Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for February 16, 2010

Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes

February 16, 2010; Service Center; 8:00 a.m.

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

Cataloging/ILL Update Pauline

Cataloging and Interlibrary Loan are thrilled to be moved into the new Service Center! Cataloging moved in on January 11; ILL, on January 20. Pauline again would like to thank all staff in both departments for their hard work on the moves. Everyone is still adjusting to new workflows and spaces, and enjoying the challenges.

Lisa Heinrich, one of Cataloging’s Materials Services Division Technicians, was selected to replace Veronica Bernal as a Cataloging Technician. She began working full time on December 28 by attending GOAL.

Vickie Ross, former ED circ clerk, was selected to fill the newly authorized Cataloging Technician position. She attended GOAL on January 11, and began working at the Service Center on January 12.

After a few minor bumps, the circ checkout station at the Service Center is up and running. Cheers to Vickie and Stormy, whose recent experience as circ clerks has been invaluable during the setup. Staff appreciate the convenience of being able to pick up and check out their system reserves, and return library materials.

Surprisingly, the transfer of ILL courier services to the Service Center was accomplished with relatively few hiccups. The delivery drivers seem to be able to find their way to the building, and deliveries have been as reliable as they were at the DN building. The new canvas bags for the Trans-Amigos Express courier service have significantly cut down on ILL’s opening and packaging time. ILL staff are working with Tech Processing staff to make sure that courier deliveries are handled as efficiently as possible.

Now that it is possible to generate notices of unfilled requests automatically, ILL no longer has a backlog of requests waiting for notices to be sent.

Thanks to Jimmy Welch for updating the mailing address on green ILL loan labels. Most libraries seem to be shipping to the new address.

ILL staff no longer prints and files copies of requests by other libraries to borrow MLS materials. This has been a great timesaver for staff.

Clyde, Aaron, and Jana have continued to work on cataloging e-resources. As of February 15, all downloadable audio and e-book titles have been cataloged.

In November 2009, Melissa Weathers (MSL) sent Pauline a list of titles to be recalled and withdrawn. Most deal with planets and incorrectly include Pluto as a planet. Melissa has also requested a few reclassifications. The requests were put on hold due to the impending move. Paula has now begun working on them.

Pauline is working with Janet to make sure that newly published materials requested through ILL are reviewed for possible purchase by MSL.

The Service Center open house for MLS staff was a great success. Staff pitched in and helped with all refreshments, visited with attendees, and gave tours. Everyone reported having a good time at the event.

Pauline attended the X-Change meeting on February 15.

Materials Selection Update Janet

Library Visits

During January selectors made an annual visit to BI and a 6-month visit to CH.

During February selectors are conducting annual visits to DN and RE (rescheduled from November due to the move back to their renovated building) and a 6-month visit to CT.

In March, they will make an annual visit to ED and a 6-month visit to DC.

Safety

Janet updated MSL’s Chemical Inventory for Candace. Staff are also working on the required 1st Quarter training.

System Reserve Lists

MSL staff continue to use the new program Jimmy developed for us.

The new program has considerably cut down on the amount of work and allowed staff to catch titles that are out of ratio much more quickly.

Weekly orders

Orders during January remained low.

On List 30 which ran Feb. 5 we sent out the first list at 5000 items since October. This list included over 800 items of replacements that had been held back from previous months to help TP out prior to the move.

Replacement List 103 went out 1/28; Replacement List 105 went out on 2/5 and List 106 went out on 2/12. List 107 should go out on the regularly scheduled date 2/25.

The problem with purchase orders going out with “IT Press” in the publisher field has been resolved. Jimmy had set this up as “dummy” publisher as they tested the new system.

Since B&T has been the only vendor to return the purchase orders, Kim has called them and asked them to go ahead and fill orders so long as the title and ISBN match.

MSL staff have been adding “NBK” to some nonfiction orders.

Some orders are still going out with “709” in the Cataloging instructions to facilitate tracking this information for budgeting purposes.

If at all possible staff are placing 709s or System Reserve orders with a filing key that is only visible in MSL.

Janet hopes to be able to eliminate the need for this designation in cataloging instructions if MSL gets an update to their order programs.

