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

Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes

November 18, 2010; Service Centerl; 8:00 a.m.

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

Update on Action Items - All

Playaways

Janet provided some Playaway samples she received from Baker & Taylor Entertainment. She discovered that many new titles are only available as Playaways. She will inquire about packaging from some other AV vendors and ask for some additional samples. She will also ask whether there are ever any accompanying materials that come with Playaways.

Heidi has received some processed samples of Playaways from other libraries and noted that processing should not present any special concerns for the samples received. However, if other vendors package their Playaways differently than the samples seen so far, that might change the situation. She is very interested in seeing some more samples from other vendors which Janet is trying to provide. The cases of the ones seen so far seem to be quite sturdy and should hold up to returns through the book drops.

Pauline said there appear to be no special cataloging issues to deal with, other than to decide which fields of the OCLC record to import into our catalog.

MSD Tech Job Descriptions

Pauline completed the updates to the job description for the former Materials Services Division Technician position. Karen reviewed the job description and forwarded it to Human Resources on November 4. It was accepted and job titles for affected employees were changed effective November 8.

Darryl Hillard’s position has been changed to PT ILL Technician; Amy Chaney’s, to PT MSL Technician. The title of the former MSD Tech position has been changed to PT Materials Services Technician. Currently, Heidi Wells is the only person in that position. When the replacement for Kristin Hill is hired, that person will also be a Materials Services Technician.

Pauline is currently working with Roy Ballou in Human Resources to finalize the standards for the MS Tech position.

Janet mentioned that Kim Rickey is working on the MSL Tech job description and standards.

AV Processing Issues

There was a short discussion about ongoing AV processing issues at the libraries.

New Business - All

There was no new business to discuss.

Cataloging/ILL Update - Pauline

Meetings and training attended:

Brittany – Everything You Wanted to Know about ILL, October 19-22

Aaron – RDA update, October 25

Pauline – Tech Support, October 26

Vickie – Staff Association, October 28

Lisa – Conflict resolution workshop, September 30

The partial shipment of white labels for barcodes was received from Reliance Label Solutions on October 14. These new labels include a couple of new features: each roll of labels is packed inside an individual plastic bag, and the rolls are held together by rubber bands, rather than by tape. Both changes make it easier to handle the labels with less waste; the Cataloging Technicians are excited about that. The balance of the shipment was received on November 1. Unfortunately, that batch of labels was rolled onto 4” cores rather than 1”, and had to be returned. The re-rolled labels were delivered on November 9 with no further problems.

Pauline would like to applaud the Cataloging Technicians and ILL Technicians for the valuable feedback that they provided to the Reliance staff during their July visit. The changes to the Cataloging and ILL labels are direct results of the Technicians expressing their ideas about problems with the labels.

Clyde was invited to become a member of the Library Forum group, and attended meetings on October 21 and November 9.

Pauline attended a staff meeting at the Del City Library on October 28. She shared information about ILL and answered questions about ILL and Cataloging.

Pauline, Aaron, Mary, and Stormy attended the OLA TSRT workshop Cataloging 101 on October 29. Pauline presented a session introducing the MARC formats and explaining how to construct fixed fields. All reported that they gained information to assist them with their jobs.

Kristin Hill’s last day in Cataloging was October 29. Due to the changes in the job description and the upcoming holidays, Pauline has decided not to post the position until after the new year.

Pauline was alerted in late October that RSS feeds for new cookbooks were not working because the new titles carried the updated subject heading “Cooking”, rather than “Cookery”. The RSS feeds now key off the term “Cooking”. Pauline sent an e-mail to all staff on November 1 to inform them of the change in subject headings. She is working on a plan to get records with the older heading updated.

Although the loan period for videorecordings changed to 14 days on November 1, the Cataloging Technicians had problems with generating barcodes for new DVD materials. The loan period was continuing to default to 7 days in the barcode software. Jim Welch was able to get it corrected in a short time, and no more problems have been reported. The Cataloging Technicians appreciate the change; they can generate barcodes faster since they no longer have to be concerned about different loan periods.

