Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for November 15, 2007

Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes

November 15, 2007; Capitol Hill Library; 8:00 a.m.

Present: Janet Brooks, Heidi Johnson, Karen Marriott, Pauline RodriguezAtkins (absent)

Special guests from Leadership MLS: Kellie Bradford (PLA), Emily Williams (OUT)

Cataloging Update - Pauline

(submitted prior to meeting)

Meetings and trainings attended:

Aaron – Tech Support Group, October 23

Pauline – Train the Trainer retreat, October 31

Pauline is out of the office November 13-16; she is expected to return November 19.

Aaron visited MSL on October 23. He spent time with Ruby, learning how requests to purchase materials are handled. He reported that the visit was beneficial.

Jerilyn Hayward of Right Management visited Cataloging on October 24, to observe processes and discuss evaluation. She spent time with Jana, Ursula, Paula, Margaret, and Pauline. She and Pauline also discussed ILL processes. 

All Catalogers attended the LC/Dewey Smackdown workshop on classification, sponsored by the OLA Technical Services Roundtable, on October 29. Pauline presented sessions on Dewey classification; Jana and Aaron assisted by leading small groups in Dewey classification exercises. The workshop was well received and beneficial to all the Catalogers. Thanks to the Cataloging and MSD Technicians for keeping the office open on this day.

The MSD Technician position based at Capitol Hill (replacing Karen Davis) was open October 22 - November 2. Only two applications were forwarded. Due to the small number of applicants, Pauline and Heidi have decided to request that HUM continue accepting applications through November 21.

Margaret has been able to work on transfers, now that Tech Processing is fully staffed. Veronica has been helping as she has time.

Work schedule for November 19-21, Thanksgiving week. (in minutes pdf)

The workload increased dramatically during the month of October, as compared to the previous month. Although not all areas have increased when compared to October 2007, or for the same period of the previous fiscal year, the increase in new titles cataloged is encouraging.

October statistics as compared to previous month (in minutes pdf).

October statistics as compared to previous year (in minutes pdf).

Fiscal Year statistics as compared to previous FY (in minutes pdf).

ILL Update - Pauline

(submitted prior to meeting)

Karen and Pamela continue to get most materials received in ILL routed out within 24 hours of their having been received.

Anna, MSD Tech from MSL, helped in ILL on October 26 and 29, as well as on November 9. She learned quickly and was a big help. She will be helping again as needed during the rest of the year.

Pauline has ordered removable colored labels from Reliance Label Corp.; they should arrive sometime in December. This will speed ILL processes since there will be no need to use paper bands.

Pauline has met with Stuart in Planning to talk about ways to use Excel to improve the labeling process. She will be working with him more after Thanksgiving.

Work schedule for November 19-21, Thanksgiving week. (in minutes pdf)

The ILL workload has increased somewhat. In October, 2007, ILL staff submitted 488 requests to borrow materials from other libraries. During the same month, 398 requests were filled, and 52 were denied by all libraries contacted. 

However, at least some of the filled and unfilled requests had been submitted during September; and some of the requests initiated in October were not filled until November. It is safe to say that MLS’s fill rate for borrow requests is approximately 80%.

ILL receives requests to lend MLS materials via both FirstSearch and AGent. As with requests to borrow, some requests were received in September, but filled in October; some were received in October, but filled in November. Requests received through AGent tend to be filled more frequently than those received through FirstSearch. This is likely because more popular titles are requested through FirstSearch.

The most common reason for declining a request to lend remains the fact that all MLS copies of a title are on loan. A smaller percentage are requests for materials no longer owned by MLS. I am pleased to note that the percentage of unfilled requests due to delays in response has shrunk to 18%, as compared to 43% of unfilled requests in September. The large number in September was primarily due to problems with the reserve system, courier service, etc.

Materials Selection Update - Janet

Library Visits

During October selectors made an annual visit to VI and a 6 month visit to MC.

During November they are making an annual visit to RE and a 6 month to SO.

Janet spent extra time with each new librarian at RE giving them some basic collection training. In December selectors do an annual to WA and a 6 month to BE.

Spotlight On

The selectors updated the Spotlight on Native Americans and it is now up on the webpage. They will be working on the Black History Month spotlight during December.

Catalog staff visit

Aaron visited MSL on Oct. 23 and worked with Ruby.

Appraisal Process

Janet met with Jerilyn from Right Management to discuss job duties of staff and shared some of her tracking mechanisms for appraisals.

Overdrive

Karen, Janet and Ruby met to go over the titles we have that are on the Maximum Access plan. Several titles were deleted and new titles added. Janet has added some of the deleted titles to the purchased titles. 

Meetings/Workshops

Ruby and Kim attended the High Performance Teams workshop on Oct. 15 th

Marilyn and Julie attended the public meeting for the NW library on Oct. 16 th

Kim attended the Staff Recognition Dinner committee meeting on Oct. 23

Julie attended the Leadership meetings and V2R meetings.

Janet Attended the YA Services Meeting on October 31.

Ruby attended the Train the Trainer session on October 31.

Janet attended the 1 st Amendment Congress on Nov. 1

Janet attended the Safety Committee meeting on Nov. 13

Julie attended the library managers meeting on Nov. 14.

Janet, Julie and Kim are scheduled to attend the Xchange meeting on Nov. 19 th .