Meetings/Workshops attended

Janet attended a webinar sponsored by Booklist on the future of reference sources on Jan 12.

Ruby and Marilyn attended the adult services retreat on Jan 20.

Janet attended the OLA Program Committee meeting at Rose State on January 22 and scheduled to meet again on Feb. 19.

Janet attended the Tech Support meeting on Jan 26.

Janet attended the Culture Survey’s Communications’ Committee meeting on Feb. 2nd. The group presented a summary at the X-change meeting with recommendations.

Melissa and Janet attended the Children’s services retreat on Feb. 3.

Ruby and Marilyn attended the Service Center Open House on Feb. 11.

Janet attended the X-change meeting at MC on Feb. 15.

Janet is scheduled to speak to Emily William’s YA Literature Class at the OU library school in Feb.

Janet is scheduled to work with the new ED library manager on Feb. 23.

Janet and Melissa plan to attend the YA services meeting on March 3.

Collection Workshop

Spring workshop is scheduled for March 16, 23, 30.

Melissa and Susan are scheduled to facilitate the MSL part.

Janet will facilitate the introduction and review

Janet shared copies of the agenda for the workshop. Managers made adjustments as necessary.

Managers should have any updates to Janet by March 8th for inclusion in the workshop manual.

Technical Processing Update Heidi

TP’s current statistics show the number of items processed on average per day in January is 612 items. This includes days of no processing (due to the move) and days of little processing due to equipment problems with either binning machine or tagging stations. Things are finally starting to fall into place and processing can proceed at a more normal pace, providing the equipment keeps cooperating. During last week, Feb. 8-12, the average was 678 items.

During the month of January, TP received an average of 36 boxes a day, including days of no deliveries at all (during the move), and deliveries of temporarily held back shipments of up to 250 boxes. In February the average has been 34 boxes a day.

It has been an experience moving a complete department. Staff has been a big help with working out new processes and procedures. The pieces are slowly falling into place, but many issues still remain to be settled. We are dealing with them as they occur. Big Bin and the tagging stations continue to be temperamental, even though IT and Southwest Solutions deal with glitches as they occur. The latest happening is that the sorter has been “eating” paperbacks; if a paperback is at an angle once on the moving band, the corner may get stuck, held tight, and so create a dam for other materials following this one.

The Open House at the Service Center on Feb. 11 went off very well, as did the tour of some of the Commission members on Feb. 18.

TP has experimented with a new type of system reserve label. There have been complaints that the SR labels will not easily come off the audio books; it tears when trying to pull it off. Anne has provided samples of a new type label with a slightly different adhesive which seems to come off easier. TP has started to use this new label last week.

Once TP had moved into the SC, it was discovered that several items were still missing, like the trash cans for the processors, the long conveyor for the loading dock, several of the supply shelves, etc. These issues are being dealt with, but it all takes time. It also was discovered that the dumpster door was not tall enough for the trash truck to pick up the dumpster and lift it up over the cab of the truck. This has been solved now by switching to a smaller dumpster which will be emptied more frequently.

As of Friday, Heidi now has a lockable door to her office. On Saturday, after arranging entry with MTC, Heidi’s fob would not let her into the building at all. One of the drivers let her in about 30 minutes later. Maintenance believes that they have fixed the problem

Heidi, together with Kim Rickey from MSL, will be interviewing for the additional Receiving Tech position during the rest of the week.

Heidi is trying to finish her chemical inventory list to send to Candace as soon as possible.

TP has had an inquiry whether there will be a spring bindery this year. Heidi replied that there will be a bindery group sent, but probably not until sometime in April.

Tanaz attended the Basic Excel workshop on Dec. 9 at MC.

Apparently, TP’s address change notification to some vendors was mistaken as new orders placed and generated some duplicate shipments, notably from Random House and the Genealogical Publishing Co. The duplicate orders are being returned for credit.

There are several vendors in the Northeast Heidi has tried to contact about problems which have been closed due to snow all of last week.

Administrative Update Karen

Karen prefaced her update by complimenting managers and their staff on a successful move to the new location, saying everyone did a great job!

