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October 30, 2002

Minutes

Members Present:   Helen Armstrong, Rich Bennett, Gary Cornwell, Robena Cornwell, Lori Driscoll, Carol Drum, Lei Lani Freund, David Fuller, Ann Lindell, Jim Liversidge, Iona Malanchuk, Barbara Oliver, Patrick Reakes, Jana Ronan, Colleen Seale, Jan Swanbeck, Carol Turner

Members Absent:  Richard Phillips, Alice Primack, Robert Singerman

  1. Discussion of Copy Service with Barbara Oliver
    • Barbara has received the first income statement and we are where we should be as far as income.
    • The machine in Rare Books still has some problems that are being worked on.
    • From August 26th – September 26th more combined copies were made than any other September.
    • Barbara is aware that there have been problems at the desk. Most of the complaining is from graduate students. They have requested discounts. This is not currently allowed because the University is under federal cost accounting. This states that anything that is sold to the federal government must get the lowest price available. The way that is controlled at the University is that all vending at UF is one price and the copy services are considered vending. Student Government is looking to see if they can do something to help the graduate students. They are thinking about opening up a program where grad students can get a card with 100 exposures and only pay half and student government pays the rest. Counsel has not agreed to this. We would not sell those cards.
    • The Med Center has experienced problems with purchasing copy cards, as a lot of them do not have state money. Barbara Oliver created a deposit account, which will enable them to use enrichment money to purchase copy cards.
    • The biggest complaints in MSL are from patrons that do not have change.
    • Barbara is open to suggestions for improving on the signs.
    • Helen Jane Armstrong reported patrons not being able to use coins in the machines has been a public relations problem in Maps. Consultants and state agencies provide 1/3 of the use for Map’s machine and they do not like having to purchase a copy card in order to copy. Barbara explained Xerox was losing $100,000 a year. Under the new contract, the Library stands pays Xerox each month for providing a service. If expenses are greater than income, the library will take the loss – not Xerox. We did away with the coin feature on the copy machine for two reasons. One, collecting coins at seven different locations was found to be a potential safety problem for the service staff as it is heavy and bulky and difficult to conceal. Secondly, local banks charge about $400.00 a month to count coins (which must be done to deposit them). Between the safety issues, the Universities drive for a “cashless” society, and the additional cost involved with coins, we decided to remove this feature.
    • The colored copier MSL was removed because it was not paying for itself. In order to make it pay for itself we would have had to charge $3.00 per exposure.
    • The printer in Maps is complicated to use. Barbara will discuss this with Bill Covey.
    • Xerox’s contractual obligations to exchange copy cards ended September 30th. Any cards exchanged at this point will come out of the Libraries budget therefore cards can no longer be exchanged. The only exception to this will be if the original card was purchased using a PO. If individuals from the Health Center request a card exchange they should be sent to Barbara.
    • The Tech Coordinators feel that overall reliability is much better with the new service. They are not receiving as many complaints. There have been small problems with default setting and patrons being able to change paper size settings. The default is now 81/2 x 11. There have also been some software problems, however the next upgrade to software should solve these problems. They are still trying to figure out how to purge jobs.
    • Signs will be framed in about another month. Barbara is still getting comments about the language on the signs. Carol Turner asked Barbara to send PSC the language on the signs.
    • Concern was noted that 1/3 – 1/2 of patron interactions at the desk are about Xeroxing and for a percentage of interactions we are giving negative answers which does not fit into five star service.

  2. Public Services Statistics Sampling – Comment, Questions, Problems
    • Sampling is going well. Carol Turner distributed an email with how to define what a reference question is. Staff should count transactions.
    • Statistics will be gathered via sampling for the remainder of this year. At years end sampling method will be compared to the full count method.
    • Carol Turner will check if reference and directional questions are divided for ARL statistics. (NOTE: We report only the reference questions, so it is important that we continue to separate them. CT)