Amy Chaney visited CAT and ILL on November 2. She spent time with Mary, Clyde, Vickie, Brittany, and Heidi Wells. She expressed appreciation for the opportunity to learn how her work fits in with that of the other departments.

Staff from TCCL visited CAT and ILL briefly on November 4. They were interested in the barcode label printing process.

Rachel Hawkins and Kristie Cobb from OBU also visited on November 4, after dropping off books for the book sale. Pauline gave Kristie a tour of the building while Rachel visited with Heidi.

Since the time change, there has been a problem with glare through the window over the emergency exit door in the CAT/ILL area. Pauline mentioned the problem to Todd Olberding, who is now working to get blinds installed there and in a couple of other areas in the Service Center.

Ursula attended the OLA GODORT workshop Hit ‘Em with Your Best Shot on November 12, on using government websites. She reports that it was a valuable workshop with good information.

Pauline attended the OKULS/SIGALO meeting on November 12. She has been nominated for chair of the OKULS Council, with voting to conclude on November 19. OKULS continues to suspend dues; at the meeting, members voted to report union listing statistics quarterly, instead of monthly.

Pauline recently contacted VI regarding a frequent ILL customer’s requests for titles on CD. The titles are only available at a few Canadian libraries, so ILL cannot obtain them. VI staff passed this information on to the customer. The customer left a message on Pauline’s phone expressing her appreciation for all that ILL does to get materials for her.

The first ever Service Center Christmas potluck lunch will be held on Wednesday, December 8.

All staff have scheduled their Christmas holidays.

Materials Selection Update - Janet

Personnel

Melissa returned to work on November 11 and is making her way through emails and interagency mail. Janet and the rest of Materials Selection are happy to have her back.

Amy’s position has changed from PT MSD Technician to PT MSL Technician. Kim will review the new standards with her in the next couple of weeks.

Library Visits

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

During November they are making annual visits to RE and 6-month visits to SO.

During December, selectors will do an annual visit to WA and a 6-month visit to BE.

Meetings/Workshops

Janet attended the Tech Support meeting on Oct. 26.

Lisa attended a Staff Association meeting at DC on Oct. 28.

Amy worked with ILL and TP staff in November, getting an introduction to the processes in those departments.

Staff who are participating in the Wellness Works program attended the wellness screenings on Nov. 12.

Janet is doing a training session for DN part time/evening staff on Nov. 18th in the evening.

Basement

Technician staff are having a basement workday on November 23rd to deal with a backlog of deliveries received in the last several weeks.

New booktrucks ordered to replace unsafe trucks have arrived. The old ones will be retired and sent away after the basement workday.

Janet is still waiting on the delivery of a utility shelf she ordered to help keep the collapsed boxes under control.

Holiday Schedule

Janet shared the MSL Holiday schedule. Some days are subject to change, but at the time of distribution, it was fairly complete.

Technical Processing Update - Heidi

Statistics show the number of items processed on average per day in October was 827 items as compared to September’s 776 items. TP processed a total of 16,534 items in October as compared to 16,299 items in September. The daily average of items processed in November so far is 890 items. There seems to be an increase in items processed for every month since July.

During the month of October, TP again received an average of 53 boxes a day, the same as in September. TP received a total of 1,057 boxes in October as compared to September’s total of 1,064 boxes. The current daily average in November has gone back to 36 boxes (thank goodness; we were overflowing into the loading dock area for a while)

Kristin Hill was selected as TP’s new Receiving Technician and has started in her position on November 1. She likes the work and seems to fit right in.

Amy from Materials Selection spent a few hours in TP getting introduced to the receiving and processing functions. She said she found the information very helpful for her job in MSL.

During the month of October and on into November, TP experienced problems with both Big Bin and the sorter. The sorter would work for while and then suddenly stop transporting materials; it turned out there was a problem with the motor overheating which has been fixed by the company. Big Bin gave the message one day that there was no available storage space for the trays TP was trying to store. After running a space consolidation function, Big Bin is fully operational again. TP decided to run this function on a weekly basis from now on to hopefully avoid future storage space problems.

Thankfully the sorter was working perfectly on November 4, the day Michael Leitch and Gail Morris from Tulsa City-County Library were here for a tour of the facility and to especially check out the sorting equipment.

