Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for February 2012

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

Update on Action Items

Discussion with Donna about transfers - Karen
Karen said a decision will be made within the next few weeks. If the new long range plan includes opening of new “storefront” locations, this will be a major factor in the decision. Jones will probably not receive many transferred materials even when they move to their new building.

Review of gift guidelines with staff - Pauline
Pauline has met with the Cataloging Technicians and stressed that IS gifts are to be added to the collection only if they are in excellent condition, there are few available copies within the system, and the material matches an existing bib record. Mass marked paperbacks will be added to the cataloged collection only if the title has previously been cataloged in mass marked format, or if the addition is approved by a Materials Services Manager.

Review of withdrawn items by Selectors - Janet
Janet has emphasized to the Selectors that they should be very selective when sending items to CAT to be transferred. Only materials which are last copies of a title in the system and are in excellent condition will be considered.

Cataloging Update Pauline

Cataloging of the recent backlog of titles waiting has been completed.

During January, 1,563 ordered titles were forwarded to the Catalogers, for an average of 78 titles forwarded per day. 2,279 titles were cataloged, for an average of 114 titles. Barcode labels were printed for 3,553 titles, or an average of 178 titles per day. These figures include only titles received from Technical Processing with printed workslips; gifts and other materials routed directly from Materials Selection or libraries are not counted. 20,341 barcode labels were printed.

For FY2012, 13,625 titles have been cataloged, with barcode labels printed for 24,508 titles. A total of 145,750 barcode labels have been printed.
Interviews for the ILL Technician position were held January 30 and 31. Phil Tolbert, Assistant Manager of Library Operations at DN, assisted, along with the ILL staff. Brandon Johnston, Public Computer Specialist at WA, was selected and will begin work with attendance at GOAL on February 20.
Garry Souders, part-time ILL Technician, has resigned his position; his last work day will be March 9. Alex Hinton, Library Aide at WA, has accepted that position and will begin work on March 5.

ILL received 764 requests to borrow materials for MLS customers in January, for an average of 38 per day; of those requests, 707 were submitted to libraries, for an average of 35 per day. 640, or 91%, of requests were filled.

No MLS materials were lent to other libraries during January due to staff shortages. MLS began accepting requests to lend materials on January 30.
Mary Parker will be taking over from Pauline as the Cataloging representative to the Tech Support group, beginning in April. She attended the meeting on January 24 as a guest.

Mike Morey, OCLC representative for this region, visited the Service Center on January 24.

Ursula attended the annual ODL Federal Depository visit at DN on January 26. She gained valuable information about the newest edition legal requirements for the Federal Depository Library Programs, and will share as needed.

The chemical inventory report for CAT/ILL has been completed and all MSDS’s are up to date.

Pauline worked with Denise Flusche, head of technical services at Lawton Public Library, to develop a response to a possible loss of funding for OCLC services at that library.

Meetings and training attended:

• Pauline – Tech Support meeting, January 24
• Brittany – Staff Association meeting, January 26
• Clyde, Pauline – Connect planning meeting, January 31

Materials Selection Update Janet

Library Visits

• During February, Selectors are conducting annual visits to DN and a 6-month visit to CT.
• In March, Selectors are scheduled to do annual visits to ED and HR and a 6-month visit to DC.

MSL Staff

• Armando’s last day in MSL was Feb. 3.
• Lori Mullooly begins Feb. 20 as the PT MSL Tech. She is currently a PT Circ. Clerk at WA.

iWeed

• Janet and selectors completed all of the iWeed training in January. Over 80 employees were trained at these sessions.
• The program went live on Feb. 2nd, after a short delay because of some program issues that Jimmy had to fix.
• Janet has been handling a few calls from staff with questions or problems.
• Feedback from staff is extremely positive.

Server Problems

• Server problems have impacted Materials Selection’s workflow in the past week. The mslMaterials program was down from Friday p.m. to Monday a.m.
• It appears that the server problems are fixed for now. Jimmy had to work through a couple of minor issues since the server was fixed.

Collection Training

• The collection training, primarily for NW staff, is scheduled for February 21 and 22nd at the Service Center.
• Janet shared a copy of the roster with the other managers. 13 employees are registered.
• Planning is bringing laptops, projector and screen.
• Janet will bring portions of the manual the managers requested for the training on a USB drive and some of the examples Heidi uses for the bindery portion.

Meetings/Workshops

• Janet attended a webcast of the ALA Youth awards ceremony on Jan. 23.
• Janet attended the Tech Support meeting on Jan. 24.
• Staff attended the retirement meeting on January 25.
• Janet and Melissa attended the Children’s Services Retreat on Feb. 1.
• Janet plans to attend the X-change meeting on Feb. 20th
• Lisa is scheduled to attend the Staff Association meeting on Feb. 23.
• Janet and Melissa plan to attend the YA Services Retreat on March 7th

Technical Processing Update Heidi

• Statistics show the number of barcodes brought to TP on average per day in January was 982 items for a total of 19.465 items; the average for February so far is 821 items. The Processors are current on processing all “rush” materials and are processing non-rush materials from ten runs ago. Processing of studyguides and dated materials like continuations is also current. The good news is that there are only about 3500 items stored in Big Bin which is the lowest count since last summer.

