Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for July 15, 2010

Materials Services Managers’ Meeting

July 15, 2010; 8:00; Service Center

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

Cataloging/ILL Update - Pauline

Meetings and training attended:

Pauline, Aaron – OLA TSRT, June 18

Aaron – Understanding Generations, June 24

Ursula – United Way, July 7

Ursula – OLA GODORT, July 9

Paula, Vickie – Basic Word, July 13

Jana’s last day in Cataloging was July 2. It was commemorated with a pizza party and presentation of a framed photograph of the CAT/ILL staff.

Interviews for a replacement Cataloger are in process. All Catalogers, plus Jana, are assisting Pauline with the selection. Pauline hopes to have someone to begin work on August 9.

Pauline met with representatives of Reliance Label Solutions at ALA. They discussed the problem of barcodes on ILL green labels not scanning properly. Pauline is working to arrange a visit by Reliance staff to evaluate the issue, before she places an order for additional labels.

The GPO item selection cycle ends on July 31. Ursula has notified appropriate staff that this is the only time that items may be added to our GPO selection profile.

Pauline is reviewing Cataloging’s periodical subscriptions. After checking with IT, she will discontinue its subscription to Advanced Technology Libraries.

Aaron will be attending the Commission meeting this afternoon to receive his five year certificate.

Pauline has received the invoice and submitted an RFP to replenish the Amigos deposit account. She has also received the invoice for Amigos membership; she will notify Amigos that the invoice is to be paid from the deposit account.

Amigos has announced that pricing for the Trans-Amigos courier will be the same as last year, $4500. Pauline is not certain if MLS will receive a $1000 credit for acting as a transfer point between the TAEX and Velocity couriers.

A group from Oklahoma City Community College visited the Service Center on June 25. Jana and Heidi Johnson did an excellent job of leading impromptu tours of the building.

Karen Litteral, librarian from WA, visited Cataloging and ILL for a brief tour on July 8.

Pauline has been asked to continue as a member of the advisory board for Rose State’s Library Technical Assistant program.

Cataloging finished the year having cataloged 19,480 physical titles and 2,028 electronic titles, for a total of 21,508 titles added to the catalog, a 3% increase over the last fiscal year. Additional copies were added to records for 16,138 physical titles; barcodes were printed for 37,245 titles; altogether, 39,243 titles passed through Cataloging.

An all-time high of 191,173 barcode labels were printed for new items, a 7% increase over the last fiscal year and a 5% increase over the previous record. Overall, Cataloging passed the long-anticipated 200,000 milestone by printing 203,031 barcode labels. The number of copies per title averaged 4.87 for the year; it peaked at 5.74 in October. The previous year’s average was 4.55, with a high of 5.2 copies per title.

ILL submitted 9,121 requests to borrow materials for MLS customers during the fiscal year; 7,303 were filled, for a fill rate of 80%. 24,194 requests to borrow MLS materials were submitted, but only 4,902 were filled; the fill rate for loans has dropped to 20%. This is not completely surprising, as the number of requests increased by 9% over FY09, after jumping 28% between FY08 and FY09.

Tech Processing Update - Heidi

TP’s current statistics show the number of items processed on average per day in June was 701 items, for a total of 15,416 items processed in June. Statistics show that TP handled a total of 225,363 items during FY10. 217,011 were ordered items, 8,352 items were standing order paperbacks. 189,896 of the ordered items were processed by TP.

During the month of June, TP received an average of 35 boxes a day, for a total of 780. During FY10, TP received a total of 9961 boxes, an average of 830 boxes per month.

Heidi is finally receiving e-mailed monthly statements for all of MLS’s accounts with B&T. As a matter of fact, she now even receives statements for the In-House Reference account administered by the Business Office. In order to not further confuse the issue at the vendor’s accounting dept., Heidi has arranged with Denise in the Business Office to just forward her any e-mailed statements for that account.

TP was ready for the bindery to pick up the books during the week of June 28. When no one had picked up the books by noon on Friday, it turned out that there was a mix-up at the bindery. Even though Heidi had scheduled the pick-up and talked to the rep. about the upcoming pick-up just the week before, it was somehow left off the driver’s schedule for that week. The new pick-up date has been rescheduled for the week of July 19. The funds have been encumbered from FY10 and will be available whenever the books come back from rebinding.

