Materials Services Division - January 2015

Date:  January 15, 2015
Location:  Service Center

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

Statistical Updates

• During December, all newly cataloged titles were routed from Cataloging to Technical Processing within one working day of receipt in Cataloging.  Mass market paperbacks were routed from Cataloging to Technical Processing within an average of 1.5 working days of receipt in Cataloging.  Records for e-media materials were uploaded to the catalog within 5 working days of receipt via e-mail. 
• Based on the best data available, around 1,800 titles new to the collection were cataloged in December, including about 400 e-media titles.  Approximately 600 records for mass market paperbacks were added during that time.
• During December, about 13,000 new cataloged items were added to the collections; about 2,000 mass market items were added.
• Titles with customer holds waiting continue to be prioritized over titles with no holds, regardless of the number of holds and/or copies.
• There is currently no backlog of materials waiting to be cataloged or barcoded.
• 853 requests to borrow materials through ILL for MLS customers were received in December.  809 requests were submitted to lending libraries, for an average of 95%.
• 632 materials borrowed through ILL were received and routed to libraries in December.  Materials are not always received during the same month that a request is placed.  During December, 151 of the materials received (24%) were requested in November.  In November, 778 requests were received and a total of 547 of the requested materials were borrowed, for a fill rate of 70%.
• In December, requests to borrow materials for MLS customers were submitted to libraries an average of 1 working day after the requests were received in ILL.
• Staff in ILL evaluated 730 requests to lend MLS materials to other libraries in December.  429 materials were lent; average fill rate was 59%.
• In December, MLS materials lent to other libraries were returned to ILL an average of 14 working days after shipment.  
• Since the beginning of the fiscal year, Materials Selection added a total of 14205 titles and 93021 items.  Since the beginning of September, when we migrated to CarlX, a total of 8952 titles and 57228 items were added.  Orders are averaging 447 titles and 2861 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.  A temporary solution has been found for getting around the problem.   Ed Baldwin from TLC is forwarding POs to us now.  For several weeks, we were not receiving POs from him until late morning.  We seem to be receiving them now by 7:30 in the a.m. which works better for us.
• Since the beginning of the fiscal year, Materials Selection received 6042 customer suggestions to purchase materials, for an average of 216 suggestions per week.  Prior to the migration, MSL averaged about 296 suggestions per week.  Handling recommendations continues to be a cumbersome task.
• Since the migration to the CarlX system, no receiving or barcode statistics are available to Technical Processing. TP can only estimate their productivity for the month 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.

Paycom-HR System Implementation - Karen

• Karen indicated that moving to an automated HR system, including time clocks, was in response to follow Department of Labor requirements and ensuring staffing accountability.
• Karen did not have new information to share with managers at the time of the meeting.  She suggested Managers plan to attend the LO Managers’ meeting on January 21^st.  She said there will be information shared and possibly some training.
• Anne is installing time clocks. 
• Supervisors will need to input base schedule for employees.

Outlook Shared Calendars - Karen

• Karen asked managers if they had a chance to use the new calendar features in Outlook 365.  Janet and Pauline have begun using the shared calendar with staff.
• Karen asked managers to share their calendars with her and other Materials Services staff as appropriate.

Executive Director

• Tim Rogers, Executive Director visited with managers for a short while and listened to some of the issues still surrounding TLC.
• Tim mentioned that he is in the process of visiting with staff around the system, getting to know them and the operations of our library system.  He hopes to visit with each of the Materials Services Departments sometime before the end of February.  Maria will be in contact with managers to arrange a time.
• He mentioned that he and the DEDs are beginning work on new strategic plans.  Our current plan ends in June.  As they begin working on new plans, he is setting up an “Open Page” site to start a conversation about future goals, values and priorities for the system and to get a shared understanding of what we are doing.

