Materials Services Division Updates - December 2014

The regular meeting being cancelled, the Materials Services Managers provided updates of departmental activities in lieu of minutes.

Department Highlights

Materials Selection

• Since the beginning of the fiscal year, Materials Selection added a total of 12293 titles and 80511 items.  Since the beginning of September, when we migrated to CarlX, a total of 7040 titles and 44718 items were added.  Orders are averaging 440 titles and 2,795 items per week in the new system.   We are still working out some issues with CarlX orders.  Prepaid orders were placed in November and we have yet to get any POs to attach to an RFP for payment.  We did not receive POs on 12/16/14 or 12/17/14 after the switch to the new email system.  Anne is working to resolve the problems.
• Since the beginning of the fiscal year, Materials Selection received 5281 customer suggestions to purchase materials, for an average of 220 suggestions per week.  Prior to the migration, MSL averaged about 296 suggestions per week.  

Cataloging

• Based on the best data available, around 2,200 titles new to the collection were cataloged in December, including about 600 e-media titles.  Approximately 280 records for mass market paperbacks were added during that time.
• During November, roughly 15,300 new items were added to the collections.  This total includes mass market paperback items.
• Titles with customer holds waiting continue to be prioritized over titles with no holds, regardless of the number of holds and/or copies.
• There are currently no backlogs of materials waiting to be cataloged or barcoded.

Interlibrary Loan

• During November, ILL requested approximately 740 titles for MLS customers; and borrowed approximately 820.  This does not accurately reflect the fill rate, as responses to all requests have not been received yet.
• During the same period, ILL received roughly 1,400 requests to lend MLS materials to other libraries; and lent roughly 600.  Not all requests to lend were evaluated by ILL staff; some were automatically declined based on system criteria.
• There are currently no backlogs of materials or requests waiting to be processed through ILL.

Technical Processing

Due to the migration to the CarlX system, no receiving or daily barcode statistics are available for August.

• Due to the migration to the CarlX system, no receiving or  barcode statistics are available for November. TP can only estimate their productivity by using the numbers provided by Materials Selection and Cataloging. The processors are current on processing all rush  and non-rush materials received from Cataloging.
• There is no backlog in Technical Processing.
• During November, TP received a daily average of 43 boxes of materials a day, for a total of 779 boxes.  526 were received from Baker & Taylor, 253 from other vendors. The daily average in December so far is 39 boxes. 

Materials Selection update – Janet Brooks

• Staff
  • Janet, Susan and Kristine conducted interviews for the PT Technician position after the Thanksgiving Holiday.
  • Marlene Rice was selected for the position and began her training in MSL on Dec. 15th.
  • Marlene was formerly a library aide Downtown.
  • Materials Selection is currently full-staffed.
• Library Visits
  • Selectors completed library visits to RE and WR during November.
  • Selectors made their annual visit to WA during December.
  • They are scheduled to do a visit to BI during January.
• Meetings/Staff Activities
  • On Dec. 8, Janet met with Lavetta, Emily, Kristin, and Amy Upchurch to talk about how to order and what types of titles to order for the Summer Reading book give-away.
• MSL Holiday Schedule
  • Quite a few staff members will be out around the Christmas and New Year Holidays.
  • Melissa Weathers will be the staff person in charge while Janet is on AVL.
  • Janet supplied managers with a copy of the MSL Staff schedule during the holidays.  

