILL evaluated 14,514 requests to lend MLS materials to other libraries; 7,062 materials were lent, for an average fill rate of 49%.
• The total number of Customer Suggestions received in MSL was 843, averaging a total of 169 per week.

Administration Update - Karen Marriott

• Karen referenced Ad-Team minutes and asked if there were any questions or discussion.
• She also referred to recent work done on contracts and where to store originals.

Cataloging/ILL Update - Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins

• ILLiad implementation
  • ILL staff received their ILLiad lending training on July 21 and 22.  Staff are excited about the product.  It provides easier batch processing of requests to lend materials, stores shipping address data in a more usable format, and allows for faster searching of requests.  Pauline has been working to tweak certain features to work with our ILL setup.  Examples include:
  • ILLiad only provides the option to print lending labels on 8 1/2” x 11” sheets.  ILL uses form-feed labels, so it is necessary to adapt the printing process to work with our labels.
  • ILLiad only prints shipping labels to ship through the US Postal Service.  Since most ILL materials are shipped via courier or UPS, a method for printing proper shipping labels is needed.
• As always, Cataloging and ILL staff did an excellent job of keeping operations going while Pauline was out traveling to and attending ALA.
• Pauline was excited to give a presentation at ALA titled “Growing Pains”, about the workflow changes that were required with the migration to the new ILS.
• Bea Ramirez, Trans-Amigos Courier Service Manager, visited on July 23.  The timing of the visit was good, as ILL experienced considerable problems with the courier during July.  No service was received on several days; on others, service was so late that it was ineffective.  Pauline and Laqueta met with Bea and discussed the problems.  Since the visit, service has become better and is back to previous levels.
• Pauline hosted Emily Murrow, UCO student working on her library media certification, for a tour and visit on July 7.  Emily was very interested in operations and asked good questions.
• Marty Thompson and CeCe Brown, OU SLIS, brought their Oklahoma Information Environment class to visit on August 4.  With assistance from Cataloging, ILL, and Technical Processing staff, Pauline gave them a tour of the building and answered questions.  The students were very engaged and had many questions about operations.
• Cataloging and ILL staff assisted Pauline in completing the survey on frequency of performance of various administrative functions.  She appreciated their help and good ideas.
• Clyde, Jenny, Paula, and Melanie (Tech Processing) worked with Pauline to create a list of pros and cons of separating DVDs received in sets without individual artwork for each title.
• Brandon attended a focus group session at the OU SLIS on July 28 to talk about ways that professional educational opportunities could be provided to public library personnel.  He described the session as extremely interesting and was glad to have the chance to attend.
• Pauline worked with Materials Selection staff and Anne Fischer to establish a media code to be used for Launchpads and similar items.  The new media code is TAB.
• Aaron is on FMLA leave to bond with his new baby.  He is scheduled to return on August 24.
• Other meetings/training attended:
  • Pauline, Jenny – TSRT planning meeting June 5
  • Pauline, Jenny, Jill – Health insurance update, June 10
  • Pauline – SIGALO/OKULS meeting, June 19
  • Jenny – TSRT planning meeting, July 17
  • Pauline – X Change meeting, July 21
  • Karin – CarlX Overview, August 6

Technical Processing Update - Heidi Johnson

• Baker & Taylor’s and Ingram’s accounts continue to be current. 
• Heidi is still getting used to her new Outlook Office, installed right before she left on vacation. IT encountered many problems during installation; some issues are still not completely resolved.
• Heidi is scheduled to attend the next Safety Committee meeting on September 8, 2015; the location is still to be determined. 
• Kristin has returned to work this week after being out for maternity leave.
• Kimberly Clark turned in her resignation, effective August 14, 2015. She has been offered an official position with her Church, after already volunteering many hours for projects dear to her heart .She will be missed in TP!
• Heidi has requested color samples of neon colored labels from Standard Printing, to be used for the new Launchpads once they have been ordered. The samples are supposed to be available on Wednesday. The wording of the label could be very similar to the one used for Views, i.e. “Set includes: Launchpad unit + AC adaptor power cord”
• Heidi wants to thank all staff who worked extra hard to fill in during her recent absences; first for medical reasons, then for an extended vacation to her family in Germany. She greatly appreciates her well trained staff who took on many tasks new to them; also the assistance of Pauline and her staff, plus staff in MSL who helped TP to deal with vendor questions.

Materials Selection Update - Janet Brooks

• Library Visits
  • Annual visits were conducted at AL and BE during June.
  • In July selectors visited CH and NW
  • In August they are scheduled to visit CT, BC and BBM
• Weeding Project
  • On 6/17/15, Janet met with Chris Stofel to discuss a weeding project and rearrangement of WR’s collection.
  • On 7/13 Selectors assisted with weeding WR’s collection. Approximately 25 boxes of materials were weeded from that collection.  Selectors did not get a chance to weed the minimally cataloged paperbacks, but left that task to Chris and his staff.  The weeding project should help them with their rearranging of the collection in the next month.
• Staff Activities
  • On 6/3/15, Janet met with Heidi, Pauline, and Karen to discuss the possibilities of centralized periodicals check-in. 
  • Susan met with Overdrive on 6/8/15
  • Ruby attended a United Way Meeting on 6/17/15 and on 7/15/15.
  • Kristine completed the temporary order entry for the continuations in June.
  • Melissa and Janet met with a group of UCO students on 7/8.  These were students in the library media program.  They were very interested in our processes and asked very good questions.
  • Janet is working on the Supervisory Training Task Force.  The group met on 7/13 and 7/22.  They’ve identified core topics for new supervisors and determined a timeline for potential training.
  • Kristine and Janet attended the X-change meeting on 7/21.
  • Janet is on the BE Manager’s Peer Committee.  They are scheduled to assist with the interview process on August 3rd.
  • Susan, Kristine, and Lauren have worked to get contracts, contacts, and cost of databases and other electronic services updated.  All contracts were scanned and are now available on MSL’s shared drive. 
  • Kristine and Janet worked on the Frequency of Performance for Selected Job Functions survey sent out by John Rollman.    They identified a few tasks that could be conducted by an administrative assistant.

Miscellaneous - All

• Heidi reported a substantial number of items going through the sorter without RFID tags and that are not in the inventory.  They show up in the “exceptions” bin with a notice of “Not converted”. 
• Janet and Karen reviewed some of the recent items to determine what might have caused the problem.  They could not readily determine the cause.  Janet asked Heidi to forward the items to MSL. 
• Janet will contact the library managers at the locations with most of the non-inventoried items to see if there is a special project going on. 
• Pauline also reported a box received with the transfers that had no paperwork attached to the books.  After the meeting, Pauline and Janet determined that it was a misrouted box.  The library used a light green routing label that looked very similar to the yellow routing labels.  Janet will follow up with the library and ask them to use the darker green label.