Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for June 17, 2010

Materials Services Division Managers’ Monthly meeting

June 17, 2010; 8:00 A.M.; Service Center

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

Technical Processing update – Heidi

TP’s current statistics show the number of items processed on average per day in May was 842 items, for a total of 16,846 items processed. So far in June, TP’s daily average is 760 items.

During the month of May, TP received an average of 34 boxes a day. In June so far, the average has been 39 boxes a day.

Heidi has started to receive e-mailed monthly statements for most of MLS’s accounts with B&T. There are still two accounts which are not yet set up correctly, but should be fixed in time for the end of June statement. As before, she will keep everyone posted as to whether this actually happens.

TP once again had problems with some of the DVD cases received from Demco. After talking to Demco, Heidi feels reassured that they now have taken care of this problem at the manufacturer’s and the quality of future shipments should be fine again.

Katherine Casey was selected as TP Aide and started on June 14, the day of the big flood.

Only about half of TP’s staff made it to work on June 14 due to the flooding problems experienced throughout the city.

TP is working on getting the 163 books to be rebound ready for bindery pickup on June 28.

Tanaz attended a United Way meeting at the Service Center on June 9.

TP had their annual staff recognition on June 9. Even though staff were given other choices, everyone opted for a pizza party again.

Kim Macarty participated on June 16 in the videotaping DN for Staff Recognition.

All TP staff have completed their safety training for the 2nd quarter and turned in their enrollment forms for FY11 to HUM.

The Public Library Directors’ tour went very well on June 4. Several of the directors mentioned that their Technical Services staff will be very envious once they hear about our set-up.

Heidi has compiled a draft of mail procedures for the Service Center. She will solicit input from the other depts. in the building before the procedures are finalized.

Heidi is stocking up on processing supplies to bridge the gap from the end of the current fiscal year to when the final budget is approved and more supplies can be ordered from the new budget.

Materials Selection update – Janet

Library Visits

Selectors made an annual visit to SO and a 6-month visit to RE during May.

During June, Selectors are conducting an annual visit to BE and a 6-month to WA.

Selectors are scheduled to do an annual visit to CH and a 6-month visit to BI.

Extension Weeding

Ruby and Janet helped extension staff weed their collections during May. They weeded LU’s collection on May 27th.

They still need to schedule a weeding time for WR, probably in July.

MSD Tech

At the first of June Kim, Susan and Janet conducted interviews for the MSL vacant MSD Tech position.

Amy Chaney was selected for the position and began on June 14. She’s in the process of training with staff on various aspects of the position.

Kim will set up training sessions with CAT/TP/ILL later.

Customer Suggestion Program

Kim and Janet worked for several weeks with the new program Jimmy made for the electronic customer suggestions.

They met with Jimmy to review the changes and updates he made to the program.

Janet supplied staff with instructions. They will begin exploring and learning the program on June 21.

If there are no further changes made, the program will be launched “live” on July 1.

Volunteer

MSL has a teen volunteer helping with RFID tag removals during the summer. Katy Leenders is helping out on Tuesday afternoons.

New Selector Assignments

Beginning July 1, selectors will have some new assignments:

Susan-Adult 000, 100, 600 (print and AV), COs, Databases, Encyclopedias, Periodicals

Marilyn-Adult 300, 500, 800, 900 (print and AV)

Ruby-Adult 200, 400, Fiction, (print and AV) LP, FL-P

Janet-Adult 700 (print and AV), Children’s and YA Fiction (print only) GPO

Melissa-no changes-TNF and JNF, children’s and YA AV, CD music.

Kim will assist Janet with 700s and continue to assist Susan with the COs, Databases and Periodicals.

Selectors are meeting with each other to discuss the changes, share notes, statistics, etc.

In the upcoming year, selectors will make it a priority to meet with staff in the new areas.

Basement Workday

Selection staff are having a basement work day on June 25th to take care of some of the backlog there and to work in their new areas with other selectors.

FY10/FY11

The last list of FY10 goes out on June 24th.

