Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for September 16, 2010

Materials Services Division Managers’ Monthly meeting

September 16, 2010; 8:00 A.M.; Service Center

Present: Karen Marriott, Janet Brooks, Heidi Johnson, Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins, Denyvetta Davis (guest).

Denyvetta was welcomed to the meeting by all.

Materials Budget – Karen

Because tax revenues have been greater than originally anticipated, $500,000 has been added to the materials budget.

The majority of the funds will be directed to electronic media, as this area seems to be exploding and prices are coming down.

According to system circulation statistics, circulation of electronic audio materials is up 84%, and e-books are up 600%.

There was some discussion of Playaway audio books that do not require a player. Karen will attend Library Managers meeting on September 22 to discuss this format with the managers. Heidi will contact Playaway to request samples and obtain information on processing methods.

New Selectors’ Funds have been set up, which allow the selector assigned to the fund to order for any MLS agency.

This should allow initial orders of more copies of popular titles and result in fewer repeat orders for the same title. Karen will be monitoring orders to evaluate this process.

In January, we will have been in the Service Center for a year. We need to start thinking about ways to evaluate the effectiveness of procedures at the Service Center. This will be discussed at a later meeting.

Job Description Updates – Karen

Karen reviewed the status of draft updates for job descriptions as submitted by MSD managers.

The job description for Materials Services Technician will be discussed at the October meeting.

Administration update – Karen

Karen briefly reviewed the agenda for the September 14 Commission meeting.

Building projects update

There is no new information about the search for a temporary location for Southern Oaks.

The FF&E (Furniture Fixtures and Equipment) bid packages for Northwest are ready for release.

MLS representatives have met with the city’s architect of record, Studio Architects, to discuss the feasibility study about the Capitol Hill building.

All staff are reminded of the deadline for switching prescriptions to mail order. After two refills, the prescription must be switched to mail order.

Policy and Procedures.

The committee is working on the borrowing policy regarding loan periods for videorecordings.

They hope to take the policy to the Commission in October.

Once the loan period change is approved, IT will make necessary changes to system software and notify us of an implementation date.

Materials Selection update – Janet

Library Visits

During August selectors made an annual visit to CT and to each of the Extensions. They also made a 6-month visit to DN.

During September, selectors are making an annual visit to DC, Book Centers and Books by Mail. They also make a 6-month visit to ED.

During October, selectors are scheduled to make an annual visit to VI and a 6-month visit to MC.

Melissa made annual visits to libraries that she’ll miss while she is out.

Staff

Melissa is out until November 11th. Until she returns, Janet is handling all of Melissa’s areas. Janet will check Melissa’s email, but if there are immediate needs that Janet can address, please email her directly.

Julia and Amy began their semester at OU last month. Julia is adjusting her schedule so she can leave early on Tuesday afternoons.

New Customer Suggestion Program

The program is working very well and staff have either ordered or transferred the older paper requests to the new system.

Regrets are transferred to an Excel file once a month.

Any bugs staff experienced early in July have been resolved due to more experience with the program.

Janet sent emails out to library staff to encourage them to submit customer suggestions through the CyberMars “Suggest a Title” form instead of the old 709s. This allows reserves to be placed automatically on Thursday evenings instead of manually on Friday mornings. The amount of 709 forms sent in has diminished tremendously. Janet has had to follow up with a couple of staff.

System Reserves

Technicians are working all of the system reserves each week now. In previous months, the technicians checked the out of ratio reserves once a week and the titles with only 1 copy or 0 copies were checked once a month.

Staff have the lists in good order and fewer items are left without some action on them each week.

Techs met this month to discuss some of the procedural changes and to make sure everyone is operating with the same guidelines.

Basement

Amy developed a spreadsheet for helping selectors work the withdrawals in the basement. She copies the holdings screen to an excel file for each selector with the withdrawn item highlighted. The selectors indicate on the page who to transfer the item to and then Amy prints out those screens to attach to the material going to Cataloging.

This new process saves a lot of paper that was printed and then tossed when material was sent to the booksale.

Meetings/Workshops

Janet worked with parents at the ED library helping them select good and age appropriate books for their children. She was scheduled to have a workshop while ED staff had a storytime, but only had one parent come into the workshop. Janet spent most of her time in the children’s area after the storytime and did some one-on-one readers advisory with parents.

