Access Services Minutes - April 17, 2018

Outcomes: To discuss topics/tasks related to Access staff to ensure that staff and members have a consistent experience across the system.

FYI:

1. 2D barcode scanning with CARL.Connect
   
   1. Risa was asked a question about the use of 2D barcodes on driver’s licenses and ID’s to quickly enter information on a new library account in CARL.Connect. At this point, 2D barcode scanners cause a conflict with iPads. If the Bluetooth scanner is connected, the keyboard on the iPad is not accessible. So, if additional information needs to be entered on the account, the scanner must be disconnected to make that happen.
2. Access Hiring Process Update
   
   1. HUM will provide the document for hiring Access Specialists to any hiring manager with a new Access Specialist posting beginning April 9^th. This process will be used over the next couple of months for hiring. After several positions have been filled using the process, we will meet again to review and make tweaks based on feedback to the process.
3. Onboarding Update 
   
   1. Learning and Development has the final onboarding documents for Access and Engagement and will begin using them for newly hired employees in those positions. Further information about how local managers will oversee the process has been requested.
4. Faster path to Access Services on Intranet
   
   1. You can find the Access Services meeting minutes and training documents by following Departments > Public Services > Access Services.

Discussion:

Feedback on CARL.X templates

The group split into small groups to review information for the following reports:

• Claims Never Had
• Lost Items
• In Transit
• Hold Expired
• Tracer List

Groups reviewed the available information to display in a finished template and made recommendations on what order to list the information in.

Action Item: Risa will review the recommendations on the templates and create some working templates for the libraries to test and provide feedback on.

During the discussion, we reviewed the process for the In-Transit list. A question was raised about the duplication of effort that this list might be causing.

Action Item: Access staff will run the In Transit report every Wednesday and will not email staff at other libraries to check for items. Access Managers will track each week and report back at the May meeting:

• Length of the lists (both To and From)
• Findability rate (number of items found on the list)

Borrowing Policy and Procedure Review

The committees that worked on the Borrowing Policy and Borrowing Procedures came together in December to create a plan to review the impacts of the changes to the policy and procedure. The group compiled data from CARL.X, Collection Development, and surveys that went to both staff and customers. Prior to the meeting, Meghan shared the first draft of the report on the group’s findings. Access Managers shared feedback on the draft that would more accurately reflect the intended message for the document.

Action Item: Risa and Meghan will revise the document with the shared feedback before presenting at the upcoming Senior Management Team meeting.

Risa shared that the Borrowing Review found that we had a significant increase to the number of claims used since we changed the procedure. Risa reminded the group that prior to marking materials claimed staff are to complete shelf checks at their location and at the owning location and to try renewing materials to give customers more time to find materials.

Action Item: Access Managers will check to ensure all staff are familiar with the process to take prior to marking materials as claimed.

Collection at your library

The group split into small groups to discuss questions related to shelf reading, inventory accuracy, training needs for managing inventory, and CollectionHQ.

Shelf Reading

Responses varied by library. Not every library is able to complete shelf reading currently. Some libraries have only Access staff handling it, while others have a combination of Access and Engagement staff working on it. Some libraries have assigned staff portions of the collection to maintain while others direct which collection needs to be read and then all the relevant staff work together to meet the goal. Some libraries are combining shelf reading with inventory management as well.

Overall needs regarding collection

Staff could use standards for collection maintenance expectations including:

• Schedule for inventory audit
• Which program(s)/tool(s) to use for regular collection maintenance and for auditing inventory
• Best practices
• Methods for fair assignment of shelf reading or collection duties
• Which staff positions are involved in collection maintenance and to what degree
• A list of reports that need to be run and a schedule of when they need to be run, who needs to run them, etc.
• More training on CollectionHQ (which will be forthcoming in the fall) to learn best practices, how to set up parameters to run custom reports, how to mark assignments complete

Risa shared that there are some problems in keeping materials with the location code BKR when withdrawing materials. She can help do batch updates for libraries if they find they have several items with the wrong location codes.

Action Item: If a location would like assistance with a batch update to materials, send Risa a list of items from Report 17. Materials need to be grouped so that all the items listed are being updated to the same location code or status.

Action Item: Risa will begin work on a list of best practices to maintain an accurate inventory of materials.

Next Meeting May 15^th at Village

Next notetaker: Capitol Hill