TLC Issues - All

• Newly added records for e-media materials have stopped showing up in the OPAC, although they are still visible in the staff client.  Neither Pauline nor Anne have been able to determine why this is occurring.  It appears that the records are being suppressed, although they do not meet CarlX criteria for record suppression.  Anne has opened a trouble ticket with TLC.  The materials are available through OverDrive, and can be located in the OverDrive search or in the staff client.  Cataloging is continuing to add e-media records to the catalog.   Update:  Shortly after the meeting, Anne contacted Pauline to convey TLC’s response to the ticket.  Contrary to Pauline and Anne’s understanding, records for 3-media are automatically suppressed in the OPAC because there are no attached items.  The records must be manually unsuppressed.  Pauline has asked the Catalogers to unsuppress all future records as they are added to the catalog.  She is currently working to unsuppress all existing records.
• Pauline is continuing to work with Karen and Kay Bauman to find a workaround for the problems caused by the limited number of characters per call number.  Karen and Kay have requested that Cataloging begin using the designation “VMP” instead of “VIDEO PLAYER” in call numbers.  This will help address the majority of problems.  Other instances will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

• ILL card problem

  • Around the first of January, ILL experienced a problem with cards used to lend materials to other libraries.  Several cards were blocked from further checkout because materials checked out on them were coded lost.  This is a problem because many of the cards are used to check out materials to more than one library, and the block prevented any materials from being checked out on the cards, even to libraries without lost materials.  The problem surfaced in January because of the way that materials check out on ILL cards.
  • Materials checked out on ILL cards have a 30 day loan period, and were being coded lost 60 days after the due date.  This meant that materials checked out in October and not yet returned were coded lost.  According to the TLC ILL manual, materials checked out on ILL cards should not be coded lost until 90 days after the due date.
  • Pauline contacted Anne about the problem.  Anne adjusted the lost date on ILL cards, and increased the threshold for lost materials to 5.  An ILL card should not be blocked until at least 5 items checked out on it have been coded lost.  Pauline will monitor the situation and let Anne know if these limits need to be further tweaked.

• CD cover images in OPAC

  • Anne Fischer contacted Pauline to discuss the problem of cover images for music CDs not appearing in the OPAC.  She informed that she had been in touch with TLC and determined that cover images are generated based on MARC tag 020 (ISBN) or 024 (UPC).  Pauline explained that very few music CDs have ISBNs, although they usually have UPCs.
  • Before the migration to TLC, the MARC field with the UPC, field 024, was not supported in the MLS ILS.  Cataloging was not used to paying attention to the field, since it would not appear.  
  • Pauline has discussed this with the Catalogers, and all new records added to the catalog will include the UPC field.  This should allow the OPAC to generate cover images for most new music CDs.  Unfortunately, there is no good way to update existing records because the UPC is usually removed or covered during processing.
• It appears that the POs, Claims, and Cancellation processes are working fairly well.  These come through the mlsAcquisitions email.  There were issues with the switch over to the new email system.  We did not receive POs for several days without having Anne contact TLC.  A quick fix was put in place. Ed Baldwin with TLC began forwarding emails to us.  For several weeks, we did not receive the POs until late in the morning.  Janet believes that we are now receiving these early in the morning, but they are still coming through Ed. 
• Deleting Recommendations-We still have to wait overnight after deleting Holds on a recommendation before we are able to delete the Title.  This occasionally causes problems when new customers place holds on a title, before we are able to delete it.  Part of this is due to the fact that the temporary recommendation records show up in the LS2Pac.
• Minimally cataloged paperback issues have been mostly resolved.  MSL deletes the temporary item records as they run across them.  CAT is removing temporary item records when they catalog records are updated.  In December, Janet ran a Holds Purchase Alert report for all items.  This helped her identify many of the minimally cataloged paperbacks with temporary records.
• We were receiving material where the ISBN randomly changed from placing the order and when received.  This appears to have been resolved or may have been a problem caused by other problems experienced in October.  Heidi reported not having any other problems.
• Seem to be able to handle replacement requests through email with no trouble.  It seems that having staff request through email has cut back on the volume quite a bit. 
• Karen is looking to problems with continuations in the Serials subsystem.  She may be contacting managers for assistance in resolving these issues.

