Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for April 17, 2003

Date: April 17, 2003 

Downtown Library, Planning Meeting Room 

Attendees:  Janet Brooks-Chair, Heidi Johnson, Pamela Kosted-Absent, Karen Marriott, Donna Morris, Pauline Rodriguez 

•  Cataloging Update   -   Pauline Rodriguez 
• The big news is the birth of Jasmine Bernal to Cataloging’s part-time page, Lacey Carr.  Jasmine arrived on April 15, giving her the same birthday as Kara Giles.  Mother and baby are doing fine; Lacey plans to return to work, but no word as to when yet. 
• Pauline is not sure how Lacey’s absence will impact processing of transfers and new-barcode materials.  If the runs slow down late in the fiscal year, as they have in years past, Tech Processing will probably be able to take more.  However, runs have been up in April, after having been down in March. 
• Ursula’s PC has been rebuilt, and all catalogers now have access to mlsCataloging. 
• A scanner has been installed on Veronica’s PC, so that all Technicians now have scanners. 
• Jana served as an Event Employee at the Read Across America celebration on March 3. 
• At the Cataloging staff meeting on March 19, Pauline discussed Canadian motion picture ratings and how they differ from MPAA ratings.  (Thanks to Marilyn and Heidi for providing a website with some equivalency information.)  The team also brainstormed possible topics for Focus 2003, which Pauline has forwarded to Planning. 
• Ursula, Jill, Paula, Veronica, and Lacey attended the book repair workshop on March 26.  All indicated that they had had a good time, and had learned new things. 
• All full-time staff attended OLA conference for at least part of a day.  Pauline has received positive feedback from everyone regarding sessions they attended.  Paula and Jill were recognized as having been nominated for Support Staff Person of the Year.  
• Pauline, Clyde, Jill, and Paula all participated in evaluation of Rose State College’s programs, particularly with regard to the LTA program. 
• Veronica is scheduled to attend the April Collection Development workshop.  She will also receive mentored Periodicals Management training at CH on April 22. 
•  Several Materials Selection staff are scheduled to visit Cataloging on April 25. 
• Cataloging staff will be taking advantage of the computer training offered through MetroTech in May and June; several staff will be attending OCLC training offered by Amigos in June. 
• Pauline will attend the Amigos Membership Conference April 30-May 2, as the system’s representative.  She will attend sessions about the new cataloging interface and the ILL Policies Manual, which replaces the Name-Address Directory.  At this membership meeting, there will be a vote on the possibility of allowed directed proxy voting by Amigos members. 
• Union list holdings are now accessible in WorldCat via FirstSearch.  Pauline showed printouts of holdings information. 
   
•  Technical Processing Update     Heidi Johnson 
• Receipt of materials continues with an average of about 35 boxes per day.  
• Technical Processing has been receiving lots of video orders.  When Heidi called Associated Plastics in early March to order more video cases, the vendor was out and needed to make more.  It took a whole month before TP received more cases.  This caused TP to ask Cataloging to only catalog "Rush" videos until more cases were received on April 8th.  Since an unusual number of videos are being received at this time, Heidi has already ordered 2000 more cases, which also will take about one month until delivery. 
• Heidi will contact the bindery about a return date on books sent to the bindery on 3-24.  She then will forward this information to Karen and Debra, so they can get the next group of Downtown materials ready to send before the end of the current fiscal year. 
• Heidi will be contacting Janet to set up a tour of Materials Selection with Erica.  Christy and Heidi will be visiting the Business Office (date still to be set) to observe what they do with the book invoices and credit memos once they have been through close-out in Technical Processing. 
• Erica is enrolled in the Materials Selection workshop and in a beginning Excel workshop on May 19th.  Loretta will attend the State of Training workshop on May 14 at OKCCC, also the Public Speaking workshop on May 8th. 
• Heidi was supposed to attend the meeting of the PR Council April 11 at DN; when she arrived, along with several other staff from across the system, it turned out the meeting was canceled.  Heidi did find out in the PR Council meeting in March that the library commercials are currently airing on Spanish language stations only.  New commercials will start airing on cable stations like MTV, Fox Kids, Nickelodeon, etc., before the start of the summer reading program, probably sometime in May according to Scott. 
• Loretta and Heidi are currently updating the manual for the Basic Materials Processing workshop.  They hope to have the contents revised by April 30th; Planning will then scan in the original artwork, some of it hand-drawn.  The manual then will be downloaded to the Intranet to be available online. 
• Deb Urschlitz from Demco demonstrated basic book repair on March 26, 1:30 p.m.  The workshop was attended by 13 students who learned how to glue a torn page, reinsert loose pages, and how to reattach loose covers to books.  Heidi and Deb discussed the possibility of conducting a multi-media workshop sometime next year.  If this comes about, I will forward the information to interested parties. 
• Heidi attended OLA part of Thursday and all day Friday.  One session she attended was about collecting local history at your library.  Debra Spindle's part of presentation was very informative; also, I was amazed about all the resource available at the Historical Society.  She also attended a session on collecting and using online statistics, and one on the "Graphic novel" which was quite interesting, especially in light of MLS wanting to purchase some for next fiscal year, budget permitting. 
• On March 12, James Chapman, our sales rep. with Baker & Taylor, stopped by unannounced to update Heidi on the new Online Customer Support Services.  Heidi is now registered and able to use this new customer service feature provided by B&T. 
• Gene Chappell received a letter informing her that she has been selected for jury duty the week of May 5th. 
• Heidi taped several book talks for "Kids' Corner" on Read-about it on March 10. 
• Ruby will forward any requests for replacement tapes for newly purchased audiocassettes to Heidi in Technical Processing.  In most cases, if new audiocassettes are defective, it is a lot quicker to call the vendor directly for a replacement tape than ordering that tape through the regular replacement process. 
   
