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Library Managers • Minutes

Library Managers, September 13, 2006
9:30 am, LIB 428


Present: Eric Boyd, Betty Graf, Jennifer Haas, Mark Haslett, Michele Laing, Sharon Lamont (Chair), Susan Mavor, Richard Pinnell, Shabiran Rahman, Mary Stanley, Linda Teather, Debbie Tytko, Melanie Watkins, Annette Dandyk (Recorder)

Regrets: Susan Routliffe

  1. Chairs Remarks
  1. Business Arising from August 16

    #1 Updates
    Pandemic Planning – the September 12 Daily bulletin had an announcement about “healthy office kits” being distributed by Health Services to departments across campus. http://www.bulletin.uwaterloo.ca/2006/
    sep/12tu.html    . Each kit contains laminated posters, ethyl alcohol hand cleaner, and disinfecting towelettes for wiping hard surfaces such as shared phones, keyboards, and doorknobs. Each Library department will receive a kit. This is the first step in the university’s pandemic planning education program. Staff are encouraged to wipe keyboards and shared phones at the end or beginning of desk shifts. Replacement kits will be available from Central Stores for $16.22. Sharon will follow up with Linda Brogden about: what our responsibility is beyond our immediate departments (e.g. washroom doors, and other public spaces); education (e.g. posters in public areas such as washrooms); and restocking of kits.
    Action: Sharon

    Meeting with Bruce Mitchell – Mark hopes to have further information about the budgets by the next meeting.

    #3 Circulation Desk Hours (Issue: informing patrons in advance of deactivating active tags)
    Rachel Caldwell is working on announcements for the Daily Bulletin and Imprint once we know when the security gates will be installed. People who have signed out books that have not been deactivated and would activate the alarms in Davis will be notified by email.

    #5 Freedom of Information Legislation
    Susan and Sharon met and discussed the broader issues. Sharon will send a series of emails on four consecutive Mondays: the first message will be general, summarizing the June 5 Daily Bulletin and explaining what FIPPA is and what it means in a UW context. The second message will be in the form of Q & A and will highlight items relevant to library staff; the third message will be about email and when to use, and how to attach a confidentially message; and the fourth will be general information about recording minutes. The first message will likely be sent near the end of September or early October.

    Follow-up from last Managers meeting:
    Minutes – information should be factual and general, with no attribution. Instead of recording “John Doe suggested …” record “A member suggested …” Do not record “Member x said this and member x disagreed”. Action items are appropriate, e.g. “John Doe will contact the Secretariat for further information”.

    Departmental files - file drawers should be kept organized and tidy and identify the information within.

    Creating records from data in electronic form – there are no general answers, and decisions will be case specific. The Library’s electronic records are fairly easy to access.

    Expense accounts – for the time being, should there be requests they will be forwarded to Susan Mavor who will work with Karen Jack to respond to those queries.

  2. Departmental Update – Cataloguing

    There are three distinct sections within the Cataloguing Department – Cataloguing, Item Preparation, and Holdings Maintenance and Inventory Control.

    There have been significant staff changes in the Cataloguing Section since May 2004, including the retirements of the Cataloguing Librarian, and seven Cataloguing Associates. One position is currently vacant. Because of the high turnover in the past two years a total of 38 months of staff time has been lost between staff retiring and staff being replaced, resulting in larger than normal backlogs of both print and electronic resources.

    Item preparation is staffed by a Co-op student during the fall and winter terms, and by casual staff in the summer term. RFID tagging of new items is being done in Item Prep.

    Because of the drop in the number of added volumes the Holdings Maintenance and Inventory Control section has two fewer staff due to retirements. The number of deletions has increased significantly and the number of volumes to be deleted varies from month to month, making it difficult to incorporate into the work flow of the section. This unit has taken over holdings maintenance for cartographic materials. They are also involved in adding some items from the Annex back into the collection in the last copy agreement project. In some cases if there are multiple copies and UW wishes to retain a 2nd copy, the only way we would be allowed to keep it is to bring it back from the Annex and add it back to the collection. Many of these items are going to Musagetes.

    Special projects:
    Cataloguing staff web has been updated to new look and feel
    Macros have been developed for use in cataloguing
    Majority of government publications are now receiving full cataloguing and LC classification
    Full holdings have been uploaded to Amicus
    Partial holdings have been uploaded to OCLC

    Many print journals with electronic access have been deleted from Trellis and holdings updated
    Took over holdings maintenance for UML library
    Weeding and relocation of cartographic material from the annex
    Unbound periodicals are now being barcoded and added to Trellis to facilitate RFID tagging
    RFID tagging is being done in Item Preparation

    Unicode upgrade continues to generate problems in cataloguing
    Bulk loading of bibliographic and authority records is problematic
    Unicode errors which prevented access have been fixed but many others remain.