NW

Bids are coming in under budget, so add-ons like a patio are being considered. Atlas Construction Co. was selected to build the new library. That is the same company that built the new Service Center.

SO

The remodeling project is currently in the design phase. SO is supposed to move into a temporary location after the Summer Reading program is over.

CH

ADA required remodeling should start shortly, dealing with ADA compliant bathrooms and other access issues.

The City wants to get started with official bond money for the renovation. The architect of record with the City is to reevaluate the condition of the building and what would be required to bring it up to code. Based on this evaluation, a decision will be made whether to renovate or look for a different site.

Telephone system

IT is to update MLS’s call management system. This update will require new voice-mail messages to be recorded. IT will give everyone about a week’s notice prior to the update.

Karen mentioned that Ann Alliotta had sent out an e-mail to managers asking if their department phone numbers could be given to customers. MSL and TP did not receive this e-mail, so Karen will forward it to managers. She asked that managers copy her on their responses to Ann.

Tech Group meeting

Karen said that there was a request that spine labels on large print materials be printed in large print. Tech Group decided that since we have not had customer complaints, this would not be investigated at this time.

An issue with the system reserve pull list was discussed. A library contacted ILL about an ILL book that appeared on their pull list before the date given to the customer had passed. Discussion centered on the fact that items which have been sitting on the SR shelf waiting for customer pickup should actually not be pulled until the end of the day given as the cutoff date to customers. If library staff member contacts ILL about such a situation again, ILL staff should tell them to call IT with the specific title information so that IT can investigate the problem.

Budget

The deadline for managers to input their budgets is April 16. There will be a slight increase in the materials and periodicals budgets.

Performance Appraisals

Karen

Karen said that scores are being calibrated now that the first appraisals have been submitted using the new appraisal system. The AdTeam discussed the need to give an explanation if a rating of “exceeds” or “does not meet” is given for any standard. For a rating of “exceeds”, be sure that the explanation is not simply a restatement of the standard. No comments are needed or advised if a rating of “meets” is given for an individual standard. However, a comment is required for each standard category following the category rating, even if the overall category rating is “meets” . Ad Team discussed the difficulties that some supervisors are having with ratings in the “Training” and “Schedule Adherence” categories. For “Training”, supervisors should review the explanation given for exceeding the overall category and use it as a guideline for rating the individual training standards. For “Schedule Adherence”, employees need to exceed expectations for two of the individual standards in order to receive an “exceeds” for the overall “Schedule Adherence” category.

Karen will release the appraisal back to the supervisor if changes are needed. Karen is still having trouble receiving notification of appraisals ready for her review, and asked managers to send her e-mails when appraisals are released to her.

Reprocessing of Audio Books - Karen

Now that TP is in the new building, all Fiction audio books are being processed without bags, with the barcode on the container. The decision was made some time ago not to reprocess older Fiction titles already in the system and on the shelves.

Barbara Beasley from WA sent Karen Marriott some sample withdrawn audio books she had reprocessed at her agency to fit on the regular shelves. She was wondering whether this would be an acceptable way for the libraries to integrate their audio book collections without the need to send to Cataloging and Tech Processing. Barbara had pulled the barcodes off the blue cards and retaped them onto the container.

Technical Processing and Cataloging did not foresee any problems with reprocessing Fiction audio book titles at the libraries, using Barbara’s method. TP did ask however for an estimate of how many additional audio book cases would be needed if the libraries go ahead with this suggestion.

MSD Workshop - Janet

Janet handed out the schedule for the next workshop on March 16, 23, and 30. Janet asked that any needed updates are sent to her by March 8.

Miscellaneous all

Janet brought a copy of a DVD set received from the OKC Community Foundation for basic reading and GED preparation. There are books that may be used with the DVDs; however; each book covers more than one disc, and MSL does not have books yet. Pauline and Heidi discussed ideas. For now, Janet will send the DVDs to Pauline, and place “Give to PRA” in the cataloging instructions for the books.

Karen informed managers of a pilot project at MC where they are interfiling non-fiction adult DVDs with adult books.

Plans for the upcoming Commission tour of the Service Center were discussed.

The meeting adjourned at about 11:00 a.m. The next meeting is scheduled for March 18, 2010; Pauline is to chair.