Janet attended the X-change meeting on Sept. 13

Marilyn and Janet facilitated portions of the Collection workshop on Sept. 14, 21, and 28th.

Julia is scheduled to attend the Genealogy workshop on Sept. 22.

Denise is scheduled to attend the True Colors workshop on Sept. 30.

Janet is scheduled to attend the children’s services meeting on Oct. 6 and Encyclomedia on Oct. 7 and 8.

Technical Processing update – Heidi

TP’s current statistics show the number of items processed on average per day in July was 582 items, for a total of 12,228 items processed in July; in August, the average was 662 items, for a total of 14,554 items processed. So far in September, the average is 688 items per day.

During the month of July, TP received an average of 39 boxes a day, for a total of 813 boxes; during the month of August, TP received an average of 37 boxes a day, for a total of 808. So far in September, the average number of boxes received is up to 55 boxes per day.

The HF Bindery Group informed MLS that the new prices for FY11 will be $11.25 per book and $12.35 per periodical, with an across the board fuel surcharge of 3%. The old prices were $7.50 per book and $11.00 per periodical with a 2% surcharge by comparison.

There have been several tours of the SC during the last two months, incl. one for the adult programmers, one for a librarian from OBU, and one for a vendor Jim Welch and Anne Fischer from IT were showing around the new building.

Heidi and Karen have been updating TP’s job descriptions and also some of the standards which have changed due to new procedures after the move to the Service Center.

Brad Gaffney’s last day with MLS was on August 31, 2010. The position opening will be posted for promotion only on 9-27-2010 while Heidi is on vacation. HUM is supposed to start testing applicants the week of Focus, and Heidi hopes to start interviewing the week after Focus.

The plastic book tubs used in TP are not glued together very well. The company that made them is now adding supports to all corners to keep the tubs from pulling apart. Southwest Solutions is picking up 25-30 plastic book tubs each trip to take for modification. They have picked up 2 groups so far, one has been returned. The modification appears to take care of the problem.

Some of TP’s staff have already registered for Focus 2010, the rest are to do so shortly.

Kim Macarty had her picture taken for Staff Recognition on September 14.

TP has a temp. worker helping out with unboxing shipments for 4 hours a day until a new receiving tech has been hired.

Heidi attended X-Change at RE on September 13, 2010, and participated as instructor in the first part of the Collection workshop DN on September 14.

Cataloging/Interlibrary Loan update – Pauline

Meetings and training attended:

Ursula – GODORT planning session, July 21

Vickie – Staff Association, July 22

Pauline – Tech Support, July 27

Lisa, Ursula – True Colors, July 29

Pauline – Digital Initiatives Committee, August 10

Pauline, Aaron, Mary – OLA TSRT, August 13

Ursula – United Way, September 2

Pauline – X Change, September 13

Vickie – Basic Excel, September 16

Mary Parker was selected as the system’s new Cataloger, and began work on August 9. She is becoming more proficient at her job each day, and is a good team member.

Dorothy Atchison and Jim Warren from Reliance Label Solutions visited Cataloging and ILL on July 20. They were impressed with operations at the Service Center and with seeing how their label products are used. Both were very concerned about the difference in color between batches of ILL green labels; they stated that delivery of products with such a significant difference was unacceptable. Jim mentioned that green is a hard color for scanners to read, and had several ideas for improving the design of the labels to make them easier to scan. He reiterated that the labels with the incorrect color should not have been shipped, however. Since the visit, Reliance has offered to replace the incorrectly colored labels with the correct color at no charge.

The Circulation Forum group toured the Service Center on August 4. Their visits to CAT and ILL were brief, but several members of the group asked good questions in each department. Pauline had worked with Cheryl Mann to revise the guidelines and procedures for dealing with ILL special stops, and she attended the portion of the meeting where the topic was discussed.

The Library Managers toured CAT and ILL on August 18.

Mary and Aaron attended an OCLC webinar on controlling headings in OCLC Connexion.

Several staff members have or will be participating in online training offered through Amigos. Mary is in the process of completing a course in Copy Cataloging for Beginners; Brittany has completed Everything You Always Wanted to Know about ILL but Were too Busy to Ask. Pauline has reported all course enrollments to Planning and they have been included in the LMS.

Spaces, Inc., completed installation of pencil drawers at all workstations in CAT and ILL on August 31.

