Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for March 18, 2010

Materials Services Division Managers’ Monthly meeting

March 18, 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 February was 667 items, and so far in March 693 items.

During the month of February, TP received an average of 34 boxes a day. In March so far, the average has been 44 boxes a day. TP is glad that the new Receiving Tech will start on March 22. His name is Brad and he has worked as a manager for Blockbuster before where he did lots of receiving, processing, and shelving of DVDs and other media.

There is continued interest in the library community in checking out the new Service Center. Whenever a meeting is scheduled in the meeting room, there also is interest in taking a tour. (YA programmers, SSRT meeting, and various other current and/or retired staff like Mary Patton, Beverly Sprehe, Kelley from HUM, etc.)

The trash cans for the processors have finally arrived as did the rest of the long conveyor for the loading dock. The correct shelves for the processors are still outstanding. Frank is supposed to do some checking on the status of these shelves. Also, the extra keys which had been ordered were received on 3-17-10. Frank is to still order a duplicate key for one of TP’s staff whose lock on her desk had to be replaced.

Starting next week, the dumpster is supposed to be emptied twice a week. Since the Friends moved in, the dumpsters have been overflowing by Monday and the janitors have not had room to empty the cut down boxes and other trash.

Heidi completed her chemical inventory list and sent it Candace. Corrected MSDSs have been received and filed.

Heidi has contacted B&T’s accounting dept. again to have credit memos applied to their open invoices. None had been applied by CFS since November of 2009.

TP staff is working on their 1st quarter safety training.

Heidi is working on inputting TP’s budget.

TP has ordered extra amounts of replacement binders of audio books on CD as several of the branches have started to order replacement binders for reprocessing their collections already.

TP’s additional 5 label dispensers have come in and are waiting for IT to set them up.

Anne Fischer (IT) has reconfigured one of the parts of the sorter and hopes this change will prevent any further paperbacks from being “chewed on” during sorting. Also, one of the tagging stations has been acting up. One of the sensors kept vibrating loose which caused the sorter to not shut off automatically as it is supposed to. Last week, the monitor on one of the stations gave out. Anne worked on the sensors and someone from IT replaced the monitor. After IT suggested to restart the tagging stations at least once a day, no further problems have been encountered so far.

The windows for the garage doors in the loading dock are supposed to be installed this coming Saturday, March 20.

Materials Selection update – Janet

Library Visits

In February, Selectors made an annual visit to DN and RE. They also made a 6-month collection review of CT.

During March, Selectors are making an annual visit to ED and a 6-month collection review of DC

In April, Selectors are scheduled to make an annual visit to MC and a 6-month visit to VI.

Collection Workshop

Janet updated the manual for the workshop and distributed updated pages.

There was a problem with the section formatting of the document after updating which Janet struggled to get fixed. She talked with Dana/Planning about a better way to manage updates for the document. Dana said Kellie Bradford is looking at a new content management program that may be useful for us in the future.

Collection workshop began on March 16. Melissa and Susan facilitated the majority of the first session. Janet facilitated the MSL Introduction session.

Heidi is scheduled for the second session and Pauline the last session.

UCO Students

Janet worked with a UCO student on Feb. 18. She and Melissa worked with two UCO students on March 17.

Budget

Janet has the majority of her program budget requests in.

She’s requesting new book trucks to replace some of the older and unstable trucks used in the basement and small storage unit to store collapsed boxes in the basement.

She is budgeting for OLA, Encyclomedia, and First Amendment Congress.

Supply budgets are basically staying the same.

Staff Recognition

MSL staff are planning to go to RedPin Bowling for their staff recognition. RedPin Bowling has a Friday lunch special of lunch and bowling. Janet’s looking at either April 9 or April 30th for this activity.

Meetings/Workshops

Janet attended the OLA program meeting on Feb. 19.

Janet spoke to Emily William’s YA Literature class at OU on Feb. 22.

Janet met with new ED Library Manager Angela Thornton on Feb. 23 to review collection procedures with her.

Melissa attended the YA Services Retreat on March 3 at the SC.

Janet is attending the SSRT Meeting at OLA on March 18. She’s scheduled to attend the OLA program meeting at Rose State on March 19. Janet’s trying to get an IFC meeting scheduled for March 24.

Melissa is scheduled to attend the Children’s Services meeting on April 7.

Anna has job shadowed DN library staff and worked on the reference desk DN.

Cataloging update – Pauline

Meetings and training attended:

Stormy – Heartwalk Captains’ luncheon, February 24

Vickie – Staff Association, February 25

Jana – Staff Recognition committee, March 3

Jill, Lisa – Excel Basics workshop, March 9

Jana – True Leadership workshop, March 11

Brittany – Collection Management workshop, March 16

All staff were enthusiastic about the Commission’s tour of the Service Center on 2/18. Pauline guided a group through both areas, and visited the Commission meeting briefly.

