Access Services Round Table

On Friday September 7th Alliance staff and representatives from 9 of the Alliance libraries participated in the first of a series of topical discussions.  This discussion was centered on issues Access Services.  Some of the topics included user trends in reference and relationship to circulation, circulation staff training, gaining user feedback through surveys, scanning and paging services, fines, the decline of circulation statistics and increase in usage of e-resources.

The round tables were created in response to an idea from Member Council to create one time informal gatherings where library staff could share among colleagues ideas on a particular topic.


Access ServicesRoundTable Meeting (Denver, 9.7.07)

 
Participants:

 Anderson, Patricia: panderse@mines.edu - Head of Circulation(Colorado School of Mines): responsible for circulation and interlibrary loan

Austin, Brice: Brice.Austin@COLORADO.EDU (University of Coloradoat Boulder): responsible for circulation, interlibrary loan, reserves, media,storage

Charnes, Alan:  alan@coalliance.org - Executive Director(Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries)

Dunn, Lisa: ldunn@mines.edu - Head of Reference (Colorado Schoolof Mines): responsible for reference, marketing, public outreach and permanentmember of sign committee

Lister, Lisa: LLister@ColoradoCollege.edu - (Colorado College):responsible for reference, circulation and reserves

Martinez, Christina: cmartine@uccs.edu - Interim Dean and Head of User Services (Universityof Colorado at Colorado Springs): responsible for reference, interlibrary loan,circulation and interim dean; just hired Access Services head

Nelson, Rose: rose@coalliance.org - Systems Librarian (Colorado Alliance of ResearchLibraries): responsible for Prospector, Gold Rush and committees

Rabb, Oscar: Oscar.Rabb@ColoState.EDU, Head, Access Services(Colorado State University):  responsiblefor circulation, reserves, and stacks maintenance

Sewell, Bethany: bethany.sewell@u.edu - Access Services Librarian(University of Denver):  responsible forcirculation, reserve, interlibrary loan and stacks maintenance

Van Arsdale, Bill: arsdale@uwyo.edu - Head, Access Services(University of Wyoming):  responsiblefor  circulation, audiovisual,interlibrary loan, stacks maintenance and soon storage

Vaughn, Sara - sarah.vaughn@unco.edu - (University of NorthernColorado): Manager of Access Services including circulation, interlibrary loan,reserves, Prospector and chair of Prospector Document Delivery Committee

 

Introduction 

 

Member Council wanted informal sharing among access servicesfolk.  There was no agenda except a listof issues emailed in before the meeting.

 

Issues for Discussion

 

1.  User trends in reference and relationship tocirculation:  most libraries experiencinga decline in reference statistics, other tasks are taking their place likeinstruction or consultations

  • CSM: seeing decline, reference staff moving toother responsibilities and is wondering about effect of non-human contacts
  • UNC: seeing same at UNC; other things arebecoming more intrusive 
  • CC: block plan requires intensive referenceservices; residential campus, ref stats not gone down, Dean looked at combineddesk and find them chaotic, starting to use e-ref sources, still use refcollection; becoming more and more popular, gate stats up, new services;reference stable; hours 8-10 (9 staff)
  • UCCS: gate statistics healthy, ref statisticsgoing down, resistance to staffing desk; virtual reference
  • UCB: IM getting fair amount of traffic and AskColorado;hard to do virtual reference in academic setting because it is hard to do theinstruction; asked about BI, doesn't do IM; referral system (merged referencewith computer help desk--removed librarians from service point, use students,then in-depth reference question to reference libn, for a year, some resistance
  • DPL: used to have roving reference person
  • DU: information question online at circulationdesk; got far more than reference desk; circulation desk are really informationdesk
  • UNC: circulation handle some questions afterthey are gone; more training; no IM, AskColorado
  • UW: reference statistics down but circulation ison rise; cross-training between circulation and reference staff

 

2.  Circulation Staff training:  most libraries are looking for ideas toimprove training, particularly of student assistants; side issues on levels ofstudent assistants, emergencies and problems with locking down computers (mostrequire logons except for a limited number of public machines)

 

CC: circ students meet once a month; has studentsupervisors; security is terrible, don't come, hire private security 8-2 am;have to show cards; lock down computers; maybe inevitable; have to have postedpolicy