• During the month of January, TP received an average of 46 boxes of materials a day, for a total of 911 boxes.
• Playaways are coming in on a regular schedule. TP has asked MSL to not order more than 25 titles per purchase order. Shipments received in more than 3-4 boxes are too cumbersome to handle, especially now that ED has been added and we are receiving 7 instead of 6 copies per title.
• The schedule for the upcoming Collection workshop on Feb. 21 has been worked out.
• Heidi will be out on medical leave starting February 27. She expects to return to work on March 19. Kristin will handle any day to day dept. operations and Pauline will finalize and sign timesheets and leave forms, plus deal with any issues requiring a supervisor’s attention. Kim in MSL has offered to make any calls to vendors regarding defective materials and other issues with shipments.
• Heidi and John Rahhal have met with Michelle Temple from Brodart on Feb. 14, 2012. Michelle wants to provide MLS with some additional samples of their products. Heidi declared herself willing to test them once received and to provide feedback to both Michelle and John.
• Heidi and Patrick met with Susan Poole from Cisco-Eagle on Friday, 2-10-2012, to discuss improvements to the flex conveyors in the loading dock area which sag when boxes are unloaded and put on them for sorting by purchase order number. Susan will investigate what weight the conveyors are rated for and to provide possible solutions within the next week or so.
• Participants of the Connect Librarian forum toured TP after their meeting on January 31.
• The sorter started making a terrible noise starting Tuesday morning while Heidi was at the Safety Committee meeting in ED. Kristin notified IT about the problem and turned off the sorter. By 11:30 a.m., when Heidi returned to the dept., the sorter room was starting to fill up with acrid smoke and something still was making strange noises inside the housing of the transport band. It was then decided to cut off all power to the sorter to avoid further hazard. IT was able to replace a 6’ compressor hose which had rubbed against one of the transport cables and ended up slit wide open. Thanks to IT the sorter was operational again by 9:00 or 9:30 a.m.
• TP has completed its annual chemical inventory list and sent it to Candace. The 1st quarter safety training has also been finished.
• Heidi mentioned that she will need to contact Jim Welch in IT to make a minor change to the bindery slips printed for materials to be sent to the bindery. She expects the next bindery group to be sent in April. She will work on that as soon as she gets back to work in March.

Administrative Update Karen

The date for the NW Library opening has been set for Tuesday, May 22, 2012.

Sorting of materials for NW should start nights in the SC sorting room around the end of March or early April.

The Commission will meet today. Items on the agenda for approval are carpets, chairs, roofs, and a van for IT.

Expanded hours will start May 7th when all full service libraries will be open using the same schedule, including Sunday hours. Maintenance will start running 3 routes on Saturday.

The Long-Range Planning committee will meet on February 27. They will look at the facilities plans and progress on the current strategic plan. They will report to the Commission at the March 15 meeting.

Ralph Ellison Library’s new artwork has been installed.

Circulation figures for e-media are going up, but are going down for other materials at several agencies. MLS will study current usage patterns and trends including what impact e-media are having on circulation of physical formats at libraries.

Miscellaneous

There was a brief discussion of possible ways to improve tracking of the number of materials flowing through Technical Processing and Cataloging. Karen indicated that the following need to be established:

1. Method of determining an overall average turnaround time for materials i.e. amount of time on average from receipt of an item at the service center to routing of the items to an agency.
2. Current overall average turnaround time.
3. Target overall average turnaround time. Neither Pauline nor Heidi has a clear understanding of what target turnaround times are expected as no definite targets have been established; when such targets are established, a method of determining whether they are being met needs to be agreed upon. Heidi and Pauline agreed that Jim Welch in IT will need to be included in this discussion at some point, in order to develop easily usable methods of tracking needed information. Pauline, Heidi and Karen will meet to further discuss this issue.

Action items:

Heidi will contact the Fire Dept. to schedule fire extinguisher training for staff in TP and CAT for the 2nd quarter safety training. She will also contact BC/BM staff in case they would like to attend.

Karen, Pauline, and Heidi will schedule a meeting to discuss expectations for Cataloging and Technical Processing, how to establish target goals, methods for gathering information, and how to utilize the information. This will not occur until Heidi returns from medical leave.

Karen will follow up on emergency signage for the Service Center.

MSL will order any future Playaways in batches no larger than 25 titles per purchase order.

Pauline will meet with the Cataloging Techs to provide a daily run count to Technical Processing.

The meeting adjourned 9:55 a.m. The next meeting is scheduled for March 22, 2012. Pauline will chair.