• Materials Selection Update   -   Janet Brooks 
• Statistics 
• Janet distributed updates of various statistical reports for Materials Selection.  Included were staff hours for working in the basement, box count for the basement project, weekly totals of items ordered, number of customer requests for purchase received, and ILL forms reviewed by selectors. 
•  Library Visits 
• During March, Selectors conducted a 6 month visit to MC and an annual visit to BC and BM.   
• Karen and Janet also had an annual visit follow up meeting with Debra/DN and Randy/SO during March. 
• During April, Selectors are conducting a 6-month visit to BE and an annual visit to BI.  They are also making visits to HR, NP, WR, JN, LU, and SP. 
• Janet met with Daphene Keys, RE's new library manager.  She provided her with a quick overview of collection development procedures.  She will attend the Materials Selection Workshop at the end of April for more in depth training. 
• Coming up in May, Selectors will conduct 6-month visits to CT and VI.  They will also do an annual visit to WA. 
• WebPage 
• Janet provided Teresa with a bibliography of teen novels in poetry format for inclusion on the Teen Webpage during Poetry Month.  The bibliography is on the webpage now. 
• Selectors worked on an update to the Asian American Spotlight On.  Megan and Elizabeth assisted with formatting the updates.  The updates have been forwarded to Teresa for inclusion on the Webpage in May.   
• Janet and Julie are working on lists of materials that can be included on the teen page that will accompany the summer reading theme.  
• Materials Selection Workshop 
• The Spring MSL Workshop is scheduled for April 23 and April 30.   
• Janet, Julie and Heidi will conduct this series.   
• Interlibrary Loan procedures have been added to the workshop. 
• Meetings/Workshops attended 
• Julie attended the March Young Adult Programmers Meeting.  She attended the April Children's Programmers' Meeting. 
• Ruby is serving on the Staff Recognition Committee. They have had several meetings already. 
• Susan attended a workshop presented on the Gale databases. 
• Elizabeth and Megan attended the book repair workshop. 
• Janet, Ruby and Julie attended OLA.  Janet participated in 2 Sequoyah programs and assisted with the Sequoyah YA Award Presentation. 
• Janet attended a workshop in Ada on Marketing Services to Hispanics as part of the Hispanic Materials Grant from ODL. 
• Janet attended a meeting of Los Amigos with Phil in the CH area. 
• Janet continues to attend Contact training.  She has had one telephone monitoring session and is scheduled for a second session this weekend. 
• Elizabeth attended an advanced Excel class. 
   
