Circulation Services Committee
Minutes of the meeting of November 21st, 2007
Present: Bonnie Horne (Gerstein), Margot Froud (Dentistry),
Patricia LaCivita (Scarborough), Elizabeth O’Brien
(Scarborough), Neil Allen, Committee Chair (Engineering &
Computer Science), Tom Chan (ITS), Mary Markou
(Architecture), Jan MacLean (Music), Lari Langford (Access &
Information Robarts), Stephanie Abba (Regis), Anne Rebello
(SMC), Terry Correia (Access & Information Robarts), Kathleen
Gibson (Knox), Joy Shanfield (Toronto Rehab, for Consortium)
Regrets: Erin Anderson (Trinity), Dorota Swieton (UTM), Bev
Branton (E.J.Pratt, Victoria), Renata Holder (Gerstein)
1. Minutes of the meeting of October 17th, 2007
There were no corrections to the minutes.
2. Business arising
i)
ii)
Lari pointed out that two versions of the schedule for
Christmas Due Dates (no. 3, October minutes) were
produced (by Terry Correia and ‘a group of libraries’),
and it took a lot of work for Yvonne to implement both.
This should not be necessary, and next year only the
one schedule (Correia’s) will be used.
All possible fixes have been tried in regard to the STL
loan period problems (no. 4, October minutes). If one
of five STLs is overdue, the account is blocked. It is
possible to raise the threshold for this. Thomas expects
version 3.1 in 3 months, and for now he has gone back
to the old policy.
3. Loan period for faculty at Downsview
Lari provided information about loan periods for Downsview
materials. The faculty loan period now matches Robarts, 6
months with 1 renewal. For now, no changes have been made
to the loan periods for other borrower groups (e.g., undergrads,
graduates, and staff).
4. New location codes for material being processed for
Downsview
Criteria will be determined for selecting new materials for
Downsview. Other material located there are low use materials
and duplicate copies that have been in collections for a while.
Effective a week ago Monday, the practice of shadowing records
until materials reach the Downview shelves has been
discontinued. New loan codes were developed to account for
them during the period that they are being processed (there are
approximately 100 skids of materials, dated by month, and
awaiting processing). This gets around the problem of seeing
holdings inconsistently, which can lead to purchasing what is
already owned.
In the OPAC, patron sees ‘Being transferred to Downsview; item
may be requested in 6 to 10 weeks.’ There is no record of the
start date of this time period. With summer staffing processing
took 6 weeks; in winter months, it may well take up to 10 weeks.
Another category is used for fast tracked materials, UTLD,
Cataloguing for Downsview. The patron sees ‘Being sent to
Downsview; available for request in 2 weeks.’ These materials
are moved ahead in the queue.
Locations ‘Remote1’ to ‘Remote13’ have been created for each of
the libraries of origin sending materials to Downsview. The
libraries can use the codes to add these materials to their total
materials count. Lari will send the Locations list to the
Committee.
Robarts is running ILL (handling VDX requests) for Downsview
materials.
How serials at Downsview display is an issue. The holdings
display can be really long, may cut off at a point, and patron has
to look at the whole screen. A message needs to be added in
field 862 to remind viewer to look at the entire screen. A patron
who sees the message ‘Some volumes located at Downsview’ will
not have a way to request them.
5. Renewing over the limit for books sent down from
Downsview
Grads and staff have multiple renewals already; undergrads get
no renewals.
6. Other business
Question arose about students whose ID is letters rather than
numerical. For them, it is still possible to use the last four
letters as the PIN, but they must be entered as Upper Case
letters. The patron can reset the pin at any time.
Question was asked about the difference between Missing and
MissingUTL. Missing is a vendor category that came with the
Sirsi application, and Missing items are automatically shadowed.
MissingUTL was created for use here, and is assigned when the
‘Mark Item Missing’ wizard is used. The same reasoning applies
to Lost and LostUTL, Paid and PaidUTL. Unfortunately, the
vendor categories can’t be removed and always show in the
selection list.
Question: why can’t students place a hold on a specific volume
on their own campus in a multi-library campus situation?
Answer: staff can do it for them in Workflows.
Comment: it was very exciting to learn about the wild card, and
it should be most useful in some types of searches, e.g., patrons,
etc.
Neil reminded Committee about Sirsi’s enhancement forms
schedule (submit by May 12, 2008). He will watch for
suggestions that we might want to vote on.
Question: how to handle e-mails to users that are undeliverable.
Committee members from various libraries had some solutions
to suggest, but most were labour intensive.
Question: can it be assumed that there will be no changes to
fines for 2008? The schedule will be confirmed in January. Work
still has to be done to come up with a new book replacement fee
that covers rising book prices. This will have to go before the
Advisory Board.
There will be no meeting in December unless something urgent
comes up that needs to be discussed, as the customary meeting
room is unavailable throughout the month.
The next meeting of the Circulation Services Committee will take
place in the Alice Moulton Room, Gerstein Science Information
Centre, at 2:15 pm on Wednesday, January 16 (2008).