Pauline attended a meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Staff Recognition on 2/23. The committee agreed to forward several recommendations to the Ad Team, including bringing back the “Thank You Gram” as a means of showing appreciation, offering employees an opportunity to apply for a subsidized trip to a national conference, possibly changing system positions at the “librarian” level to exempt status, and encouraging individual Ad Team members to visit offices and libraries.

The OLA Technical Services Roundtable met at the Service Center on 3/12. Pauline was unable to attend, but Aaron, Jana, Ursula, Clyde, and Heidi handled the meeting and tour, with assistance from other staff. The attendees were so impressed by the building that they almost didn’t finish in time to have a meeting!

ILL courier deliveries and pickups deteriorated badly since the February meeting. Apparently, the company that holds the contract with Amigos for Trans-Amigos courier service switched subcontractors without notice in mid February. This resulted in a full week without TAE delivery or pickup; when deliveries finally did arrive, ILL had several days of work to get the materials out. Almost as soon as the TAE situation was sorted out, Velocity suddenly stopped delivering or picking up; it took about 10 days before service was restored. As of the week of 3/15, both courier services are functioning as expected.

All staff who plan to attend the OLA conference have completed their requests.

The two MSD Technician jobs have been posted and closed. Pauline is working on weeding down to a manageable number of applicants to call for interviews.

Thanks to Janet and the MSL staff, ILL has avoided placing requests for several recently published titles. MSL has purchased the titles and placed reserves for the customers. Pauline will continue to send lists of recently published titles requested through ILL to Janet.

While Pauline was out sick the week of March 8, Heidi received a call from a library customer and volunteer who said that he had questions about cataloging. Heidi passed his information on to Pauline; Pauline contacted him when she returned. His questions were mostly regarding shelving and filing of fiction titles. Pauline was able to explain the general concept to him, and he was pleased with the service.

Pauline has received extra keys for all desks in Cataloging that were missing them.

Pauline has completed the departments’ chemical inventory. Staff are in the process of completing safety training.

Pauline has ordered ribbons and cleaning cards for Cataloging’s barcode printers, and blank labels for barcodes. The ribbons have been received.

An ILL item was damaged by being caught under a spring in one of the black bins. So far, this is the only occurrence. ILL has requested a different copy for the customer.

Administration update – Karen

Building projects

Capitol Hill will be closed March 22 through 27 for ADA work.

The groundbreaking for the Northwest Library will be held at 2:00 P.M. on March 30. Currently, the projected completion date is summer 2011.

Plans are for the Southern Oaks remodel to begin in late fall. The system is looking for a temporary site for the library to move into after summer reading.

The city of Del City has plans for renovating its community center, but the plans do not include renovation of the Del City Library.

Deputy Executive Directors

The Deputy Executive Directors are reviewing information from the ad hoc committees formed after the Cultural Survey.

Policies and Procedures Committee

The committee is working on a facilities naming policy.

Karen is working to update the special collections policy.

The committee is also discussing the idea of a policy on social networking and off-duty conduct.

Staff Recognition

The Staff Recognition dinner has been scheduled for November 20 at the Clarion.

Budget

No major increase in the materials budget is anticipated at this time.

Twitter Survey

Kim Terry conducted a brief survey of people who follow MLS on Twitter with one question: What do you like best about the library?

Responses were: 1) e-media ; 2) system reserves (online) ; 3) e-mail notification ; 4) online renewals.

Miscellaneous

Pioneer Library System has contacted MLS about a tour of the Service Center sometime in April. This might coincide with the MSD Managers’ meeting on April 15. The managers agreed to move the April meeting to the Service Center, and the May meeting to Downtown. Janet will change the room schedule at DN; Pauline at SC. Heidi will chair the April meeting and Janet the May.

Karen will be out to attend PLA March 23-26.

Stuart (Planning) rode with the delivery drivers last week to evaluate routes. A slight change has been made in one route.

AV Titles with Accompanying Materials

Pauline referenced the minutes of the November meeting, when it was decided that books and guides will not accompany CDs classified in the J, YA, or Adult levels, unless they are essential to using the item.

She asked how the managers would like to handle added copies of CDs that have already been cataloged with accompanying material.

The managers agreed that added copies of CDs will be separated from accompanying books. The CDs will be cataloged separately on new bib records.

The next meeting will be on April 15, 2010, 8:00 A.M., at the Service Center. Heidi will chair.