Technical Processing update – Heidi Johnson

• Baker & Taylor’s and Ingram’s accounts continue to be current.  
• The sorter issues appeared to have settled down last month. Unfortunately, BE is still receiving many misrouted or mistagged items. Various factors appear to be at work and Anne Fischer will be in the Service Center on Friday to help investigate and hopefully solve this mystery.  
• The Service Center’s Christmas party was held on Monday, December 8. Staff enjoyed the food and visiting with other departments during the dinner. 
• Problem shipments from Findaway World have decreased. There were one or two problems during the last month, but overall their order entry and warehouse shipping processes have improved considerably. Karen Peck has been working hard to improve MLS’s service from Findaway. 
• TP has been short staffed during the last couple of weeks due to staff taking AVL for the holidays. Several other staff in TP have been out sick, some of them with the flu. However, all functions in TP will be adequately staffed during the holidays; no service interruptions are expected.
• One of the tagging stations in TP experienced frequent “Controller timed out” messages. Sometimes, this would happen in the middle of a transaction. Often, even restarting the program would not fix the problem until the PC itself was restarted. 
• IT was finally able to fix the problem by replacing a part and re-downloading the tagging software to that particular station.
• Denyvetta Davis had requested training for some of RE’s staff on how to repair minor damage to library materials. Karen Strange went to RE on December 10, 2014, to demonstrate basic book repair techniques to staff there. Five students participated, the course was well received, and everyone agreed that the information will be helpful with their work.
• IT installed 2 additional printers for the Receiving Techs which had been sharing one printer since the CarlX conversion to a different workslip format. This has made a big difference when printing out the distribution lists for received orders. The Techs no longer have to worry about workslips from different purchase orders getting mixed up during printing. 
• Several staff experienced difficulties when trying to complete the online course of the quarterly safety training. The program failed to properly mark their progress. Two staff members were unable to exit the program without losing all of their scores. Planning was able to manually mark their tests as completed and mentioned that even some of Planning’s staff had the same problem. 

Cataloging/Interlibrary Loan update – Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins

• Staff in both departments have been working with Pauline and other staff to find ways to address questions or issues that have arisen since the migration to TLC, as follows:
• Call Numbers and Barcode Labels
  • Cataloging has established workarounds to allow barcode labels to be printed for most materials when call numbers exceed a total of 32 characters.  Library staff are being asked to take note of these workarounds and to be aware that the call number changes are not errors.  In all cases, Cataloging is making every effort to make sure that classification and cutter are consistent for all forms of the same title.
  • The largest number of affected materials are large print biographies.  In this case, the BIOGRAPHY designation is removed from the call number.
  • Another affected area is tween nonfiction AV (CD, DVD, AMP, VMP).  These materials are usually placed in JNF instead of TNF.  Individual libraries may change the location of the materials to TNF if desired, but the TWEEN designator does not appear in the call number.
  • Pauline is still hopeful that TLC will be able to increase the total character count per call number.
  • Library staff should feel free to check with Cataloging to see if materials are affected by this problem.
• Multi-part Materials
  • Pauline has not received word as to how customers may place reserves on individual parts of multi-part sets.  TLC indicated prior to the migration that the system would allow for this.
  • Anne has opened a trouble ticket with TLC.
  • Cataloging has gone ahead and cataloged all materials that were on hold waiting for this information.
  • As Pauline learns more, she will share with library staff.
• ILL Notification and Material Titles
  • Most notices regarding ILL materials, e-mail and postal, now include titles of materials.  It seems that titles do not always appear on notices of material not borrowed.
  • Current workaround for locating titles of materials not borrowed:
    • Search for the customer’s card number using a “call number item” search.  This will pull up all titles for which the customer has received notices.
    • Titles are truncated due to lack of space.  If the customer does not recognize a title, contact ILL.  Staff can locate the full title.
• OCLC has experienced several significant system outages during December.  These outages have impacted both Cataloging’s and ILL’s ability to work at times.  Fortunately, none has been very long term; the longest lasted about half a day.  OCLC assures users that they are working to resolve the issues.
• Pauline has developed a new procedure for handling MLS materials lent to other libraries.  The process uses an Excel file to convert data from WorldShare.  It has eliminated the need to print and file requests to lend materials, and considerably reduced the time and work needed to print temporary labels.
• The Cataloging Technicians have completed printing new barcode labels for all transferred materials sent from MSL.
• The annual Service Center holiday potluck luncheon was held on December 8.  As always, there was a great deal of food, fun, and laughter.  Instead of using a caterer for meat, Curtiss Ray volunteered to smoke turkey, ham, and brisket.  There were many comments on how good the meat was this year.
• Several staff members are scheduled for AVL between now and the end of the year.  However, there will always be staff in each area to respond to queries and provide assistance.
• Pauline will be on AVL December 22-January 5, returning to work on January 6.