List 47 only had 1854 items; List 48 had 4180 items. List 49 and 50 are expected to be small, since funds are pretty much encumbered.

The first list of FY11 is scheduled to go out on July 1.

Janet suspects the first list will be large, as selectors waited until the new FY to order items coming out later in the summer and did not have a lot of funds at the end of June to make many new selections.

Meetings/Workshops attended

Janet attended an OCLC webinar on May 20. The topic was “The Future is Mobile”.

Janet worked with Anna/RE on June 9, giving her instructions for weeding the collection and doing replacements.

Amy attended portions of GOAL on June 14.

Staff “attended” the summer reading training. Marilyn, Lisa, Julia and Melissa assisted with summer reading sign up during the first week of June.

Cataloging/Interlibrary Loan update – Pauline

Meetings and training attended:

Jana – Effective Communication, May 27

Vickie – Summer Reading volunteer, ED, June 1

Jill – Summer Reading volunteer, MC, June 2

Lisa – Surplus sale volunteer, June 4

Ursula – United Way meeting, June 9

Pauline – Read About It taping, June 9

Stormy – Heartwalk Captains’ luncheon, June 16

Jana – Staff Recognition, June 16

Several CAT and ILL staff members suffered problems with water in their homes or cars during the June 14 flooding. About half the staff was unable to make it to work due to water and/or traffic issues; others were anywhere from one to two hours late. As of Wednesday, June 16, everyone has been able to be at work.

Several leaks appeared in the CAT/ILL area during the heavy rains. There appears to be a roof leak over the catalogers’ area; no water seems to have gotten through, but the ceiling tiles have water stains. Water did get through the window in Pauline’s office, but all collected on the windowsill. A large amount of water did come in around the emergency exit door on the east side. About 5 square feet of carpet was soaked, and the wall around the door was damp. MTC brought in a wet-dry vacuum to pull out most of the water, and left a fan to help dry up the remainder. Pauline has notified Todd Olberding of the problems; Todd has contacted the building contractor.

Jana has been selected to replace Charla Aucone as a reference librarian at the DN library. Everyone is very sorry to see her go, but wish her well in her new position. Her last day in CAT will be July 2; she begins at DN on July 6.

Roy Ballou offered to contact Pauline’s top applicants for the unfilled Cataloger position to see if they were still interested. Pauline selected six applicants for him to contact; five are still available and interested. She is in the process of contacting them to schedule interviews to be held during the week of July 12. Julie Ballou at DN has agreed to work with Pauline to allow Jana to come to the SC and assist with the interviews.

All staff returned their benefits paperwork to HUM on time.

Several staff members have completed their safety training for the quarter. Pauline is watching to make sure that all others complete it before she leaves for ALA.

Pauline has submitted the RFP for an additional shelf unit for ILL. Bruce Delp from Southwest Solutions visited on June 16 to confirm the specifications, and promises to get a quote to Frank Ray ASAP.

Pauline has completed a draft of ILL request procedures for staff at the Service Center, and sent it to Karen for comments. She is working on finalizing it for distribution by June 21.

ILL has recently received a number of questions about items that appeared to be missing their red ILL labels. In most cases, the labels had been placed inside the front cover or on the flyleaf. So far, it has not been determined how this is happening; ILL staff never places labels inside materials. Pauline has sent an e-mail to all correspondents reminding staff never to do this.

Pauline has submitted an RFP for binders to be used for the TV411 in print guides. Heidi has agreed that Tech Processing will copy the guide covers and insert them into the sleeves of the binders. This will avoid the need to print and attach title labels.

Pauline will be out June 24-July 1 for ALA. Aaron will be acting supervisor in CAT, Jana in ILL.

Administration update – Karen

Building projects

Southern Oaks

The 95% completion plans for the renovation are due in late June.

Plans are for the library to move to a temporary site in mid-October.

Del City

It has been noted that the current Del City Community Center building is 7 feet below the flood plain. There will be no expansion of the building or the library.

The city is planning for a sales tax vote in the future. Possibly, the library could be included as a project for the tax. If this occurs, a new library building would be built.

