Minutes – Summit Borrowing Committee Steering Team
February 15, 2007 (Phone Conference, 12-2pm)
continuation of January 26th meeting

In attendance:  Cindy Cunningham-OHSU (Chair),Caroline Mann-UP, Pam Mofjeld-UW, Zippy Nickerson-CWU, Erin Petrequin-PCC (for Katherine Stevens), Lori Pagel-WOU, and Bahram Refaei-Linfield, John Helmer--Orbis Cascade Alliance, and Michelle Williams--Orbis Cascade Alliance.  Guest: Jennie McKee--Reed

Action Items:

·        Send out Data Harvesting Survey to SBC. (Michelle)

·        Order more DVD and VHS boxes to feed into the system. (Michelle)

·        Create mockup up of the book labels including the courier codes. (Michelle)

·        Add tip (http://www.orbiscascade.org/staffhome/materials_descrip_supply.htm#media) to use rubber bands on the media boxes rather than tape – the boxes last longer. (Michelle)

·        Determine how many labels are purchased for Summit use at each site to include in SBDay discussion about labels. (Michelle, SBC)

Possible topics for SBDay and/or SBC meeting 2007:

·        Session on navigating the Sharing Materials site

·        Kinds of data we would like to be able to harvest and how we can use various forms of data.

·        Courier issues, including the demand and  associated costs related to additional services

·        Costs associated with supplying more labels; etc.

·        Best practices for handling US Mail tote issue

·        Supporting distance learners

12.       Update on activities of Data Harvesting Working Group. Jennie McKee is the SBC representative and would like feedback from the steering committee on a survey that will be sent to the SBC addressing the following issues:

 The Data Harvesting Working Group (DHWG) will be meeting February 22, 2007 and Jennie asked if Michelle could send out the “Questions for Summit Committees” to hopefully receive responses on or before February 21, 2007 for discussion at the DHWG meeting.

There was some question of how this applies to Summit Borrowing and there appear to be two levels.   On the committee level, transactional data is used for load balancing, very important to Summit’s success.  On the local level there are some good uses related to Collection Development; more robust data locally would be helpful.  At present the Circ Cross Tab Data is suspect at best and may indicate trends, but the 10% to 45% error ratio makes it questionable for most uses.

1.   Courier delivery on weekends. Consider some additional suggestions on things Central could do to help with processing Summit Requests (possibly tied into the celebration of the millionth loan): increase the number of Summit bags in the system, increase the number of Video / DVD / CD boxes in the system (realizing that these will wear out more quickly than the bags), provide ALL labels along with book bands.

John has already talked to Senvoy and they do have limited Saturday pick up in some but not all areas.  The greater Seattle area does not have Senvoy coverage.  Items picked up would not be sorted until the next business day, so it would not be any faster than the current system for outgoing materials.  There would be additional cost associated with the addition of pick up times.  We decided to discuss this further at SBD so people can be made aware of all pertinent facts.

Because three large institutions have recently started circulating Videos, DVDs, and CDs the number of media boxes has become insufficient and we recommended getting more.  Michelle was planning to order additional media boxes already.  New boxes are ordered once a year.  There was a stated preference for the boxes with Velcro closures and suggestion that rubber bands be used to secure the media boxes.

In regard to labels:  The current practice is to provide bookbands and with monies not used for bookbands to purchase and disperse removable labels.  The labels are significantly more expensive which would drive up the cost of membership in Summit.  There is no significant discount purchasing Avery labels in bulk and the other brand of removable labels wasn’t of the same quality as Avery labels. 

2.  Misdirected packages/items: EWU examples and how new paging slip with               Senvoy sort code working. 

It was felt that the Senvoy sort codes are working well and there was a suggestion to have the codes on all related forms.  The problem of misdirected packages/items appears to be predominantly human error and somewhat cyclical, frequently based on changes in student staffing.   All sites should continue to contact the sending library promptly.  One site uses a white board in the processing area to be sure incidents are followed up on. 

3.  Limiting the number of media requests (one member has been canceling Summit requests for media items when a patron has more than 3 checked out and/or in transit). 

The member who was canceling Summit requests has been contacted and agreed to comply with the established loan criteria.  We were reminded that needs to limit access to certain media types can be addressed by setting up different ITypes for those that can circulate freely through Summit and those that need to be limited to access on the owning campus.  All members need to operate within the established parameters. 

4.  The short loan: one member reported insufficient time to send to Distance Education students, even with the new 1-renewal period. 

This is another area where we need to work within established parameters.  This issue has gone to Council in the past and Summit cannot be manipulated to handle all Distance Education needs; alternate methods might be explored; for example using InterLibrary loan.

5.    PUA:
       a). PUA items returned to a library not involved in the PUA transaction
       b). Returning non-PUA items in the PUA module

Only Summit transactions work: 

a)   It is possible to return a Summit item that is not a PUA item through the PUA system.

b)  Items not checked out through PUA but returned through PUA cause a busy record issue.  This is a bug that III is aware of; when resolved this problem could become a solution. 

John Helmer forwarded http://www.orbiscascade.org/staffhome/paging_slips-illus.html for review of PUA paging slip language.

6.        Moved to the end of the agenda

7.        Develop list of best practices for handling the US Mail tote issues with the courier perhaps asking for examples of how members are managing via a survey; develop questions.

It was determined this topic needs to be discussed at SBD.  Would be a good suggestion for the planning committee. 

8.  Send out tips on paging slips for distance education students; review suggestions

This was also determined to be a topic to be referred to the planning committee and discussed at SBD.

9.  Development of a "job outline" for SBDay committee so that volunteers will know duties, possible time commitment.

Charge:  Develop the Summit Borrowing Day program

Identify speakers                                                                                                                Contact prospective speakers                                                                                                                Moderate elements of the meeting

Lay out the program    

Meet using teleconferencing – shouldn’t require much travel. Mostly thinking about content and planning how to make it happen.   John and Michelle will set up and participate in teleconference meetings.  The time commitment depends on the level of participation. 

The main focus of the planning committee will be to develop a program for Summit Borrowing Day.  Currently the two time frames are July 19-20 and July 26-27, there is at least one conflict that would make July 26-27 the better choice.  John, Michelle and Susie will take care of the logistics including registration and packets.  Past agendas are available for ideas – usually there have been 6 to 8 topics covered.

Louise Newswanger was nominated as the chair and John has already sent out an email saying she accepted. Bahram and Cindy will represent the steering team on the committee. Erin Petrequin also volunteered to be on the planning committee

10.  FU on Zip Code finder suggestion

Cindy met with Janet Crum and gave her an outline for this enhancement to forward to the (Summit Catalog Committee) Short Term Summit Interface Work Group for consideration. The proposal outlined some ways to improve the current system. This will be explored by the work group as “short term” solution. A long-term solution might be to devote programming resources to developing a Summit tool similar to the OCLC zip code finder. This idea has been submitted to Innovative as an enhancement request.

11.  FU on 'Check-in' box highlighted versus' Do not check-in' box.

This was an issue specific to a particular member site and will need to be resolved with help from III.

6.  Brainstorm any issues the SBC-ST or SBC should be working on

·        Restrictions on Visiting Patrons; local loan rules for visiting patrons, etc. Pam forwarded the url for local loan rule development. http://www.orbiscascade.org/staffhome/visiting_patron_setup.htm

·        Thoughts on the Sharing materials webpage – perhaps a Summit session on navigating.  It has become so packed with information that it is a rich but confusing website.  John said Council is open to suggestions about re-design.

12.  Other items?

SOU sent a thank you for the recommendation that the examples be removed from the access pages.