Materials Services Division Minutes - March 03, 2016

Director Level Position over MSL, CAT/ILL, TP - Tim

Tim handed out a draft of the new job description for what is currently called the Director of Collection Management. He mentioned that he expects to fill this position within the next 6 months. Tim asked the managers to bring any concerns to the next MSD meeting.

Administrative Update - Tim

Tim talked about OrangeBoy’s strategic planning efforts.

He mentioned plans for staff to wear new magnetic name tags to replace the current photo IDs. The new tags will show first name only for all staff except for managers, whose tags will include last name. The department or library will no longer be part of the information on the tags.

Tim announced that future charity and fundraising efforts will mostly be done online by the Staff Association and no longer on library time. DVS should not be raising money for outside charities. More information will be forthcoming about this subject.

Tim mentioned possible changes to staff rewards. Instead of strictly going by the number of years of service, the awards should look to reward staff’s special efforts made though out the year to best serve their customers. Tim said he would keep the division updated about any possible changes.

Collection recovery efforts are to be increased by looking into hiring of an outside company to help with these efforts.

The System is considering buying two MLS themed shirts, possibly golf type shirts for every employee; employees would have the option to purchase additional shirts.  Tim said staff would then be allowed to wear jeans any day of the week, as long as they were wearing their library shirt.

Department Highlights

Since the beginning of the fiscal year MSL has ordered 19907 titles for a weekly average of over 569 titles.  A total of 124,960 items were ordered for an average of 3570 per week. 

MSL received over 7654 recommendations from customers to purchase titles, for an average of 219 recommendations per week.

1,691 titles new to the collection were cataloged in January; 1,245 in February.

About 14,000 new items were added to the collections in January, 17,000 in February.  About 3,000 of those items were added to browsing collections.

In January, TP received a total of 14,259 barcodes from Cataloging. The average daily run for January 2016 was 750 items. In February, TP received a total of 16,035 barcodes from Cataloging. The average daily run for February was 764 items.

During January, TP received a daily average of 46 boxes of materials a day, for a total of 874 boxes. In February, TP received a daily average of 44 boxes of materials a day, for a total of 930 boxes for the month.

Cataloging/ILL Update - Pauline

Because of the transition between systems in ILL, statistics are not available at this time.

The biggest news is that ILL went live with ILLiad borrowing on February 8, and began fully transmitting all requests to borrow materials through ILLiad as of February 26.  ILL staff are still learning the procedures, but are already enthusiastic.  Some of the things that they like best are the reduced amount of data entry, the speed with which tasks can be completed, and the ability to communicate more fully with customers.

Pauline plans to meet with the Regional Directors on March 8, and the Library Managers on March 9, in preparation for having library staff input ILL requests online.  She has set up a few Service Center staff with personal ILLiad accounts so that ILL staff have live customer accounts to work with.

Since mid-February, the keyword search in ITSi and CarlX has not been working properly.  Searches that should produce multiple results return none, and it is not possible to search the call number field.  This has been a problem for the Catalogers, because one of the most effective ways to check for duplicate call numbers has been through the keyword search.  Pauline reported the problem to Anne Fischer on February 22.  Anne communicated with TLC and determined that there have been no updates to ITSi, so she opened a trouble ticket.  TLC indicated to Anne that the issue has been forwarded to their developers.  The Catalogers are managing with workarounds, but hope to get keyword search back soon.

Problems with barcodes that are printed, but cannot be scanned at the libraries, continue to pop up.  The issue appears to be primarily tied to one specific printer, but it does not occur all the time, nor with all barcodes.  Some of the items can be scanned in Tech Processing, but do not scan at the libraries; others scan in CAT, but not in TP.  IT has cleaned and calibrated all the barcode printers, and the Cat Techs are diligent about keeping up with Maintenance.  Pauline is communicating with Anne about the issue.

Thanks to Curtiss Ray, ILL now has a four-wheel cart with a hydraulic lift.  This allows cartons of materials to be raised to desk height or lowered for easy mobility, and has cut down on the need for staff to lift boxes of materials.  Pauline had contacted Curtiss for ideas about what to purchase; he located the cart and purchased it with Maintenance funds.

In response to Stacy Schrank’s call for ideas regarding the next Focus, Cataloging and ILL staff shared their thoughts with Pauline; she compiled them and forwarded to Stacy.

Ashley Welke, new BI manager, visited on January 11 as part of her onboarding staff training.  She was impressed and interested in all operations.

Devin has begun Dewey classification training with Pauline.

On January 14, Pauline was contacted by David Newyear, DC Manager, about several FEMA publications that the city of Del City had asked to have added to the library’s collections and catalog.  The items were sent to CAT in December, but no deadline had been established for their addition.  Unfortunately, the city indicated that it was essential that they be added immediately.  Pauline was able to catalog all the titles, Cataloging staff rushed them through barcode printing, and Technical Processing pushed them out to DC.

MLS was notified by GPO that various publications that had been made available to depository libraries have been determined to contain personally identifying information regarding military personnel.  The titles were recalled; libraries were required to respond as to whether or not they had received copies.  Sharon Bish, DN, was able to determine that MLS did not select the affected titles, and responded to GPO.

Maria Watkins has responded to Pauline’s inquiries about how returns to non-MLS libraries are handled.  Pauline is finalizing procedures for ILL staff, and will send out a notice to MLS library staff by Monday.

TAE appears to be resolving the issues with courier deliveries to MLS.  ILL staff are monitoring the situation.

Devin attended an Amigos online workshop on cataloging with RDA February 16-19.  She reports that she learned a good deal about the RDA framework and is better able to understand how it has been implemented at MLS.

Materials Selection Update - Janet

Library Visits

• In January, selectors made annual visits to BI.
• In February, selectors met with DN staff.
• In March, selectors will be conducting visits to ED and HR.