Capitol Hill

The June Commission agenda includes a contract for a feasibility study of different options for the CH building. The contract is with Studio Architects, the firm that designed the Service Center.

Ad Team

Todd reports that there has been no flooding in library buildings after the recent heavy rains.

Todd and several inspectors will be visiting each building to investigate leaks.

The new Learning Management System is up and running. A test subject has been assigned for each office. Managers should review the system and provide feedback.

Door counters are being installed at all libraries.

Once the counters are up and running, the statistics will be posted on the Reports and Statistics tab on the Intranet.

Presently, only VI statistics are available.

The Literary Voices Committee is searching for an author for next year’s dinner.

The new WellNet system will be made available to staff shortly.

Commission

The major item on the June Commission agenda is the budget.

Karen anticipates that there will be some additional funds for materials, but does not know how much.

Job Descriptions

Karen instructed managers to review job descriptions within their departments and determine which ones need to be updated first.

Dates for meetings to work on updates will be established at the July managers’ meeting.

ALA

Karen will be out for ALA June 25-29.

709s and system reserves – Janet and all

The group discussed backlogs in Tech Processing and Cataloging.

Janet expressed concern that the ratio of holdings to reserves is often larger by the time that materials are cataloged and processed than when they were originally ordered. The larger ratios indicate that additional copies are needed to maintain reserve ratios.

If the ordered and received copies were cataloged and processed into circulating collections more quickly, the need for many additional copies would decrease.

Janet asked if Cataloging and Tech Processing are having a hard time identifying materials with reserves waiting.

Pauline and Heidi explained that the departments are not supposed to be identifying such materials any longer. Checking for reserves was eliminated from workflows with the move to the Service Center.

Heidi explained that processing is backed up, primarily because of the amount of time that processors spend doing RFID tagging.

She has taken over the task to free up processing time, but this is not a permanent solution.

Processing AV, especially books on CD, takes a large amount of time.

Currently, processors are checking workslips as they remove materials from Big Bin, looking for materials designated “709” or with a disproportionate number of reserves for the number of copies.

Removing materials from Big Bin is time-consuming, and checking to see if reserves are waiting adds to the time required; this in turn cuts into processing time.

Pauline stated that the Catalogers had been quite backed up for a while, but are currently more or less caught up.

The group discussed ways that the amount of work done on catalog records could be reduced.

It was agreed that summaries will be eliminated from records for nonfiction videorecordings and e-media.

Pauline commented that she continues to receive calls regarding items showing checked in at CAT, but not returned to agencies.

She explained that the items are generally transfers, which must be checked in for barcode labels to be printed. The items then wait until an MSD Tech has time to process them.

Whenever someone calls about a particular title, staff spend considerable time looking for it, since transfer titles are not shelved in any particular order. Items being transferred to open agencies are separated from those assigned to NW.

Kristin has been unable to process transfers since the move to the Service Center; she spends all her work time assisting Tech with processing new materials. Since the vacant MSD Tech position was filled by Heidi Beth (Wells), Heidi Beth has spent her time processing transfers.

Currently, Heidi Beth is focusing on processing transfers for open agencies, due to demand and need for some materials to fill reserves. With the NW opening approaching, this is not a good long-term strategy.

Karen asked if it would help to have a part-time person to handle the RFID tagging.

Heidi indicated that it would be a big help, as it would give processors more processing time. Pauline agreed that if the processors had more time to work on new materials, the MSD Techs could both work on transfers.

Heidi mentioned that it would also help to have a part-time person to retrieve cataloged materials from Big Bin and put them into trays for the processors. Allowing processors more time to process new materials could have the added benefit of getting all materials out more quickly, and avoid the need to check workslips for 709s.

Heidi will get back to Karen with information about number of hours, work times, etc.

Miscellaneous

Due to problems with DN parking, it was agreed that for the time being, all MSD managers’ meetings will be held at the Service Center. The chairing rotation will remain the same.

The next meeting will be on July 15, 8:00 A.M., at the Service Center. Janet will chair