Minutes of September 13, 2007 meeting

Present:

Katie Anderson, Rose Barbalace, Zohreh Bonanian, Judy Gardner (chair), Maggie Harris, Yoshi Ishii, Barry Lipinski, Andy Martinez, Dean Meister, Glenn Sandberg, Roger Smith, Christopher Sterback, Jeff Teichmann, Michele Tokar, Darryl Voorhees (recorder), Penny Weniger.

Guests:

Valeda Dent

Absent:

Jan Reinhart

Agenda

1. Access Services Annual Report FY 2007- statistical highlights. (Judy)
2. Staff Resources web page redesign: .../rul/staff/access_serv/access_serv2.shtml
3. Revised "Add Brief Title" instructions. These instructions will be used to create brief records for Circ-on-the Fly, returned LOSTITEMS, and Missing books that are found. Access Services staff will have responsibility for creating the records. (Judy, Chris, Andy)
4. Kiosk update. (Roger)
5. Announcements and Information Sharing

Annual Report and statistical highlights

Judy outlined eight (8) major initiatives that are detailed in the Annual report that is located in the staff pages under the following URL:
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/staff/access_serv/reports/Access_Services_RIS_Annual_Report_2007.pdf

1. The libraries' environment and facilities were enhanced through two procedural changes. Namely, these changes were the revised food and drink policy and the revised banning policy.
2. Customer service training programs were carried out throughout the year in a three tiered format: basic customer service skills, question analysis and referral skills, and core competencies for introducing key online resources to users.
3. The libraries were responsive to the budget shortfall and were able to tweak these changes in response to stated user needs, such as reinstating building hours.
4. In March 2007 the RUL Access Services Department Hosted the 2007 Ivies+ Access Services Symposium.
5. An online satisfaction survey was conducted in February 2007, to evaluate Rutgers ILL service to New Jersey Library Network member libraries and to fulfill a requirement of Rutgers statewide services contract.
6. Access Services staff, in consultation with the University Delinquent Accounts Office, undertook a major revision of the Libraries’ delinquent accounts policy and resumed attempts to recover long overdue and assumed lost items.
7. Interlibrary loan lending staff successfully migrated the lending operation from ILL Manager to ILLiad on June 6, 2007. In May, the Access Services Committee recommended the Libraries begin to deliver electronic copies of print journals in our collections to Rutgers student faculty, and staff, regardless of their “home” campus and at no fee as part of a pilot program for free article delivery.
8. Collection management and Art library staff completed an inventory of the Art library reference and folio collections and have started an inventory of Art’s stacks collection.

Statistical highlights include:

• General circulation and reserve circulation are down by only 1%.
• Rutgers Delivery Service decreased by 8% in books and 25% in article requests.
• Electronic reserve use remains high, with an increase of 7 gigabytes of material over last year. Hits to the eres server are down but the group postulated that this may be due to the increase in file size limitations that are self imposed. Lager pieces of an article would equate to less traffic on the server.
• RUL loaned over 26,000 book and microform requests on ILL, 59% through PALCI's EZ Borrow.
• RUL filled 7,193 ILL article requests, 65% of which were from RAPID requests.
• Through RAPID we are lending 8,300 items and borrowing 4,600 which has haled us to become an overall net lender.

Staff Resources web page redesign

Please refer to redesigned pages at
.../rul/staff/access_serv/access_serv2.shtml
The staff pages are almost ready to go public and will undergo continuing editing. Old meeting minutes from NBL pages will be transferred to the new location. A public Access Services page will be added to the libraries and centers section of the website soon and will include an online application form for student employees.

Revised "Add Brief Title" instructions

New instructions for using the Add Brief Title wizard in Workflows were discussed. The impetus for the revision was to accommodate creation of brief records based on the return of long overdue billed items that were previously batch removed from Unicorn. Primarily, the change was to add a circulation note, "Route to DTS", to assist in routing the material to the local technical services unit. A lively discussion ensued about the need or perceived effectiveness of adding this note and some committee members asked for statistics to support this change in procedure. Andy Martinez will gather statistics on misrouted returned long overdue material and report back at the October ASC meeting.

Kiosk update

The Kiosk outreach project is slated to begin on September 24th and will run for 5 weeks over 7 campuses, including all 3 major geographical areas of Rutgers. Volunteers are being recruited. An Ipod and several flash drives will be raffled as incentives to survey library users at the campus centers.

Announcements and Information Sharing

Andy- For most of the NBL branches, there has been a 30-60% reduction in the work study allotment so far this semester. Only SERC has received their normal allotment of work study this semester. The collection shift at Chemistry has been completed, while the collection shift at LSM has just begun.

Penny- The Security and Facilities Group is working on a few projects. Douglass seems busier than ever during the first week of a fall semester. May Chin will Retire on October 8th.

Yoshi- A possible reorganization of Dana library is being discussed.

Maggie- A garter snake was spotted this morning at the circulation desk. No one was harmed and the snake was safely removed.

Roger- Nicole Warren left last Friday to pursue a teaching career. Interviewing will begin soon for Pete Anderson's former position.

Darryl- Arden De La Cruz's former position is almost filled. A new CD/DVD duplication service will receive broader publicity after addressing a few remaining copyright concerns.

Michele- The Circulation Group has dealt with issues regarding the new RUConnection cards and late class registrants borrowing privileges. Copier training will begin this week at LSM in response to a reduction in Imaging Services hours at that location.

Bill- Holds are in place for students.

Katie- The Resource Sharing Group did not meet in August. There has been positive feedback on the new article delivery service.

Jeff- Alexander is very busy with the beginning of the fall semester, much more so than in the past.

Zohreh- Reserves are busy. Faculty are connecting to reserve lists through Sakai and would like to increase the limit of reserve items per class to 50.

Dean- Busy with ILL conversion and serials recon issues.

Rose- Work study placement of first year students was delayed due to the transfer of the work study office to an online system. More are expected to come in soon. Over 220 new workstudy packets were created for incoming students this year.

Judy (for Glenn)- Dave Travis has resigned. The ILL office is still working on ILLiad procedures. The old system (ILL manager) transaction data has been archived.

Chris- Announced that we may want to consider the possibility of shortening expiration dates for patrons and how they are implemented in the system, either according to a number of weeks after last load dates from administrative computing or periodically throughout the year.

Next meeting: Thursday October 11th