Amigos has revamped its contract for the Trans-Amigos Express (TAEX) courier service. Instead of contracting with one courier company for most routes and with another (Velocity) to serve southeastern Oklahoma, they have contracted with Celerity Logistics to serve all routes. This means that MLS is no longer serving as a transfer point between Velocity and TAEX, and will not receive the $1000 credit toward our cost of participation in the courier service. Amigos has offered a $500 credit for this fiscal year in appreciation of MLS’s having served as a transfer for two years.

There were a few hiccups in the transition away from the two separate couriers. The last Velocity dropoff was scheduled for August 27, with Celerity beginning pickup of all materials on August 30. The Velocity driver dropped off all materials from Velocity’s warehouse as scheduled, but no one picked them up. Amigos had sent notice that a driver from either Celerity Logistics or Segue Distribution would visit each location between August 25 and 27, to introduce her/himself and receive basic orientation for the site. No driver visited MLS during this time. The courier driver who had been serving our site continued to make regular deliveries and pickups, but did not pick up materials for the former Velocity route, and continued to drop off materials for that route. When Pauline contacted Amigos, she learned that Celerity has apparently subcontracted the Oklahoma City route to the same company that had been serving it. Staff were pleased about not having to “break in” a new driver, but the driver had not been given clear instructions about the change in procedures for materials formerly handled by Velocity. Currently, the driver is picking up and dropping off all materials as he is supposed to.

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission and Amigos have partnered to provide additional nylon zipper bags to TAEX participants. The bags are scheduled to be delivered in mid September or early October.

Pauline was a guest speaker at the Rose State Library Club meeting on September 9. She spoke about techniques of organizing in general and organization of library collections in particular, and led a discussion about organizing various types of collections.

Pauline has begun cataloging the TV411 DVD sets. The Cataloging Technicians (Jill, Lisa, Paula, and Vickie) put forth an enormous amount of effort to get the sets ready for barcoding and processing. They removed 540 DVDs from notebook sleeves, opened 540 DVD cases and inserted DVDs into them, trimmed 540 DVD inserts and added 1,080 title labels (two per insert), and put the inserts into the DVD case sleeves. They made 527 color copies of the covers of guides, unpacked 528 binders, inserted the copies into the front sleeves of the binders, trimmed 527 spine title labels, inserted the labels into the binder spine sleeves, and inserted the guides into the binders. So far, 15 episodes/guides (a total of 270 DVDs and 255 guides) have been cataloged, barcoded, and processed. There are 15 more sets, plus one additional guide, left to be done.

Rachel Hawkins, technical services librarian at Oklahoma Baptist University, visited on September 14. She toured the Service Center, spent time observing Aaron’s work process, and discussed technical services issues and questions with Pauline. As is often the case with librarians from other institutions, she said that she is jealous of our facility and operations. As a new librarian, she appreciated the learning opportunity and the option to contact other librarians with questions. Several Technical Processing staff (Kevin, Melanie, Kim, Robyn, Kimberly, and Katherine) provided impromptu demonstrations and answered questions. In addition to the Catalogers, Jill, Brittany, and Darryl demonstrated cataloging and ILL processes and answered questions as well.

Jef Fredericks, circ clerk from Edmond, dropped by the Service Center on September 14. Vickie gave him a tour of the facility. He was particularly interested in ILL; Brittany and Stormy answered a number of questions and explained ILL processes to him.

Chris Larwig photographed Pauline and Aaron for Staff Recognition on September 14.

CAT and ILL staff have been asked to submit registrations for Focus sessions.

Cataloging no longer has access to the RDA Toolkit, as free access expired on August 31. Pauline chose not to pay for access until RDA is closer to official adoption. However, she is working on a subscription to the LC product Cataloger’s Desktop, which will include access to the toolkit.

Southwest Solutions is scheduled to install ILL’s new shelf unit on Friday, September 17.

Miscellaneous

Denyvetta asked about how new materials are assigned the location code NBK.

Pauline mentioned that she has been alerted to some problems with YA titles being incorrectly coded. She will follow up with Jim Welch.

Action Items

Action - Responsible - Deadline

Attend Library Managers’ meeting to discuss Playaways - Karen - 9/22/2010

Contact Playaway for processing information - Heidi - None set

Follow up on YA titles being coded NBK at Service Center - Pauline - None set

The next meeting will be on October 14, 8:00 A.M., at the RJN Downtown Library. Janet will chair.