June 18, 2007
At our meeting on June 5, the Arts & Humanities Division discussed ideas for service transformations in our units. We considered the possibility of centralized serials check-in, which is under consideration in the PSED units. Even though we have flipped many titles to e-only, there are many humanities journals that are still available only in print, and given the number of current journals received in our units (a total of more than 2,000 in the English, Classics, Modern Languages, Architecture and Art, and History, Philosophy and Newspaper libraries), this was not seen as a workable option. Everyone concurred that we spend a lot of time as individual units claiming issues, trying to figure out what went wrong when subscriptions are dropped inadvertently, and dealing with nonpayment problems, and these activities are best done at the point of check-in. Several members of the division expressed interest in having a centralized call slip retrieval service, so that instead of having a staff member in each unit retrieving material to fill call slips, someone working out of central circ could pick up materials to fill call slips (as ILL staff currently do for loans outside of I-Share). However, this would not release more than a portion of one staff member in any of the units. In general there was concern expressed that consolidation of units might result in loss of flexibility in staffing.
Kathleen Kluegel described a proposal that she and John Wagstaff have drafted to transfer theater history collections and services to the Music and Performing Arts Library. They are currently polling the teaching faculty about the proposed change.
Discussion of other proposals in development was deferred until the July meeting.