    Staff training and development:
    Sessions held for all campus cataloguing units
    Webcasts:
    Voyager® 5.0 and Cataloguing
    Voyager® Unicde and Cataloguing

    In house
    Cataloguers’ desktop
    Classification Plus

    Alison Hitchens attended sessions on Cataloguing Electronic Resources and Cataloguing Cartographic material. She also hosted a Serials cataloguing session at Waterloo.

  3. Staff Training and Professional Development 2006/2007

    The Library spent $33,340 on staff training and professional development in fiscal 2006/2007. Staff participated in 81 events, including conferences, workshops, webcasts, and courses. As well, 22 Library staff attended 51 of the programs offered through the University’s Staff Training and Development Committee. Sandra Keys, in her capacity as LAUW President has received a copy of the report.

  4. Sick Leave

    In Fall 2005, Library Managers reviewed the Library’s sick leave practices at the request of the Occupational Health Nurse and the Human Resources Disability Advisor. As a result, the Library’s procedures with respect to reporting and managing sick leave were revised. It was decided that Annette Dandyk would consolidate and report sick leave statistics following the end of the attendance year. The report has been completed and Sharon Lamont will review absences of ten or more days with individuals’ managers. It was noted that the majority of staff are under the national average.
    Action: Sharon

  5. Micro Desk Hours and Service

    Although the Micro collection is well used, business at the Micro desk is low so Circulation Services Managers have proposed closing the desk at 6:00 p.m. weekdays, and remaining closed on weekends. Occasionally there is a class project that uses the micro materials and on those occasions the desk will remain open evenings, and over the weekend if required. A buzzer will be installed soon, allowing people needing assistance to alert the evening or weekend supervisor.

  6. Staff Elevator Locked Off at 4:30 by Facilities

    Facilities staff will lock the staff elevator at 4:30 p.m. Access to the 4th floor from the main elevators and lockup of internal staff offices will be done at 6:00 p.m.

  7. 6th Decade Report

    A significant statement about the Library has been added to the final report. It reads:
    A strong and vibrant library is a vital component of an excellent teaching and research intensive university. The UW Library will continue to foster and be a model of collaboration, connectedness and partnerships. The UW Library will rank among the top research libraries in Canada, as evidenced by:
    • quality and strength of information resources to support research, learning and teaching
    • impact of educational programs
    • high faculty, staff and student satisfaction with information resources, services and facilities
    • innovative and effective use of technology to support delivery of services and information resources

    Linda has incorporated new wording as part of the Library’s submission to the university’s 2006 Performance Indicators Report. It reinforces the need for quantifiable statistics, and less quantifiable measures.
    http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infosec/
    Sixth_Decade_Plan.pdf

    The committee revisited an earlier decision not to participate in the 2007 LibQUAL survey, ARL’s web based survey to measure library service quality. At that time CARL directors were asked to consider participating as a consortium in the survey, and it was agreed that UW would not participate. Things have changed since then:
    • we have been highlighting our need to measure student satisfaction with services and resources (e.g. our interest to get user satisfaction is emphasized in the 6th decade report)
    • we want to demonstrate that we are looking for ways to gain feedback about user satisfaction (already being done – various surveys have been completed recently)
    • if we participate we benefit from receiving the broad basis of comparitors.
    • since last year’s decision we have learned that all other university CARL libraries have decided to participate.

    It was proposed that Shabiran, as Chair of CNAC, should investigate the following issues and make a recommendation about whether we should proceed:
    • time frames
    • whether we will be allowed to customize the survey by asking additional questions
    • what the significant implementation changes since the 2001 survey include.

    Action: Shabiran

  8. Change in Lending Policy

    As a result of the recent Voyager upgrade, a change to the lending policy is necessary. The normal process would be to change the policy first and then make the change in practice, however, the usual process cannot be followed because the Voyager system is driving the change and we have no control over it. A 14 day loan period can no longer be guaranteed. If a user signs a book out on term loan and if it is recalled within seven days of being signed out, the patron would have the book for fewer than 14 days.

Next meeting: October 4, Porter

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September 28, 2006