Cataloging/ILL Updates - Pauline

• There are no backlogs of materials or requests waiting to be processed through ILL.
• As always, staff in CAT and ILL did an awesome job of maintaining department operations while Pauline was on AVL for two weeks.
• Aaron Killough, ILL, has shared that he and his wife, Carrie, are expecting their second child in spring 2015.
• Staff at some libraries have asked for a way to make printed tax instructions available for checkout to customers.  Pauline is working with Karen and Kay Bauman to make this happen.  She will attend the Managers of Library Operations meeting on January 21 to go over the process with library managers.
• Pauline has been working with Susan Ryan, MSL, to clean up records for periodicals in CarlX.

Technical Processing Updates - Heidi

• During December, TP received a daily average of 39 boxes of materials a day, for a total of 816 boxes.  462 were received from Baker & Taylor, 344 from other vendors. The daily average in January so far is 31 boxes. 
• Baker & Taylor’s and Ingram’s accounts continue to be current.  
• Baker & Taylor is trying to save on shipping costs and is experimenting with batching shipments and apparently only shipping every 3 days. The agreement was for this to happen to backorders only, but UPS deliveries indicate otherwise. Heidi is still in negotiation with B&T’s shipping department about tweaking the current trial period arrangement. 
• Anne Fischer was in the Service Center on Friday, December 26, 2014, to investigate the mystery of why Bethany Library received so many misrouted items in their shipments. She discovered that any items with RFID tag problems were routed to BE by default instead of to the exceptions bin in the sorter room. Anne was able to fix this problem. Heidi is dealing with any items which end up in the exceptions bin, even after resorting to eliminate possible sensor misreads. Some tags were never activated, some missing their tags, some never had any, and some items have dropped out of inventory before the conversion to CarlX. Many are transferred items which still have old RFID tags that are coded for the previous owning library. Since old RFIDs cannot be overridden, they have to be replaced and recoded. Other items frequently ending up in the exceptions bin are magazines. Heidi will address the issue of magazines going through the sorter at the next LO meeting.  TP has found many magazine covers without the rest of the magazine, or loose pages which have come out of magazines in the sorter room. 
• During the last month, Heidi’s PC has been experiencing many problems when using Word files. IT has been looking into the situation and hopes to have found the problem and fixed it.  
• The Service Center is scheduled for carpet and chair cleaning for Sunday, January 25.
•  Heidi is scheduled to attend the next Safety Committee meeting on January 20, 2015, 10:00 a.m., at DN. 
• Kevin is scheduled to attend the next Staff Association meeting on January 22, 2015, at RE. 

Materials Selection Updates - Janet

Library Visits

• Selectors made an annual visit to WA during December.
• They are scheduled to visit BI during January.
• They are scheduled to visit DN during February.

Staff Activities

• Several staff attended the Wellness workshop on 1/13/15.
• Janet is scheduled to meet with Angie/OUT on 1/29/15.
• All staff have been involved with the training of the new Part Time Technician, Marlene Rice.  Marlene began in MSL on 12/15 and is picking up processes quickly.

Thanks to TP Staff

• Janet extended a big thank you to Kevin and Alan who came and assisted with work in the MSL basement on 1/9/15.  Their help freed up MSL staff to do other tasks in the basement.

MSL Staff Out

• Over the past few weeks, MSL staff have been in and out of the office, as they are experiencing waves of illnesses, most likely the flu.  If you are unable to reach a certain MSL staff, please contact the office main number, 3814 for immediate assistance. 
• Marilyn will be out of the office the week of Jan. 19^th, with plans to return 1/26.

Job Shadow Requests    

• Janet would like MSL staff to spend time job shadowing in TP and CAT, so staff is familiar with processes in these departments.  It’s hoped that this activity will help MSL staff understand what impact they have on the departments and what TP and CAT do that impacts MSL. 
• Janet asked Heidi and Pauline that if they were agreeable to this, to let her know what is a good time for visits, maximum number of staff at one time, etc.  She also extended an invitation to TP and CAT staff to come to MSL.

Next meeting is scheduled for March 19, 2015.  Heidi will chair.