Karen Litteral from WA toured TP on July 8. Julie Ballou contacted TP about a possible tour for the members of the Circulation Forum on 4.

TP staff is working on their 3rd quarter safety training.

Heidi reported that TP now has Skype and a webcam. This should speed up receipt of questionable materials which previously had to be sent to MSL for review. Now TP can show the book to MSL on the webcam and the selectors can decide without any further delay whether a book is appropriate for our collection or not.

Tanaz, Robyn, and Heidi were all part of the test group for the new on-line learning system and found it fairly easy to use.

Heidi will still solicit feedback from the other depts. in the Service Center about the proposed mail procedures. There was a delay due to staff being on AVL, etc.

Chuck from Scott-Rice visited TP with a rep. from the company who makes the supply shelves used in TP. One of the shelves appears to be not as sturdy as the others and is developing a bend in the middle. Scott-Rice is to let us know what the company decides to do.

Materials Selection Update - Janet

Library Visits

During June Selectors conducted a 6-month visit to WA and an annual visit to BE.

During July selectors are doing a 6-month visit to BI and an annual visit to CH.

In August selectors are scheduled to do their annual visits to the Extensions and CT and a 6-month visit to DN.

Personnel

Amy Chaney started in MSL as the new MSD Technician on June 14th.

Volunteer

MSL has a teen volunteer helping out once a week removing RFID tags from withdrawn items going to the Friends.

New Customer Suggestion Program

MSL staff have been working with the new Customer Suggestion Program Jimmy developed. Janet shared copies of what the program looks like with managers.

The program is working very well and staff are in the process of getting rid of all of the old paper files. Since the program has been running since the middle of March, there was much overlap between the electronic version and the paper files. As of July 1, no more suggestions were printed and are now handled electronically.

Test orders from List 1 with the auto-reserve function went out without a hitch, as did orders for List 2.

Changes in Selector Responsibilities

Selectors have begun selecting in their new areas of responsibility. Prior to the change, staff have been meeting with each to discuss the areas, exchanging resources, tips, etc.

Everyone is excited about the changes and is hard at work selecting in these new areas.

Workshops/Meetings

Ruby facilitated the readers’ advisory workshop in June.

Lisa is scheduled to attend the staff association meeting on July 22.

AVL

Janet is scheduled for AVL August 9-13. Ruby will be “in charge” while Janet’s gone.

Administration Update - Karen

Karen referenced items in the July Commission packet including year-end statistics.

Building projects are still proceeding. Administration is still looking at temporary sites for SO.

Library night at the ballpark is scheduled for August 2nd.

Todd is still looking at roofing issues. The roof on the SC was totaled after the inspection following the hail storm.

Misc. All

Heidi brought up an issue regarding the “Great Courses” series on CD. Each course set consists of 12 CDs which are packaged in 2 containers. Prior to the move to the Service Center, each set was cataloged on a single bib record; the 2 containers were placed together in a hanging bag. With the change to the new process of packaging CDs, each container of 6 CDs has been cataloged separately, and no bags are used. Recently, Tech Processing has received added copies of some titles that were cataloged under the original system. Heidi asked for guidance as to how they should be processed.

Pauline suggested that Cataloging could print 2 barcodes using the same bib record, with “part 1” and “part 2” designations on them. She added that if a library wants to reprocess any of these CD sets, staff could send the CDs to CAT; Cataloging Techs will print 2 barcodes, and MSD Techs will reprocess the set.

UPDATE: On further checking, Pauline discovered that the problem is limited to 3 titles in the series. She will recall the titles for re-cataloging and processing.

Heidi discussed some issues with the bins going to different libraries with mixed agencies’ materials. She was not aware of this happening across the system and was sure they were not leaving tech processing that way. She will continue to monitor.

Managers were to continue evaluating job descriptions and send to Karen as they are completed. The job descriptions for MSD Tech will be discussed at the October meeting. Kim/MSL will be invited to attend this meeting.

Next meeting scheduled for August 19 at the Service Center. Heidi will chair