•  Administration Update   -   Karen Marriott 
• The Long-Range Planning Committee of the Commission met.  Kay Bauman reviewed the Long Range Plan and highlighted the accomplishments and adjustments made in the plan. 
• The Public Service Committee of the Commission will recommend to the whole Commission that they close the Spencer Library.  Donna said they are recommending a closing date of June 28th
• Jimmy wanted to close before the start of the new FY because of statistics. 
• Karen attended ODL's Legislative Day. 
• The Public Services Council is meeting with Tom Massey to use project management techniques to formulate core services for the library system. 
• Anne Hsieh indicated that any gift certificates (such as a gift card to Barnes and Nobel) or cash gifts to employees are considered tax deductible and should not be offered unless they are sent through Payroll.  If the gift is for a specific item, i.e., lunch or a movie ticket to a specific show, that should be ok. 
• Karen reminded managers to do safety training with staff on repetitive stress syndrome. 
• Karen and Donna are meeting about the budget.  Donna does not project any cuts to materials.  Karen said they would also talk about the DVD format. 
• Donna mentioned that she attended the OLTN Strategic Forum.  ODL hired a consultant to study library priorities for using OLTN.  She stressed the need to do something for the libraries using dual ILL systems (i.e., OCLC and OLTN).  The OLTN Advisory Council will meet soon and Donna is sure the issue will be discussed further. 
   
• Hispanic Materials Grant  -    Janet Brooks 
• Janet shared results of an informal survey she conducted to determine level of need and types of materials for Hispanic material.  She also polled library staff to discover the preference for classifying the material in regular Dewey and Fiction classes, or all in 468.  There was no consensus among libraries.   
• Janet has submitted 2 orders at this time. 
• After discussion, managers decided to catalog material by the regular Dewey or Fiction classification.  The spine labels will have "Spanish" under the call number to help identify the material.   
• Karen was concerned about libraries separating the Hispanic material from the rest of the collection may be in conflict with the Policy and Procedures for developing new special collections.  She has discussed with Denyvetta and Judy.  Donna recommended she also discuss with Jimmy.  If the AdTeam does not have any problem with this, it will be okay to pull this material out to a special area.   
• If libraries do not want to pull the material out, they can either shelve in the regular area or shelve them all in the 400s.   
• Pauline asked about the possible reclassification of existing Spanish language materials cataloged in 400s.  Karen recommended she look at the Cataloging and Technical Processing workload and see how it can be worked in. 
   
• Holocaust Resource Center     Karen Marriott 
• Karen asked if MSL staff could generate barcode labels including the HRC designator on the call number in the DN basement.  Pauline said this could be done.   
• Staff would only need to put HRC in the Vol/Year field of the barcode program. The location code will need to be set to HRC.  Pauline is not sure if this can be done when barcodes are produced, or will need to be done at the circ desk. Pauline recommended that MSL staff arrange with her to watch them do some of this new procedure to make sure it works.  
   
• Genre Headings/Cat Instructions -   Janet Brooks/Pauline Rodriguez 
• MSL staff can put cataloging instructions for the BC materials in the Cataloging instructions.  Use the format "TP:  Genre Heading".  Technical Processing will know that this refers to the BC copies.  There is no need to do two separate orders for the BC copies. 
• "BPR" only shows "R" on the spine labels for libraries.  This causes some confusion at libraries that don't know that the material is coming for their professional reference.  Pauline will draft a question to Jimmy to see if he can set up the computer to generate "PR" on the spine label if the location code is "BPR".  She'll run the request by Karen before sending to Jimmy. 
• Heidi asked if the office code could be printed on the back of the label, so TP staff would not have to turn the book around to see who gets the material.  Pauline will include this in her request to Jimmy. 
   
• Documents Budget   -    Pauline Rodriguez 
• Pauline indicated that for FY02 and FY03, MLS has spent less on purchased GPO materials than has been budgeted in account 404.  She recommended cutting the amount budgeted at least $2000 for next fiscal year.  The budget amount can be evaluated before the following fiscal year to see if restoring funds is necessary. 
• Since Karen and Donna are meeting soon, they will discuss. 
   
• Miscellaneous     -      All 
• Heidi indicated that audio titles that are blank or damaged within the first 6 months can be treated like damaged books and returned to the vendor for replacement.  She requests that staff send the entire set, not just the damaged tape. 
• Heidi has a number of genealogy titles sent in for barcodes that need to be repaired or sent to the bindery.  There will be some funds left over after this last bindery for them to bound.  Pauline can store these with barcodes in Cataloging.  Karen asked that Heidi send her the number of books, so she can include the figure in a grant she is requesting.  
• Karen is asking for a Friends grant to help with binding genealogy material for Downtown.  She asked Heidi to let her know if there would be a special price for this material or if it would be the flat fee. 

Next meeting: May 15, 2003;  Capitol Hill;  Heidi Johnson, Chair