Technical Services Committee – June 22, 2023

Attendance: Tammie Busch (co-chair) (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville), Susan Howell (co-chair) (Southern Illinois University Carbondale), Jodi Craiglow (Trinity International University), Brent Eckert (Rock Valley College), Lauren Noel (Columbia College Chicago), Robin Mize (University of Illinois Springfield)

Members Absent:  George Gottschalk (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Renata Schneider (DePaul University), Jackie Zook (Northeastern Illinois University) 

CARLI Staff Attending: Martin Kong, Jen Masciadrelli, Adrienne Radzvickas, Ted Schwitzner

Minutes Taker: Lauren Noel

Announcements

CARLI Reports & Announcements

Jenn reported that CARLI is in the homestretch of integrating new libraries into ALMA; there is still work to be done but are all ‘live locally.’  While it’s been rocky at times, Jenn said everyone is happy about the end result.  The libraries that have been added are the following: St. Johns College of Nursing, Illinois College of Optometry and UIC Law (which merged with UIC – the law library had previously been a stand-alone, Sierra, but is now integrated into UIC’s existing ALMA).  The next group to be added will include 5 institutions, which will be the bulk of the new libraries. Work on those will start in late summer/early fall and will go live by the end of next June.  Those libraries include City Colleges of Chicago (7 institutions, but 1 ALMA instance), Elgin Community College, College of Lake County, Prairie State College, & Chicago Theological Seminary.  The Chicago History Museum will also be added, but not until 2026 due to an existing contractual agreement with their current vendor.

Ted reported on good news from the CARLI Board: the CARLI Governance Board has approved the updated Cooperative Cataloging Policies for I-Share document on June 16th.  Edits have just been finished so the document is now live on the webpage.  The email that Ted sent us is a draft that they would like to post on the newsletter and also send out as an announcement to member libraries. Ted mentioned that they are including back references to the document for people who would like to look at what came before.  Ted also mentioned how pleased they are that the document was approved.  Jenn also commented that it was one of those ‘late in the day’ situations where there wasn’t any discussion, so those board members that did read it, didn’t have any questions about it and trusted the committee to have done due diligence.  Ted thanked the TS committee for making this happen.  Jenn also mentioned that the chair-elect of the board asked Jenn to convey his thanks to the TS committee for all its hard work.  Jenn had written a summary of what the document was about for the non-catalogers on the board (which was probably most of them)

Committee Member Announcements

None reported

Discussion

Continuing Business

1.  Review and approve May minutes
   Susan asked if there were any suggested edits. Tammie mentioned that all the content was there, but that the formatting needed some editing.  Susan volunteered to clean up the formatting issues.  Otherwise, the content is fine, and the minutes were approved.
2. Annual Projects
   
   1. Planning for the 2023-2024 TS Committee
      Susan asked if anyone wanted to make any recommendations to the next committee.  Jodi asked that, given that we now have policies in place, would a good next step be to start working on how to implement these new policies.  Susan agreed.  Susan would also like to see the committee move forward with cleanup projects, updating the database maintenance document and general suggested priorities.  Brent mentioned that some of these ideas were discussed in last month’s meeting.  He also said that he’d like to see authority control addressed and that it seems there really isn’t a clear procedure for authority control or at least Ex Libras doesn’t seem to work that way it should in this regard. 
   2. Discuss scheduling first full TSC meeting
      Jenn mentioned that because the All-Committees meeting is scheduled for mid-July, it makes sense for the TSC group to be scheduled after that.  Once Jenn has the email list re-populated (with the new members), she will send a poll for dates after the all-committees meeting.   She’ll also send a ‘welcome to the committee’ email after the 1st of July.  The new TSC members are Ellen Corrigan (Eastern Illinois University), Stephanie Fletcher (Illinois Institute of Technology) and Gail Heideman (Knox College).  Jenn also acknowledged Brent, Renata and Robin who are all rolling off the committee and thanked them for all their hard work and contributions to the committee.

New Business

1. Select Chair or Co-Chairs for 2023-2024
   Susan asked if anyone was interested in the job.  There were no takers, but Ted also pointed out that two continuing members are absent.  Tammie and Susan stated that they are both willing to continue on as co-chairs.  Jenn will send out a survey asking members to vote either to retain Tammie and Susan or vote for someone else.  It was agreed that as long as the votes are in before the all-committees meeting on July 18th, there shouldn’t be any issues.
2. All-Committees meeting is scheduled for July 18th.
3. Are there any topics the committee would like to see for the upcoming Tech Services Q & A sessions?

   Susan asked for ideas and if there were any volunteers to present at these upcoming Q & As. Ted mentioned that there were a few suggestions after some of the acquisitions training sessions this past year.  Some of the suggested topics included: binding functionality, how to use acquisitions without invoicing, Amazon workflows, purchase requests (Knox College has presented about this, but it could be expanded), renewing (serials or streaming video, continuing resources), claiming & how claims work and how they affect rollover, so general claiming practices, and probably lots of fun cataloging issues to cover as well.

   Brent mentioned that a Q & A about prediction patterns would be helpful – his library is one of the few that still works with print periodicals.

   Ted suggested that surveys about possible topics would be helpful in cases where topics might warrant a focused workshop rather than a Q & A session that would not be helpful to all.

   Tammie is interested in hearing from our new members and asks that we continue this discussion into our next meeting with our new members.

   Jenn elaborated on what some of the new libraries might bring to these topics.  She especially emphasized how the stand-alone libraries may have unique perspectives, in some cases there is only one librarian on staff.  Tammie would like to know how people get by day to day when one can’t possibly do everything.  The topic of ‘how do we define a small library?” came up.  Ted mentioned that there are libraries in the consortium who call themselves ‘small’, but are in fact staffed with quite a few people and are probably only comparing themselves to U of I.  Jenn mentioned that in some ways we are all small in that everyone is working with not enough people (and not necessarily enough support) for the work at hand. 

Other Business

Tasks assigned – Jenn will be sending out a survey monkey to decide on chair/co-chair assignments and will also send a doodle poll for the date of our next meeting.

Meeting was adjourned at 10:05

Submitted by Lauren Noel