Technical Services Minutes
November 11, 1999

Present: Theresa Byrd, Carol Holliger, Judy Orahood, Kim Strain, Barbara Wiesner

1. Search Process--Associate Director of Libraries and Head of T.S.

a) Ad came out in the Chronicle of Higher Education on November 5th. Theresa is not happy with the position of the ad or the fact that our logo was left off. Our other journal ads will be out during the first part of December. Theresa asked us only to post the ad to our assigned list so that we don't end up double posting. Michael Upfold posted the ad to the III listserv. We will all be asked to post again around December 1st and December 15th. Theresa will also take our ad to ALA Mid-Winter (Jan 14-19).

b) We need to work on interview and telephone reference questions in December. Theresa will develop a formal process for our review of application folders. Interviews will probably take place after ALA Mid-Winter.

c) We need to begin the process of creating an office for the new person. Theresa asked us to talk among ourselves about how our space might be reorganized. She will ask Tom to convene a meeting to discuss where the Gov Docs workspace will be. Joy and the T.S. staff will be involved in this discussion.

2. YBP Approval Slips: Barbara estimates that with the CRC and YBP orders this year, we might have 750 to 1200 more books to process than we did last year. We may need to buy more order records from III...we currently have 15,000 order records. She is currently ordering mostly from YBP and Emery Pratt. There has been a problem with YBP and electronic ordering. Evidently, price information is not going through when libraries send orders electronically. YBP will work on the problem after they have completed their Y2K work. Barbara began slip ordering on Columbus Day, and so far, 128 slip books have been ordered.

3. Historian: 318 Historian books were delivered between October 27th and November 11th. Carol's student, Cristin Owens, will assist Barbara with these books. A discussion ensued about the fact that we receive so many duplicates of history titles ordered earlier in the year. We might decide in the future to delay ordering history titles by a few weeks in order to determine whether ordered titles might be donated by Dr. Spall. For the moment, we will continue ordering history titles as usual and wait to see whether the turnaround time for delivery of the books improves.

4. Bar codes: Judy reported that our new bar codes will be shipped on 11/12/99. They are higher resolution bar codes than we currently use. A discussion followed about who is responsible for maintenance of computer equipment, bar code readers etc. At the moment, it feels as if no one is responsible. Judy did not get as much help from Information Systems on the bar code reader issue as she expected to receive. There is no answer to this question at the moment.

5. Gov Docs: Judy and Joy will be at the College of Wooster for the 5 Colleges Gov Docs meeting on Tuesday, November 16th. Theresa reported that the Gov Docs manager position is still on track, and will probably be advertised in the Spring.

6. Budget meeting: Theresa says she will hold a budget meeting for interested staff in the next two weeks.

7. ALAO - There will be a skeleton staff here on Friday, November 12th, since so many staff members are going to ALAO in Columbus.

8. President's visit: Dr. Courtice will be here at 8:30 AM on December 3rd to meet with the entire staff. He is coming to get an understanding of our vision for what we are, and what we would like to become. There will be a power point presentation, followed by an opportunity to ask questions. He will also be asking us questions. He needs to understand our needs so that he can represent them to potential capital campaign donors.

9. Objectives: Our technical services objectives need to be tightened up so that they are more measurable. The following changes were made:

1.Hire the Head of Technical Services by March 1, 2000
2.Order 100% of firm order books by March 20, 2000. Place 100% of approval orders by April 15, 2000.
5.Complete retrospective conversion of the CRC books by August, 2000
6.Continue ongoing processing of the Ohio 5 historical government documents
7.Continue processing books and maintaining the database
8.Start ordering books via Yankee Book Peddler's Approval Book Plan by October 14, 1999
10.Revise the Union List of Serials by October 15, 1999
11.Complete binding of periodicals by September 15, 1999
14.Attend 100% of Ohio5 Subcommittee meetings
15.Dispose of weeded periodicals in government documents carrel by August 31, 2000
17.Withdraw missing books from CONSORT by December 31, 2000

Judy will examine Objectives 6 & 7 and send an e-mail to Theresa suggesting how they can be made more measurable.

10. Status Reports

Carol: We are unable to create a list by title of in-house use of periodicals during a particular time period. A baseline list has been run, so that we can compare lists run in December and May against it. There was discussion about adding this to the III enhancement list at some point. The EBSCO electronic invoice has been received, but there are problems with it. Carol is working with EBSCO to resolve them. We are having attendance problems with students at the periodicals information desk this semester.

Barbara: 310 firm orders and 86 slip orders were placed in October. 286 titles were actually received in October. Discussion took place regarding whether slips and order cards still need to be returned to requestors in our current electronic environment. This process takes a great deal of time. Theresa asked Barbara to send an e-mail query to Collection Development committee members to get their input on this issue.

Judy: Documents cataloging is caught up, with the exception of ERIC documents which are not yet on OCLC.

Kim: Working on creating check-in records for government documents and cataloging 200 plus new Historian books. Barbara indicated that we might need to buy more check-in records from III. We currently have 3,000. Judy will contact Michael Upfold regarding the cost of order and check-in records.

Our next meeting will be December 2nd in the Kleist Room at 9:00 AM.

Minutes submitted by
Carol Holliger