April 2001 Meeting Minutes


April 4, 2001 (Sofia)

  1. Sharon will talk to Lucy about the phone system. In the meantime we will continue the way we are and continue to keep tally.
  2. Sharon brought up National Library Week. Sofia needs to keep better track of the various "special" weeks that come and display the appropriate books.
  3. Kinder books are due soon. Sharon and Sofia need to have pages in by Friday, Leslie by Monday (9th), and the rest by Tuesday to Nicki. Also we discussed what to put them in. The kids will already have a bag from the bookstore, but we discussed folders or bags of our own.
  4. University of Southern Maine received an endowment for Life Long Learning.
  5. In the annual report we need to include the kinder books and a general statement on our phone situation.
  6. Thursday (4/5) there will be a tech meeting at 10 am in 24 hour room.
  7. The information services staff meeting was discussed. We are considering having another either the week before graduation (5/7-11) or the week after (5/14-18).
  8. Everyone needs to keep an eye on leaks in the library. Some new leaks have been noticed and old ones continue. Keep an eye particularly on the following sections: Stacks - D, Curriculum Center, 24 hour room, Cluster, Over the computer/scanner in cluster, Exhibit room, Special Collections, and in periodicals section.
  9. Is it time to buy new shelves for the periodicals? If so, we need to make sure size and shape are transferable in case we want to change where the periodiclas will be located.
  10. We need to get clips for periodicals shelves from Camille.
  11. Do we discard the old nursing journals in dungeon? if so, tell UM libraries who are depositories what we have and give them what they need. Then we can do ILL. Do we discard Newsweek, Time, etc... after 3yrs? 5yrs? Leslie will look into serials space.
  12. Someone ? will ask to have broken periodicals shelf fixed.
  13. Sharon, Leslie, Anne, and Sofia will each take a section of the online cataloging course.
  14. Cataloging issues and standards were discussed.

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April 11, 2001 (Anne)

Minutes:

I. Sharon and Sofia did enjoy the workshop tremendously. Different topics were discussed concerning reference librarians; i.e. - How to get our services to remote users, specifically in references; - How to set up chat rooms for reference librarians titled " Ask a Librarian".

Sofia will continue working to better our access of on-line forms and adding more info to our staff web site. I think she does a very good job at it!

II. There is no problem for Sofia to have access to Netscape and e-mail on the ILL machine in the special collection room.

III. Book drop - reminder - we decided if Sharon is not here, Stephanie will check it and Sofia will be the back-up.

IV. Leslie is to do the phone messages when Sofia is not here and Sharon will be the back-up. Sofia has daily greetings written so she will put them up on our staff web site. Sofia will program a generic message in case of "emergency(ies)" that someone will need to activate when our hours are irregular. Sharon will talk to Lucy again about the "phone tree" set-up.

V. Audio cassettes in curriculum collection - Stephanie is OK with the idea of having audio cassettes with the corresponding books in the curriculum collection area.

Others:

1. Sofia talked to Michelle Brandt, from the Maine State Library, on the way she was setting up call numbers and the shelving for gov. doc.. They reassured her that she was doing it the proper way as long as she is consistent and clear in doing it. They will be printing and sending out an updated version of the State Agency's Classification & Stems and other rules and regulations on cataloging government documents.

2. Sofia will be training a work-study student on shelving gov. doc.

3. Stephanie talked about potential work-study students for the summer.

4. Stephanie decided to attend the Docu-Tech meeting on April 20th .

5. Nicki tells us that the children's book is coming along well for our little K-people that will be visiting on the 24th of this month.

Leslie will do next week's agenda.

Have a great week everyone!

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April 18, 2001 (Leslie)

  1. Public Phone
  2. New software for assisted learning station
  3. A Student
  4. Computers in the Cluster
  5. Closing
  6. Nursing Journals

Library Minutes

Public Phone - Short discussion on a recent phone incident. The Library Staff agreed that we need to support our workstudy students in their enforcement of our policy that students wanting to use a phone use the one in the 24-hour computer room. All staff will advise student to first check the phone in the 24-hour room and then go to Cyr Hall. Stephanie will remind the workstudy student that there is a phone in Cyr Hall.

