Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for January 15, 2009

Materials Services Managers Monthly Meeting 

January 15, 2009; 8:00 a.m. DN 3rd Floor Director’s Conference Room

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

Dana Morrow - Guest

Outreach/Programming Update - Dana Morrow

Dana shared ongoing and future program events with the managers. Programs include:

Trip Around the World

Underwater Bridge

Winter Readfest

Rahim AlHaj (fall 2009)

Zydeco performances in March 2009

Neighborhood Arts-children’s music festival with a different performer each day.

Oklahoma Fancy Dancers Oct. 2009

Cataloging Update - Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins

Pauline has continued to work a limited schedule, but will be returning to work full time on January 20. She is very grateful to the Cataloging staff for their assistance while she has been off. She also thanks the MSD managers for their assistance.

Cataloging’s December output of barcode labels printed was 15,258, with a daily average of 727. 1,754 new titles were cataloged, for a daily average of 84. The totals reflect an increase over November, but the daily averages are lower.

Overall, Cataloging’s output increased dramatically during the second quarter of the fiscal year. The total number of barcodes produced increased 17% over the first quarter, while the number of titles cataloged increased 26%.

Pauline, Jana, and Ursula attended the Read About It luncheon on December 19.

Pauline ordered 100,000 labels for barcodes on December 13. She was notified on December 15 that only 80,000 were available. Those labels were shipped and arrived on December 30. Pauline and the Technicians have evaluated the labels and determined that they are acceptable.

Per MSL’s request, the book Angel Girl has been recalled for return to the publisher.

Kristin and Jana have helped out in ILL a few days, and Lisa has helped in Tech Processing.

ILL Update - Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins

Pauline has continued to work a limited schedule, but will be returning to work full time on January 20. She is very grateful to the ILL staff for their assistance while she has been off. She also thanks the MSD managers for their assistance. There are some issues with the ILL VCirc, but overall it seems to be working well. Library staff are pleased with it overall.

Stillwater Public Library and Lawton Public Library have joined the Trans-Amigos courier system. With the new Velocity courier, this should result in significant postage savings for MLS.

ILL borrowing is holding steady, with an average fill rate of about 85%. However, the number of loan requests has increased dramatically, from a monthly average of 1300 requests during 2007 to about 1700 during 2008. Handling these requests is becoming overwhelming for ILL staff. Finding a way to deal with lending will be a priority for Pauline in 2009.

New ILL request forms are still in the works, but have not been received yet. Tech Processing Update Heidi Johnson 

The average daily run in December was 709 items; so far in January, the average run has been 813 labels. In December, the dept. processed a total of 14,887 items. 

So far in January, TP has received an average of 34 boxes of materials a day as compared to December’s total average of 38 boxes per day. 

Kimberly Clark has started as TP’s new processor. This is the first time since Heidi came back from vacation in October that TP is fully staffed again. 

Heidi has been spending most of her time by either helping with processing materials or unboxing/entering materials in the receiving area, with making some calls to vendors about problem materials received. 

Heidi is working with B&T’s accounting dept., CFS, to clear out some of the old items again. The good news is that fewer of these items appear since Cindy in Customer Service has become involved in applying some of the credits to the correct, short-paid invoices. 

All Ingram accounts continue to be current. 

Loretta has knee surgery scheduled for January 20. She expects to be off for 2-3 days. 

Heidi attended the workshop on MLS’s culture survey on January 12 at BI. She is also scheduled for a book talk taping on January 16 at DN. Heidi will be on AVL January 28-30. 

Materials Selection Update - Janet Brooks

Staff

Marilyn returned from FMLA leave on 12/2/08, about 2 weeks earlier than expected, so MSL is now fully staffed.

Two staff members are currently adjusting their schedules to meet school and personal needs. Lisa is coming in at 8:30, taking short lunches and leaves at 5:00 each day. Anna is taking shorter lunches so she can leave early on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Library Visits

During December selectors conducted an annual visit to WA and 6-month collection review of BE. 

During January selectors are doing an annual visit of VI and a 6-month visit to CH. 

Janet met with Sally/VI to go over collection processes and needs, since she was not available during the annual visit in October. 

