NJLA Technical Services Section meeting September 22, 2011 Somerset County Library, Bridgewater

Present: Jennifer Baxmeyer, Helen Imre, Bill Schryba, Susan Muntz, Marcia Lubansky (presiding), Adele Barree

Section President Marcia Lubansky called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m. Members introduced themselves around the table.

The minutes of the March 24, 2011 meeting were approved.

Discussion -- What’s new at your library? We shared information about initiatives or changes at our respective libraries.

Somerset County Library System – Adele reported that within the last year and a half, SCLS got a whole new administration with the retirement of both the director (April 2010) and the assistant director (August 2010). SCLS Director Brian Auger came to us from Howard County Library System in Maryland. Assistant Director Keith McCoy was director of the Roselle Free Public Library before joining SCLS. In January 2011, Somerville Public Library joined the system so there are now 9 branches. The library system is in the process of developing a new strategic plan. Plans are underway to change from branch-specific to centralized materials selection. Tech Services is in the process of changing to EDI invoicing.

Princeton University Libraries – Jennifer reported that Princeton Libraries Technical Services is moving off campus to a building across Rt. 1. The move is in the planning stage with a target date of August, 2012. Princeton Libraries is one of the development partners for a new ILS – Alma, by X Libris. More than an ILS, Alma is a Universal Resource Management System, providing a central knowledge base of bibliographic records to which a library need only link their holdings. Alma is also supposed to have a better ERM component. Technical Services is testing the web-based cataloging component and finding it rather clunky.

Franklin Township Public Library – Helen reported that FTL is opening a new branch on the other side of town from the main library, off Rt. 27. The township has the building and about 1/3 of the 10,000 volumes being purchased for the branch have already been ordered, received, cataloged and processed. It is uncertain when the building will be ready to open.

Union County College Library – Bill reported that the library underwent a major reorganization last year which was initiated by the new college president. All reference books were moved to the 2nd floor, and only the librarians and computers remain on the 1st floor. The library no longer has a quiet study area so there have been noise issues. With the departure of the library director, the assistant director became acting director. This has been a positive change; however, the library is down 3 librarians. The Tech Services department has lost 1 staff member. The library is putting more of their materials budget into e-resources. They have subscribed to E-brary Community College and Gale Reference Resources.

Livingston Public Library – Susan reported that the library has gone from three to two reference librarians. They would like to replace the vacant reference position with an employee who has technical knowledge. All the librarians, including Susan, are now working some hours at the reference desk. Her job has changed so that she now supervises collection development instead of circulation. LPL (along with the other BCCLS libraries) is moving from Sirsi to Polaris on 12/12/12. In preparation for the migration to the new system, BCCLS libraries are getting rid of all audiocassettes and videocassettes, so LPL is doing a massive weeding. They are working on expanding their world language collection and have relocated it to the area formerly occupied by the books on cassette. They have a new selector who is building collections in Chinese, Russian, Korean and other languages. LPL is also looking at ways to market their DVD collection by grouping them according to film genre.

Bernards Township Library – Marcia reported that BTL, along with the rest of the MAIN libraries, is going up on Polaris on October 27th. Marcia chairs the MAIN Technical Services and Cataloging Committee and has been responsible for the majority of the data mapping for the migration. They have only had 6 months to plan for this change, which has required a tremendous amount of coordination.

Marcia will be attending the NJLA Conference planning meeting on October 6th at Monroe Twp. Library. The date for the NJLA Conference has not yet been set, but program proposals are due by November 21st. We decided to present a program on some aspect of the use of mobile devices (e-readers and other hand-held devices) to provide access to library services. These are timely and important topics for librarians in all kinds of libraries. Reference was made to some recent conferences devoted to e-resources. “E-book evolution and revolution” was a program track at the Internet Librarian 2011 conference: http://www.infotoday.com/il2011/day.asp?day=Tuesday. The first NJLA-sponsored E-Summit was held on July 14th: http://librarylinknj.org/content/1st-annual-e-summit.

We decided to provide a dual-speaker or panel format with information and discussion on some of the following topics (to be narrowed down by speakers):

 Provision of e-content to patrons who don’t own hand-held devices, including cataloging and circulating e-readers with pre-loaded content sets  E-books and digital rights management  Selection and purchase of e-resources, including the issue of payment by libraries without credit cards  How to work with the various vendors DRMs (Digital Rights Management programs)  The effects of open access on the publishing industry

Jennifer is willing to be one of the speakers. Adele offered to approach Rich Loomis, SCLS Electronic Services Librarian to speak, as well. (Note: Rich is willing to present, but cannot commit to participation until the date of the conference is known.)

Bob Egan, who was unable to attend this meeting, sent his program suggestions, concerning certain trends affecting library collection development:

 A program or panel discussion on Current Issues, Trends and Problems in Collection Development  A significant number of disturbing developments center on the current popularity of e- books. Recently RVCC has purchased large blocks of titles from a variety of vendors. These blocks contain many books that do not fit into our collection development policy and we would not have purchased them separately. Here we have lost control of the selection process. Also, sometimes a vendor will drop a title, for a variety of reasons. We then have to go in and discard them from our ILS.  Some of the e-books omit photographs and other illustrations that are included in the print version due to copyright restrictions.  How do you proceed in discarding e-books? Does it ever make sense to discard a book that takes up no room on your shelf?  It seems that many MARC records for e-books are overwriting records for print editions in the catalog because they have ISBN data in the wrong subfield.  These e-books require the cataloger to learn a whole new set of skills, such as working with FTP, MarcEdit, and load profiles. Many small libraries just do not have staff with those skills.  Another collection development involves Patron-Driven Acquisitions where patrons select the titles to be purchased. Is that a problem?

We will plan our Spring Workshop after we have our Conference program in place.

Marcia reported that NJLA membership is down, so we are all charged with promoting membership. One of the ways we might be able to do this is to plan meetings that would draw more attendees. Marcia presented the idea of inviting a speaker to give a short (1/2 – 1 hour) presentation on a particular topic for part of the meeting. One possible topic could be how libraries organize their collections, including reclassification projects aimed at better marketing of collections. Marcia will contact Rhonda Marker for other ideas for topics and speakers.

Field trips draw a large attendance. It might be interesting to have a field trip to a publisher. Susan and Bill will investigate the possibility of a visit to Princeton University Press.

Our next meeting was rescheduled from Wednesday, October 19th to Thursday, November 10th. We will meet in the Administrative Conference Room at the SCLS Bridgewater Branch. Coffee and tea will be available at 9:30; the meeting will begin at 10:00 a.m.

Respectfully Submitted, Adele Barree November 3, 2011