New Software for Assisted Learning Station - Sofia began to investigate software which would read internet pages. Stephanie discussed Zoom Text, the current software loaded to read Internet pages. Sofia received a 30 day trial of IMB's Homepage Reader 3.0. Staff has been asked to try the two programs and give feedback to Sophia. Sharon would like Sophia and Stephanie to make a list of the software with a short description of what it can be used for. This list will also be sent to George Diaz.

Student - Stephanie brought to our attention a problem she was having with a particular student. This student has a block on his account and was reported has giving our 9PM-11PM workstudy a hardtime. This student was also found rummaging around the staff offices looking for a fork. Leslie will try to contact the student before the afternoon is out to discuss his behavior and inform in that he needs to pay his fine. Sharon will lock her office door when she leaves in the evening. Leslie will lock the door which leaves her office by the handicap door when she leaves in the evening. Leslie will tell Neal to expect to find the door locked and to let Library staff know he's in. Nicole and Tina may be in to access the search files. If you don't know someone ask for an I.D.

Computers in the Cluster - Nicki let library staff know that her and Peter have been working on the computers in the cluster. The computers were recently ghosted but there was a problem with the print driver. They've tried to install the correct print driver on each of the computers but there seems to be a conflict. Nicki will hang a sign which informs students that the computers may or may not print. Nicki also informed everyone that two of the computers were misssing their power buttons but they were still working. Sharon questioned the cost of the 4Si versus the Xerox, maybe we should consider a new printer.

Closing - Nicki reported that the 24-hour room door was locked this morning and a student. Stephanie will find out if Danielle forgot to unlock it. One possibility is that the night watchman locked it.

Nursing Journals - Leslie let everyone know that we had begun to discard nursing journals older than 1990. Sharon suggested to public service staff to assume that all nursing journals older than 1990 had already been discarded.

Other -

  1. Government Documents - Sofia asked staff to not let anyone shelve Maine Documents except for Debra Wood.
  2. Serials - Georgine asked how close we were to electronic claiming. So close and yet not quite there. Some additional programming needs to be done with the MilSerials software in order for it recognize the correct field.
  3. Budget - Sharon explains that we were asked to not spend any more money. She also described the new budgeting system which would determine Blake Library's budget for FY02. The Library is a part of the Academic Support Group. This means that the Library's Budget is also determined by the spending habits of other departments in the group. Three years of E&G spending were looked at, with an average taken for the group to determine the next fiscal year. Sharon stated that the first year the Library may need to make some adjustments but in the long term she thought this procedure would benefit the Library.
  4. Library Director's Meeting

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April 25, 2001 (Stephanie)

1. Handicap Exit
–the emergency exit sign has been removed. It was misleading and inferred that people were not to use the door, except in emergency situations.

2. Notes in patron records
–All staff are asked to please insert a note in a patron record to record such things as the student not having a library card or the student coming in at a later date to pay a fee. The important thing to remember is that the note field needs to be removed after the issue in the note field has been addressed.

3. Docutek
–Stephanie updated everyone about this file management software. It is to be used for electronic reserves. It is similar to Blackboard. Stephanie asked that everyone review Docutek information at www.docutek.com

4. Novell accounts for under 16
–Sharon recommended that we modify the contract to reflect the fact that during busy times of the semester, we reserve the right to disable Guest accounts. A second issue is the scanning workstation at the cluster. This station does not currently have network access. Nicki and/or Pete will make it network accessible and add clean slate to it. Netscape will be defaulted to an "offline" status.

5. Overdue Reserve Materials–(no fees?)
–Discussion on this matter will be postponed until next week. The book on reserve for Patrick Stamp will be reviewed, as will the loan rules. The main issues are the fact that once the reserves are taken out of the system, we are unable to see when the fine was accumulated. Also, since the bills do not print several of the lower level fines are not being waived

Other:

  1. The assisted learning station has new software on it. Try it out! Leslie will find out how to get Jaws software installed on the station.
  2. We have an Information Services meeting on Thursday. We do have coverage.
  3. No Roller Blades in the building
  4. Sharon and other info. servs. staff will look into setting up Georgine's computer for printing on the fiery. This will leave Nicki's computer in Admin mode for clearing print jobs.
  5. A discussion of the serials color problems in Millenium took place. Sharon is still in contact with Mark Dehmelow to try to resolve this issue.
  6. Georgine is doing the next agenda.

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