Alan: wondered about establishing best practices

  • DU: all staff in one area, looked at jobs, madetiers of questions; 1st all students; all staff have to work circ desk; oncallstaff tier 2; go to expert for tier 3; most abusive patrons come in evenings
  • UCCS: lots of comments in LibQual about customerservice; wonders about sequencing; call security but they are slow
  • UNC: one big training session at start ofsemester, decided to scale back and focus on customer service, roleplaying,don't have knoweldge about reference interview to effectively answer questions;have staff on hand at all hours; campus has paid student security program buthaving problems getting employees; have large unsupervised areas and hopeproblems don't happen
  • CSU: emergency response training is provided;have students in campus police; do sweeps at building
  • UW: have multiple levels of student employees,sometimes responsible for building without staff

 

3. User feedback onaccess services:  most common is LibQual,other methods used or being considered

  • big survey, such as LibQual; UCB followed upwith focus groups enticed by food ; did anything happen as result of surveys:UCB responded to LibQual comments, changed turnaround to Pascal, extendedhours; modeled after UWashington; UNC tries to respond, contradictory response,strange coincidences; UCCS changed hours, lot of noise complaints; cell phonepolicy; CC handed out cards; UW changed hours, focused on user space; quietstudy floors--general consensus that analysis of comments often better than otherresults, but may be contradictory
  • secret shopper?
  • small surveys, voluntary didn't get much;incentives with surveys, large chocolate bars, immediate; UW interested butdoesn't want sole responsibility
  • after use survey; UW
  • web survey, link on receipt to website
  • graffiti board; turns into comments (some had tobe deleted)
  • record all questions some years ago at CSM withtear off slip; kept it up for 3 weeks; recording reference at desk; CCreference blog recording question; Williams College free refblog--statistics,modifiable, transfer to IT
  • record quests at circulation desk:  DU
  • focus groups? UCB followup on LibQual; managed by outreach office with pizza; UCCS putsomething on homepage (self-selected), facilitated
  • UNC symposium focused on administrators andfaculty; broke into focus groups; half-day event, put up web page with feedback

 

4.  More services: 

Paging for patrons: CSU keeps paging separatethrough ILLiad and OPAC, individual departments pull, local paging three timesa day; UW started with storage facility, to be expanded as part of Request Itservice

Scanning articles for patrons:  UW started with storage facility, using asinitial offering of expanded ILL service called Request It

 

5. Fines:  Most have eliminated fines or are thinkingabout it--retain some for holds and recalls

  • UCB did away with fines, money dropping tworetirees, $10 billing fees; reserves still have fines but as physical reserved have dropped to almostnothing; give patrons 90 days; give them six notices--blocked on fifth notice
  • CC dropped fines; fines don't go to institution;faculty is main problem, don't charge
  • UNC lots of complaints
  • CSU for replacement and recall; looking into IIIpenalty points (set level where you limit privileges)
  • CSM charges departments (dept. heads) to getfaculty to pay; block patrons when things go overdue; believe it if they claimreturn
  • UW can't charge fines so deals with lost bookand billing fees


6.  Circulation statistics: generally librariesseeing decline; got into side issue of public scanners (there are a few thatprovide such services)

  • CUB is going down, being replaced by electronicuse; patrons hated Pascal, now scanning probably start doing it for on-campusresources soon
  • DU all but faculty; photocopier use down;reserve numbers down; ILL and Prospector up; 

 

7.  Specific institutional questions for thegroup:

DU asked about Pascal delivery, notice comesbefore items; recommended to change settings

UW asked about Prospector problems w/cancellations -- largely a problem from DPL; sometimes items are checked out sorecords arrive without barcode; Alliance and other consortia going to talk toIII about DCB about its price

 

8.  Do we do it again:  all library participants saw the meeting asuseful for several reasons:  to shareideas, meet each other so we can contact later; thought both specific topicsessions and occasional general session would be useful.  Recommended setting up session on stafftraining though attendees might change [I wondered on the trip home if we wouldtrying to get institutional representatives only or would want to involve unitmanagers as well].  A wiki might beuseful to share training materials and ideas.

 

There was a recommendationto post minutes and contact information.

 

Alan will report back toMember Council that we had a useful meeting because of information sharing andnetworking. Another meeting with possibly different constituency on trainingwas seen as useful.  Participants weretold to advance the cause by telling dean about useful nature of meeting.

 

minutes by Bill VanArsdale 9.8.07            

 

 

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