Library Managers Meeting has now approved a significant rewrite of our Interloans Services SOP – this replaces three Interloans related SOPs. This SOP also provides guidelines where questions have arisen or there has been a lack of clarity including:
– Services provided to Retired Staff
– Interloans and the needs of undergraduate students
– Library Support Services expectations about how users place Interloan requests
– Services provided to authorized distance students
– The fact Library Support Services may make decisions (based on cost or expediency) to just purchase materials needed instead
– The Institutional Repository is the preferred method for supply of UC theses via Interloan
Comments and feedback are always welcome. Tim Stedman

Following the recommendations from the project group reviewing our methods for new title lists, Library Support Services will now cease to send out “Items received by the Library” emails to LLOs when books they have ordered arrive. The LLOs have been notified about this change. New titles lists will be made available through the appropriate subject guide. This method provides access to the most relevant new material both print and electronic. Tim Stedman

The Electronic Resources Management Standard Operating Procedure has now been re-written to reflect changes to roles and responsibilities since this document was produced in 2008. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the changes in this SOP. This revised SOP has now been approved by the Library Managers Meeting. Tim Stedman

Recently I was asked if we could have a list of patron-driven titles we have access to via EBL. (I recall the interest for this was around making possible outright purchasing decisions). I have received a list from EBL following on from the profile changes we made recently. I suggest the most useful column to sort by is the “LCC column” (Column K), or you could try “Category” (Column O) both of which provide options for a crude subject sort. There are two worksheets, one for the patron-driven titles and the other for owned titles. Tim Stedman

Following discussions during the year and as part of the goal within the LSS operational plan to even out workloads the following changes have now taken place. There are now two Information Resource Coordinators, Peter Hosking and Wendy Wu. Where possible the position descriptions of Peter and Wendy now use the same wording, however each retains a speciality. In Peter’s case E-subscriptions and in Wendy’s Asian languages. Wendy has now moved to the Resource Acquisition team. As Wendy is trained up by Peter she will take a more active role in continuing resources. Wendy will continue to work with monograph purchasing including e-books.

Thank you to both Wendy and Peter for their willingness in agreeing to these changes, particularly Wendy in moving teams to support the changing nature of Library Support Services work.

Anne, Tim and Joan

In April Library Support Services and Liaison Librarians reviewed our EBL e-book short term loan purchases during March 2013. On the whole we were reasonably happy with what was being used but we wanted to identify purchases we thought were irrelevant, what we considered to be suitable for short-term loans and what were suitable for outright purchase. One of the imperatives for this review is that we have an immediate need to significantly reduce the size of our patron-driven discovery profile with EBL in regard to non-owned content (opex). If we were to continue at the current rate of spending, the e-book loan book budget (opex) would run out well before the end of the year. The changes agreed were to reduce the EBL profile as follows:

– Excluding content already well-represented in the print – History, Language, Literature, Linguistics, Mathematics, Religion
– Shortening the preserve time of titles previously used from 12 months to 6 months
– Limiting the publication date to 2011 and onwards
– Excluding publishers which duplicated e-book content available elsewhere (e.g. CRC Press)
– Excluding publishers which appeared to be profiling “lightweight” material

The effect of these changes will be to reduce the number of EBL patron-driven discovery records in our catalogue from approximately 80,000 records to 30,000 records. We are working on these changes with EBL now and hope to have this completed before next week. If it turns out we have made a mistake and inadvertently removed particular titles in demand (e.g. being used for assignments or courses now) we can put individual titles back into the profile if needed. Hopefully we have bought these titles (for outright purchase – capex) already.

Tim Stedman

Liaison Librarians may be interested to know about two new reports linked from the Liaison Librarians report page on the Camelot wiki. These include Target report for Liaison Librarians and Budget Summary Report for Liaison Librarians. Here you will be able to see the latest target figures and who will be sent the emails at the start of every month. The budget summary report also shows the open budgets for the current year, how much has been allocated and spent, and how much is available. Please report any problems to Library Support Services. Tim Stedman

Access to this corridor is temporarily closed off until the wall panels have been checked. Please go the long way around by using the corridor that goes past Finance/HR/Learning Resources Administration under further notice. The Totara meeting room is also affected as the wall panels in this room also need to be checked.

Tim Stedman

The representative from Cengage visited today and this Excel sheet may be useful / of interest to Liaison Librarians for book selection. Tim Stedman

Includes some predictions for 2014 prices – The Winds of Change/Periodicals Price Survey 2013 by Stephen Bosch & Kittie Henderson