Weeding Projects

• Selectors are working with BI and DC staff on major weeding projects. 
• They will be at DC on 3/23 and sometime during the week of 3/28 at BI.

OLA

• Ruby is serving on a panel at OLA on 3/31.  She’ll be speaking about selecting erotic literature for the public library.

Meetings/Workshops

• Janet attended the MLS Design Team meetings on 2/2, 2/9, 2/10, and 2/23.  The Design Team is working on the DC new building project, preliminary plans for a new building for AL, expansions and remodeling for BI and RE.
• Janet, Ruby, Melissa and Kristine attended a meeting with the Playaway rep. on 2/3.
• Janet attended the Leadership Team meetings on 2/3, 2/17 and 3/2.
• Janet attended a meeting with the representatives from Bibliotecha on 2/4.
• Janet attended a meeting discussing EDS on 2/4.
• Janet, Susan and Kristine attended a workshop on negotiating with vendors at OU on 2/5.
• Jessica Morris/DN job-shadowed Melissa on 2/8
• Janet met with Stacy on 2/8 to discuss collection training needs.
• Susan and Lauren met with the rep from ProQuest on 2/12
• Janet met with Vicki Thompson on 2/12 regarding the database statistics and met with Tim and Vicki to go over the project on 3/1.
• Janet met with Chris Stofel and Kiley Atkinson on 2/16 to discuss collections at the community libraries.
• On 2/17 Melissa met with Tim to discuss and review the contract for Freegal
• Kristine and Lauren attended training in Excel on 2/18 and 3/3
• Janet participated in the Peer Committee interviews for the Assistant Manager positions on 2/22 and 23.
• Kristine is attending the Supervisory Series training. So far training on 2/23, 3/10 and 3/23.
• Janet attended the Business Planning meetings on 2/23 and 2/24.
• Kristine attended the Essentials of Project Management workshop on 2/25.
• Janet conducted training for the Community Libraries staff on 2/29.
• On 3/3 Ruby and Janet will meet with LaVetta to start discussions regarding the Big Read program.
• Janet is participating in portions of the Accounting Software demos on 3/3 and 3/8.
• Melissa has jury duty beginning on 3/8.
• Janet is attending an e-book webinar sponsored by American Libraries on 3/10.

Technical Processing Updates - Heidi    

• Baker & Taylor’s and Ingram’s accounts continue to be current.
• TP conducted two tours of the department for a couple of groups of homeschoolers and some of their parents, about 40 people total. Each tour lasted about an hour and the children had a wonderful time, especially when visiting the sorter room and watching the books fall into the assigned bins. Their parents thanked the library for providing this interesting learning experience for the children and adults.
• Kristin and Heidi are scheduled to interview several applicants for half-time TP Aide position, vacated when Alexis Austin resigned. One interview is scheduled for this afternoon, 1:00 p.m.
• Linda Williams, previously working at the Village Library, has started Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, as TP’s newest Processor. She filled the position left vacant when Jennifer Choi resigned to continue her education in NYC. All applicants for this position were from within the system.
• Heidi conducted tours of TP for several new employees who were in the Service Center for part of their GOAL training, including Ashley Welke, the new manager at Belle Isle.
• Janet and Heidi and some of the Selectors met with Karen Peck from Findaway World on Feb. 3. This meeting was held shortly after MLS started to circulate the first Launchpads. Heidi was inundated with requests for replacement USB cables as many of the ones supplied did not fit snugly and kept falling out without recharging the units. Findaway supplied us with about 300 replacement USB cables. Launchpad replacement supplies have been added to TP’s online supply catalog.
• Heidi attended the “Legal Aspects for Supervisors” training at NW on Feb. 11.
• On Feb. 23 and 24, 2016, Heidi attended two half-day workshops for OrangeBoy Inc.’s business planning exercises at DN.
• Last week, TP started to receive the first EDI orders from B&T. However, all items showed already received when the Receiving Techs opened the boxes and started to receive the orders like we had always done since switching to CarlX. None of TP staff’s initials show up as having been the one to double check receipt, quantity and quality. Currently all items show received by CVN (=Conversion per Anne Fischer in IT) When staff try to change anything on the invoice (like deducting cost of defective material we will not accept), CarlX will not let TP do so. Anne has been communicating with TLC about this problem, but so far, they have not come up with a solution. Unfortunately, this prevents TP from binning any of these items at this time. It is hoped that the problem will be solved before TP runs out of room to store any additional boxes.
• Update: TP can now receive and bin shipment and the Receiving Tech’s initials can be accessed. One problem, however, is that shipments of two different p.o.s are shipped together, usually one of the two p.o.s is for AV materials. When there is a shipment of multiple p.o.s on one invoice, Data Entry has to duplicate each invoice, mark off any materials not on the same p.o., then use the copy of the invoice to mark off the items for the other p.o.and pay in two separate parts. Receiving split payment often causes confusion at vendor’s accounting department and intervention by TP is then required. MSL has been communicating with Anne Fischer who in turn has been in contact with TLC about this issue.

Schedule of Meetings for next two months - all

It was decided to schedule the bi-weekly MSD managers’ meetings for 8:30 a.m., each first and third Thursday of the month. There will not be a meeting on March 31 due to OLA Annual Conference in Tulsa. April 7^th also has been canceled due to conflicting schedules.

Pauline demonstrate the interface in ILL for Tim and Janet. It was decided that MSL staff would receive a demo at DN.

Miscellaneous - all

Tim mentioned that CarlX is supposed to supply the requested reports for Cataloging and Technical Processing.

The meeting adjourned at about 11:30 a.m. The next meeting is scheduled for March 17, 2016. Pauline will chair.