Holiday Schedule

Janet shared a schedule showing which staff are off and who are working during the upcoming holidays.

Technical Processing Update - Heidi

So far, the runs in November have been on average 870 labels per day which is a big increase compared to October’s average of 709 labels. Technical Processing currently receives an average of 43 boxes of materials a day which is a slight decrease compared to September’s average of 49. On October  19, TP received 151 boxes, and 114 boxes on Nov. 6. 

TP is uptodate on processing all types of rush materials and is currently processing nonrush  materials from the run eight days ago. Heidi has talked to Margaret, the MSD Tech housed in CAT, about temporarily putting processing transfer materials on hold and helping out with processing some of the older ordered materials in TP.

Alexis Buck started her job with TP on October 23 and is currently being trained in processing print materials and the sorting of materials. After Thanksgiving, she will also start boxing and routing materials. 

Technical Processing just received back the sample bindery group sent to the HF Group. They delivered the rebound books as promised 3 weeks after the initial pickup. 

TP has not had a chance to look closely at the rebound books yet, but it appears as if the bindery did a good job. They did call twice to verify some information on the binding slips after they had received the materials. Heidi will present a final report on the experience with the HF Group at next month’s meeting.

Heidi and Kim Macarty attended the Staff Recognition dinner on Nov. 10 at the Centre. The food was tasty, the band most excellent, and the company very pleasant.

Jerilyn Hayward with Right Management, the company working on revising MLS’s performance appraisal system, visited TP on October 24 for about an hour to ask some questions concerning job duties within the dept. 

Phil Tolbert was interviewing for CH’s page position and Heidi sat in on several interviews with him the end of October.

Administrative Update - Karen

Karen reported that the 50% completion plans for the new Service Center have been reviewed. Plans were modified to include one 32’ vertical lift module for TP’s binning of received materials. Instead of using two shorter machines or building an expensive “dog house” on top of the building, the new plan calls for a pit to be utilized in the installation of the lift. Karen, along with some other Ad Team members, went to ScottRice to look at furniture samples for the new building.

Plans are proceeding for the new NW Library; the land purchase is to be finalized next month. Karen helped with establishing plans for the new collection. The bond election will be held December 11. Kim Terry (MAC) put up fact sheets concerning the election on one of the Intranet sliders. Kay Bauman and others are working on plans for the remodeling of the Ralph Ellison Library; again, Karen was involved with planning for the collection. 

Karen reported she went to DC to talk with Melissa about the interfiling of reference materials into the circulating collection. The task force is currently working on designing custom printed labels for “in library use only” or “not to be checked out” materials. This project is to be completed by January’s Library Managers’ meeting. Village is the next library scheduled to change over to interfiling reference materials with circulating materials. 

Karen submitted new orders for Overdrive’s Maximum Access. She said she did not see any problems with the update, other than to notice that new titles were being offered. She mentioned that some titles had turns as low as 5 and others as high as 97. MLS is continuing to build up their user group for this fairly new service.

The Policies and Procedures Committee (Donna Morris Kim Terry, Karen Marriott, and Kay Bauman as chair) is looking into a number of policies, including updated fees for services, and issues relating to “Rules of conduct”. These rules have to be fair to all customers, enforceable, legally sound when stating what is appropriate behavior and what is not, and involve a huge range of issues. A draft of these rules will be presented to the library’s attorney and to the library managers for discussion during their next monthly meeting. Revisions to the Grievance Policy, Civil Rights Policy and a new Complaint Resolution Policy will be considered by the Commission at the November meeting. 

Karen mentioned that the leadership group attended the last Ad Team meeting to present information and responses gathered from the “ Transformational Café” presentation at October’s Focus 2007. This information is now available on the Intranet for staff viewing.

Kay Bauman (PLA) is working on a list of questions for a baseline survey for the strategic plan. This survey will be conducted again in five years to evaluate our progress.

The Commission’s Long Range Planning committee met about capital improvements, like the City of Edmond’s strong desire for a second library, and the City of Del City’s future plans for remodeling the Community Center which would also impact the library there. The next regular Commission meeting is scheduled to be held in ED. 

Karen said she is scheduled to job shadow some of the OUT staff. She also mentioned Lisa Wood developing a mobile version of “Family Place”. Lisa has been invited by Libraries for the Future, a nonprofit organization in New York City, to give a presentation about this mobile version at the next PLA conference in March.

Karen attended the Staff Recognition dinner and received her pin for 30 year of service with MLS. She remarked on this year’s record setting number of attendees, including many commissioners.

Karen reported that she has completed the GPO survey.

Miscellaneous - all

Kellie and Emily from Leadership MLS talked about their experiences being part of the leadership group. Kellie said that now Focus is over with, she is busy with the Train the Trainer workshop; also, since Teresa was out, Kellie is also handling the Intranet scheduling. Emily reported that even though summer reading just ended, she is already busy with calling sponsors and vendors, getting the graphics selected, and the teen programs organized for next year’s event. As she put it, it is always summer in Outreach! Both Kellie and Emily reported that they received nice feedback on the leadership program in general. They also discussed some of the activities they participated in, like planning activities for the future and designing the cover page for a departmental newspaper.

The meeting adjourned about 10:30 a.m. The next meeting is scheduled for December 13 at the DN Library; Pauline will chair the meeting.