April 15, 2011 - MnPALS Circulation and Interlibrary Loan Workday

Had a productive joint Circulation and Interlibrary Loan workday! I participated in the Opening session topic discussing how we serve our online and distance students. There were also presenters from Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU), Minnesota State University, Mankato (MSUM), and Northland Community College. I think an entire day could have been spent on this topic!
The first breakout session I attended was Circulation Reports and How We Use Them - this was a good refresher of available reports and it was nice to hear how other libraries use the data. Breakout #2 was about How Lost Items are Handled in Circulation. As a result of this session, I will be requesting some table changes in order to clean-up our lost items replacement fees in circulation. This session also reminded me to look at Patron Scrubbing practices. The final Breakout of the day was Keeping your Circulation Tables up to Date - again this was a good refresher about which tables need to be updated and when to make those changes. I've already been able to make a few changes in the tables with information I learned at the workday!

18th Annual Minitex Interlibrary Loan Conference - May 19, 2009

I enjoyed attending my first ILL conference. Marshall Breedings' morning presentation (Next Generation Library Automation and Its Implications for Resource Sharing) was thought-provoking. As he described it, this is his 'niche.' His Library Technology Guides will be worthwhile to keep tabs on: http://librarytechnology.org/. He is very involved in the OLE project which we also have heard about at previous MnPALS meetings.

During the MINITEX Update, Bill DeJohn mentioned a resource for licensing and e-journals: http://librarycopyright.net/ . I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but this topic is of interest to me so I anticipate I will explore it a bit more in the future.

The afternoon session was more hands-on and was led by Ray Wilson: Seven Quality Improvement Tools for your Workplace. The tools he reviewed were * Agenda * Affinity Diagram * Check Sheet * Operational Definition * Pareto Chart * Cause & Effect (Fishbone) * Cause Analysis * Force Field * Multivoting * Plus/Delta. I had heard of many of these before, but it's always good to have a refresher and to find ways to immediately implement some of them.