In February selectors are scheduled to do an annual visit to DN and a 6-month visit to CT. 

Northwest

Kim and Janet met with Julie and Charla from Downtown to discuss possible storage of some of the NW collection. 

Selectors identified some areas that they thought could be boxed. Currently, staff are boxing oversized items that have been placed on bottom shelves and reference sets. 

The boxes will be stored in the compressed shelving area with very visible labels. The boxing of these areas should help ease some of the crowding a while.

MSL received the storage boxes for the CD settlement in the basement, so staff have begun sorting and storing those items to free up space so the NW AV can be moved to the basement soon.

IT has continued RFID tagging of the collection. DN staff are tagging new items as they come in, utilizing the equipment that IT has left in the compressed shelving area.

Customer Suggestions

The receipt of customer suggestions remains high, with over 9000 suggestions received so far this year, or an average of 328 suggestions each week. Most of these are for print materials.

Selection staff are beginning to look at the process used for working customer suggestions and seeing if there is a way to streamline and make it paperless.

Staff are beginning with a group brainstorming session on January 16 during the staff meeting. Then Janet will meet with staff in small groups over the following couple of weeks.

Meetings/Workshops Attended

Melissa met with the NW users’ group on 12/2/08.

Ruby met with the ODL GPO librarians, along with Sharon/DN and Ursula/CAT and me on 12/4/08.

Kim helped Heidi with interviews for TP on 12/14 and 12/16.

Melissa met with the DC expansion committee on 12/16. She received overtime pay for this.

Ruby attended the Read About appreciation luncheon on 12/19

Kim began the year end periodical purge over the Christmas holiday.

Janet attended the Safety Committee meeting on January 9.

Janet attended the MLS Culture Survey Supervisors’ meeting on January 12.

Ruby and Susan attended portions of the adult services retreat on January 14.

Melissa attended a DC community center meeting on January 15.

Ruby is taping a Read About segment on January 16.

Janet is scheduled to attend the Tech Support meeting on January 27.

Janet and Melissa are scheduled to attend the Children’s Services retreat on Feb. 4

Safety Committee

Janet attended the Safety Committee meeting on January 9, to review the progress made on items identified during a recent safety inspection by the state.

Janet mentioned that the Safety Committee determined the need for annual training on the Hazardous Materials procedures. Staff will do this training each year in the first quarter. Watch for a PowerPoint slide presentation coming soon.

Administration Update - Karen Marriott

Work on the Service Center is on schedule with project completion date of Sept. 15. IT held pre-bid meetings and sent out bid packets to companies for the materials sorting system. Karen will assist IT in reviewing bids later this month. Contract award is planned for the February Commission meeting. The vertical lift storage system for Tech Processing is scheduled to be delivered on May 6th. Karen will check with Todd about progress on furniture for the Service Center.

Karen continued to attend design meetings for the NW Library. A second community meeting was held in December and was well attended. The NW Library project is on schedule for construction bids in late spring.

In order to have sufficient material for the NW Library opening, the budget for NW needs to be increased in FY 10. Expenditure of additional funds can be timed around the move to the Service Center. Heidi and Pauline need to be thinking about whether any increase can be handled prior to the move.

Karen, Donna, and Kay have visited all but the extension libraries to discuss the move of the Family Talk collections.

Karen mentioned the culture study meeting attended by system managers. Donna will be sending out an email to all staff about this study.

Karen reported no new information on the appraisal system changes.

Oklahoma City is in the process of picking an architect for the SO Library expansion project. Donna, Kay and Todd are assisting with the selection. Karen is attending planning meetings for the project.

The Ralph Ellison remodeling project is somewhat behind schedule but plans are being made for reopening by fall.

Spring Collection Workshop - All

Stacy has the spring collection workshop scheduled for April 2, 9, and 16 which are Thursdays. The next managers’ meeting is scheduled for April 16.

Managers decided to see if they could move the workshop to April 1, 8, 15. Janet will check with Planning. (Update since the meeting, Dana/PLA changed the workshop dates to April 1, 8, and 15).

At their February meeting, managers will discuss the possibility of conducting a library managers’ training, especially for the new managers.

Next meeting is scheduled for February 19, 2009 at CH with Heidi serving as the chair of the meeting.