Minutes of Joint TSSAC/TSD Council Meeting
Wednesday, May 3, 2000
9:00-10:45am

Present: Carlen Ruschoff, Jim Albert, Lulu Barnachea, Wilma Bass, Sue Baughman, Roselin Becker, Carole Bell, Robert Bratton, Yvonne Carignan, Heidi Hanson, Delores Huff, Arlene Klair, Susan Koutsky, Jan Siar, Sarah Wiesner

Meeting roles: Facilitator - Wilma Bass; Recorder - Susan Koutsky; Timekeeper - Jan Siar
Guest Facilitator: Sue Baughman

A. Topic: "Living the Future" Conference Notes
Leader: Carlen
Time: 10 minutes
Outcome: Information sharing

Carlen and Sue Baughman attended the "Living the Future" conference at the end of April. Lulu has photocopied handouts from the conference. Carlen reported that the conference focused on change and reorganization in the workplace. The main themes that came out of the presentations were that organizations want to be more user-focused, flexible, adaptable to continuing change, and quality-focused. They also want to develop best practices and promote an environment that addresses continuing education. The important aspects of successfully changing an organization are to have a shared mission, involve as many staff as possible, foster good communication, and promote good leadership. Some of the problems that organizations had include communication and "getting stuck" (unable to reach consensus, poor group communication skills). Carlen recommended that as we go through the program review process, we emphasize creativity and encourage group communication and tolerance. She also spoke with Charles, Shelly Phipps, and Maureen Sullivan, who concurred that we are on the right track with the program review. Sullivan and Phipps will visit the division soon.

B. Program Review
Leader: Carlen
Facilitator: Sue Baughman
Time: 50 minutes
Outcome: Brainstorming to identify TS activities (core activities and others) for program review.

The objectives of the session were to:

• Identify activities for review
• Organize ideas under categories

Brainstorming Session: The group thought of all the TSD activities to be considered for the program review and came up with the following list:

Activities for Review

• Ordering Process—including pre-order searching
• Pre-cataloging searching
• Receiving Process—serials, monographs, gifts, gov docs, etc.
• Payment Process
• TS Involvement with Gov Docs
• Maintenance of the Union Catalog
  • Receiving and notifying other campuses of global catalog
• Serials Processing—from acquisitions to end processing
• Serials Binding
• Authority Control
• Priorities for Processing
• Paperback Workflow
• Management of Cataloging Cue
  • Inputs and Outputs
• Nonprint Materials / Electronic Workflow
• URL Maintenance
• Training
• PRD Process—Coaching, Evaluating
• Transfers and Withdrawals
• Participation in National Programs—Conser, NACO, etc.
• Work with Other Colleges—UMUC, CLIS
  • The impact of being a processing center
• Maintenance of Documentation and Related Web Pages
• Processing of Preservation Photocopies
• Cataloging of Microfilm and Microfiche
• Special Collections Cataloging
• Dissertations/Theses Processing
• Help Desk Relationship with TSD and to Customers
• Establishment of Policies—changes in procedures, communication of same
• Claiming Process
• Rush Procedures
• Collection Management Priorities—who or what goes first (transfers, withdrawals)
  • On a large scale
• End Processing—stamping, labeling, security stripping
• Job Shares—creative ways to deal with tasks
• Bringing People into the Process to be a Part of the Process—group participation
  • Staff responsibility in the process
• Direct Support of Users through Roving, Instruction, First Look Fair, etc.
• Use of Technology—keeping up, learning new skills, minimum competencies
• Conservation Procedures
• Brittle Books Procedures
• Bindery Process
• Disaster Team Activities
• Deacidification
• Statistics—collection, reporting
• Electronic Licensing
• Student Work
• Payroll Responsibilities
• GA Work
• Tracking of Management Information—L&A, budget, travel
• Management of Infrastructure—timesheets, paychecks, supplies, photocopiers, etc.
• Measurement and Evaluation
  • Setting of benchmarks
  • How you know how you’re doing
  • Quality, quantity and turn-around time
• Space Utilization in TS
• Relationship with Other Library Divisions
• Reformatting—microfilming
• Preservation Priorities
• Digital Libraries

Key Categories
The group thought of categories in which to group the above activities. The categories are mainly material-specific, and will include processing procedures from "cradle to grave." Gifts may fall under any category.

Serials Gov Docs Electronic Resources Nonprint Resources Print other than Serials and Gov Docs (purchased and gift, other than approval plans) Managerial/Supervisory Roles Special Collections and Maps Approval Plans—includes prompt. cat. Covers every category

Assignment
Sheets from the brainstorming session will remain posted in the TSD conference room. Group members should visit the conference room to do the following:

• Use the number of category to indicate where each activity falls
• Talk with friends and colleagues
• Write questions on the paper assigned for questions
• Write additional ideas on new sheets of paper
• Complete assignment of categories by Friday, May 5, 5:00 p.m.

The combined TSSAC/TSD program review committee will meet again on Monday, May 8 from 11:00 to 12:00. We will try to finalize the categorization of activities. The next step will be to assign groups to discuss the categories. Every TSD staff member will work with at least one group.

C. Questions and Additional Ideas:
NOTE: The following questions and additional ideas were put in by staff after the first joint TSD Council/TSSAC meeting.

Questions:

• TS liaisons to subject teams- address in "Direct service to users" or add own element?
• Maybe we need to rethink our categories…these don’t seem very helpful
• How about a category on External Relations to include liaison work & direct support to users & other PS work? Maybe even publications (print/Web)
• Wouldn’t it be more through to compile a division-wide list of all the staff activities, rather than relying on our (somewhat) limited experiences and memories? In other words, was the whole TSD staff informed they could come in and contribute to this?
• Review CQI team work already done (CQI document which exists) - for example: Binding, Serials, Work Culture, etc. (Instead of reinventing the wheel!)

Additional Ideas:

• New LIMS
• OCLC - MARCIVE - providers of services keeping up with documentation
• Need training in bibliographic structure - nobody one can find titles in Victor, OCLC, cataloging queues, etc. because they don’t know cataloging definitions & resulting bib structure
• RE: Direct support of users - this is a "flow" of its own. Issue of how much is done and by which staff should be its own Key Category
• another activity = CJK processing - from Acquisitions to shelf
• authority control – how all-inclusive should it be?
• subscription to serv lists – share other ideas and experiences
• writing loader specs
• need real teams – not hierarchical committtees
• management who make technical decisions without full knowledge
• adds processing – mono & serial – need training & documentaion
• review statistics keeping
• other non-Roman language materials
• another activity: scores and music sound recordings

Last modified: August 20, 2004

© 2000 University of Maryland Libraries