Heidi first helped out in the receiving area when Alan was on AVL for a week the end of October; she continued unboxing for another week as TP was overflowing the loading dock. She then switched to helping the processors as they were unable to keep up with the huge daily runs and were running out of room on the conveyors. Staff from Cataloging/ILL have been very good to help out with unboxing and processing as much as their jobs allow. Heidi W. and Lisa have been helping with processing new materials, and Darryl has helped unbox. Their help is greatly appreciated!

Heidi had to switch to Data Entry mode on Wednesday as Tanaz was out and the Receiving Techs were receiving tons of books, literally.

Heidi has decided to postpone sending books to the bindery for rebinding until sometime early in the new year. With the amount of materials coming through right now, there is no way the processors could get the bindery groups ready without it negatively impacting workflow at this time. Heidi will send an e-mail to the libraries informing them of the change.

Heidi and Karen met Jim Welch regarding some needed updates to TP’s GUI client. Unfortunately, some of the changes Jimmy made to the program caused other, unexpected problems and Jimmy is fixing them as TP finds them.

HUM e-mailed Heidi on Wednesday that there are 16 viable candidates for the TP Aide openings. Heidi will look at the applications as soon as possible and try to at least call some of the applicants before Thanksgiving to possibly schedule interviews for the week after Thanksgiving.

John Rahhal had to find a new supplier for the double DVD cases TP uses even though we had a contract with Demco for FY11. Apparently Demco no longer carries this item, but John was able to find it through Vernon Library Supplies.

Heidi has ordered three modification kits to change out the wheels on the three original transfer tables. The new wheels are bigger, so make it easier to move the fully loaded carts.

Heidi as Griselda had lots of fun participating in the Ghouls Gone Wild parade DN on October 23 and, if the library again participates next year, already intents to participate again in 2011. Some very interesting people come out during these events and the library float did attract lots of attention along the parade route.

The first annual Service Center Christmas Party has been scheduled for December 8. Sign-up sheets for food to bring and for volunteer opportunities for setting up and taking down after have been posted in the lounge.

Administrative Update - Karen

Karen talked about the upcoming Commission meeting and pointed out item 46-C, Classification Compensation Study. She said the library received responses from two different companies. Even though their price is higher, the library will recommend that Singer be signed on to perform this study as they have done similar studies for other libraries before. It also appears there is less work involved for library staff if going with this company, and Singer has made provisions for built-in appeals which the other company did not.

Karen said that once the selection has been made, the study is scheduled to be started right away.

Karen pointed out the minutes of the Administrative and Personnel Committee which include a change to the grievance procedure.

Southern Oaks

There are two possible sites for a temporary location for SO, one at 59th and May, the other at 59th and Penn. Negotiations are ongoing.

Strategic Plan Updates

The results from the Customer Awareness survey are in and are being evaluated. Results do show improvement in the public’s awareness of library resources since the baseline study.

IT Demo of Mobile Apps

Karen mentioned that IT demonstrated some mobile library apps (like getting a library card, etc.) for use by librarians at the last Library Managers’ meeting.

Literary Voices

Karen reported that tickets are selling well.

Endowment Trust

Karen mentioned she will be speaking at the Endowment Trust luncheon later the same day.

MSD Meeting Schedule for 2011 - All

The proposed schedule was approved without any changes.

Miscellaneous - All

There were no miscellaneous items to discuss.

New Action Items - All

Playaways

Ask for samples of other vendors’ Playaways”, esp. if packaged with accompanying materials - Janet 

Inquire about replacement cases for Playaways - Heidi

Take a sample to the next AdTeam meeting - Karen

Check into Interlibrary Loan practices at other libraries - Pauline

MSD Meeting Schedule for 2011

Forward the MSD meeting schedule for 2011 to MTC to book the meeting room at the Service Center - Pauline

Forward 2011 schedule to PLA to post on the Intranet - Janet

Bindery

Notify libraries of change in bindery date - Heidi

The meeting adjourned at 10:10 a.m. The next meeting is scheduled for Dec. 16, 2010; Pauline will chair.