  3. Aleph Activities Update – Rich Bennett
    • Rich Bennett will try to put up a web update and send information out to staff by the beginning of next week.
    • The 2nd subset is currently being reviewed. It included some problem fixes reported from the first subset and some patron data with circulation data migrated over. The data is mapping nicely from Notis fields to Aleph fields.
    • The full load for all data is expected to occur at the end of December when the production server is up. The full load could take four weeks. It should be indicative of how long implementation will take.
    • A 3rd subset will be done due to a delay in doing the full load. This will include some acquisitions and authority information that was not in subset 2.
    • Train the trainer sessions will be January. ExLibris will train 10 individuals from each department. Those individuals will then train other staff.
    • The Indexing Taskforce that Denise Bennett is co-chair for has submitted a report and it has been accepted. It still requires a little tweaking. There are detailed charts that show marked tags and how they will be indexed. It appears that everything we were used to doing the Notis environment will be able to be done.
    • The OPAC Taskforce that Rich Bennett is co-chair for has submitted a draft report to members. On Friday this report will go to the Aleph Implementation Committee. Rich hopes the report will be accepted shortly after that and we can start getting people from various state university involved in evaluating and designing the OPAC.
    • Rich Bennett distributed a handout demonstrating the types of decisions about logical bases that can be made in Aleph. He would like a committee to start thinking about logical bases and what they should be. Carol Turner asked Rich to distribute examples of other institution’s logical base
    • Carol Turner suggested a meeting be scheduled at a future date for further discussion.

  4. Discussion Of Suggestions To Put ILLiad On Top Library Web Page – Is This A Good Idea? Is it needed? What Might Move To Provide Space For It?
    • A suggestion was put in the suggestion box to make ILLiad more prominent on the Library home page. Rich suggested that ILLiad could possibly replace “Ask a Reference Question” since there is a place for RefeXpress on the homepage.
    • Department chairs will get feedback from staff before any changes are made.

  5. PSITC Update – LeiLani Freund
    • LeiLani will disseminate a summary of what equipment is available in the Library for scanning. She reminded everyone that the Circa labs have these capabilities.
    • The committee has been discussing alternatives for students viewing web classes. Currently they are viewing these types of classes on expensive, multi media workstations.
    • The committee has been discussing low cost scanning.

  6. One City, One Story – Colleen Seale
    • Carol Turner, Alice Primack, and Colleen Seale are the liaisons for the One City, One Story. The 1st meeting was Monday night and the theme will be Romeo and Juliet. There will be a play at the hippodrome, readings, web pages, bookmarks, articles in the newspaper, banners, etc. The Library will be doing displays.
    • Santa Fe Community College will have a Shakespeare Festival in February.
    • Ideas are welcome.

  7. Reports and Announcements
    • Robena Cornwell reported that the hologram on the new UF ID interferes with the bar code reader in Music. Lori Driscoll noted it could also be the stop bar at the end. She will check into this.
    • Carol went to the Provost breakfast where TEAMS was discussed. There will be several workshops hosted by University Personnel detailing TEAMS. A&P status employees will switch to TEAMS. USPS status employees will have an option of switching or remaining USPS. IT positions are being restructured. The Provost said departments should start reviewing classifications. The Provost group will send out guidelines for the four days at Christmas. The intent is not to shut down the University but to create a family friendly work environment. The Assistant In status is not being changed at this point. However, since IT positions are being studied and a lot of Assistant Ins are IT, it may be possible that status could change in the future. The Graham Amendment will not have an effect on TEAMS.
    • The MSL training room is moving along. The walls have been painted and the carpets are being steam cleaned. The computers have arrived. The room still needs wiring and furniture.
    • Maps is doing a homecoming display the whole month of November with the theme “Home is were the Swamp Is.” It will be located in the MSL display area.
    • Iona Malanchuk asked if anyone promotes the Librarian profession during BI classes. She has been discussing the profession at the end of her BI classes. She has also been meeting with the UF Minority Education Students Guild. She is helping them develop a program with 25 minority volunteers who will go out in the community to help kids read. When she was talking about the books they should be using she started to invasive the careers fields that involve books. She encouraged the students to notice the variety of things that Librarians do. Carol Turner thinks things have been done at career fairs.

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