Service Quality Improvement Council

August 9, 2000

Agenda

1. Begin the assessment of the SQIC: When SQIC began, the Council was appointed for a one-year term (more or less), and the various committees were also charged for a one-year term. Now is the time to assess what SQIC has accomplished, what it does well, what its membership should be, etc. Please come prepared to contribute to a discussion of the questions: "If we were required to do an annual report of SQIC, what would we report?"; "What are the most important issues relating to the quality of our services to our patrons that we need to address in the coming year?" After the discussion, we will review a proposed outline for how the assessment will be carried out over the coming months.

Minutes

Present: Sue Crockford-Peters, Suzanne Eggleston, Holly Grossetta Nardini, Emily Horning, Danuta Nitecki, Rich Richie, Paul Stuehrenberg (chair)

Absent: Katie Bauer, Kenny Marone, Fred Martz, Sandy Peterson, Andy Shimp, Martha Smalley, Joan Swanekamp

I. Paul Stuehrenberg welcomed Holly Grossetta Nardini, the Service Quality Support Director and newly added ex officio member of SQIC, to the Council.

It was decided to delay discussion of announcements and questions until the end of the meeting.

II. SQIC Assessment. Paul asked that Council members comment on the question of SQIC's future agendas and the membership of both the Council and its subgroups. He requested members to consider which of the Council's achievements should be noted in an Annual Report of its undertakings, and to evaluate which elements of the Council format should be continued and which should be changed. Danuta Nitecki added that consideration of SQIC's work over the past year should be based on concrete examples of the impact that it has had on library service. Suggestions for inclusion in the Annual Report were made.

• Sue Crockford-Peters noted that the terminology of "service quality" is now popularly used by library staff. SQIC should be credited with helping to bring about a cultural change in staff perceptions of their work.

• Rich Richie observed that SQIC had brought together public services staff as a unique entity within the library system, and provided a forum for discussion of the topic of public services.

• The Assessment Group's investigation of the process of reference statistics collection was mentioned.

• The policy changes affected by the work of the Task Force on Services for Persons with Disabilities was noted.

• Policies ironed out by WAG and passed by the Library Management Council, e.g., policy governing research workstations, were acknowledged.

• The Instruction Task Force was commended for giving direction to the future of library instruction and for creating the basis for assessing the success of the program.

• Emily Horning noted the work of the Staffing Issues Group, which includes the "problem patrons" policy (pending), the Extreme Weather policy (passed LMC), and the Staff Recognition program (passed LMC).

• Sue Crockford-Peters mentioned the Council's efforts to address the issue of Social Security number confidentiality on library printouts.

• The Reference Services Group's work to develop a library-wide reference program Web page was noted.

• SQIC worked to introduce outside speakers on the topic of service quality to staff (e.g., Dan Seymour, Amos Lakos, Peter Hernon), and was engaged in the formulation of recruitment procedures for "service quality" personnel.

• SQIC assisted with the development of the Spring 2000 User Expectations Survey.

• The Document Delivery Group has been looking into and working to refine the process of document delivery. Guest facilitator Joan Stein (Carnegie Mellon) was brought into the Group's discussions.

• A policy on carrel use was presented by SQIC to LMC.

• SQIC assisted in work on the email reminder pilot project.

• SQIC organized a Task Force to address the introduction of vernacular scripts to library public research workstations.

• A policy on the placement of emergency phones was worked out. LHR was charged with following up the Council's recommendations.

• SQIC's acquired familiarity with the process for implementing library policies was noted as an accomplishment.

Topics yet to be discussed by SQIC include:

• Printing on workstations (more research yet to be done with vendors)

• Charlie Greenberg's document, "A Service Agenda for the Digital Library Age"

• Procedures for handling/searching reported missing books

Paul then asked that members comment on which aspects of SQIC have not worked well or have impeded more efficient discussion of topics and implementation of proposed solutions. Suggestions included:

• Meeting time - increase the meeting time from 1 hour to 90 minutes or 2 hours

• Membership - are members close enough to the frontline of public services work to take a broad view of the needs of public services staff and patrons?

• Chairs of subgroups - should the position of chair be based on position? It was noted that public services does not have designated positions within the library staff structure, with the exception of the Service Quality Support Director. It was remarked that membership should be based on sincere interest in furthering service quality.

• Workload - it was observed that all library staff are over-extended.

Paul asked members to comment on the dexterity with which the Council handles topics charged to it. Rich noted that periodic updates of the work of its subgroups are helpful in anchoring SQIC's projects to its objectives. Danuta inquired whether SQIC has displayed the necessary discipline in following up on its projects. She remarked that pending issues do not, at times, surface until months have elapsed since initial discussion of the topic. The Council should be able to nurture a sense of the importance of each topic that is brought before it. Danuta added that SQIC sets its agendas almost opportunistically, without set priorities. Paul followed up by asking how much of a team-oriented environment can SQIC create among its members. How could SQIC best link its efforts to define policies to implementation groups? How can SQIC start to engage in thinking in terms of "customer service" as a group? How can SQIC encourage the library to start to engage in thinking in terms of "customer service" as an organization? It was commented that perhaps the library is too bureaucratic in its makeup for such a cultural change to set in quickly. LMC-approval is required for the implementation of committee initiatives. It was also mentioned that the mechanism for soliciting ideas for discussion by SQIC might be made clearer, though others on the Council felt that topics were making their way to SQIC without difficulty.

The following were identified as next steps in SQIC's self-assessment:

• Schedule a couple of open forums on specific topics, such as Document Delivery or Instruction, and invite key staff involved in each topic to lead discussions with all interested library staff.

• Find a way to involve Technical Services and Systems staff more deeply in public services issues.

• Select individuals to examine the workings of the Council and make recommendations on future improvements. This "retreat" should establish who should be the next owner of the library's quality movement. Another desired outcome is the setting of priorities for the coming year, and the appropriate membership for SQIC. The possibility of inviting non-library participants was put forth. It was suggested that a ½-day or a full day be allotted for the "retreat." Once Dan Seymour's assessment of SQIC is received, it may serve as the basis for this last element of the self-assessment.

Future meetings of SQIC in the coming weeks will feature further discussion of the self-assessment process and resolution of pending topics. Immediate next steps include scheduling the forums and considering the content of forum discussions.

III. Announcements. Sue Crockford-Peters shared the details of the next phase of the email notification service, which will be introduced at the beginning of the fall term. The most significant change and improvement to service will be the introduction of courtesy reminders for all categories of patrons. [Presently, only faculty members receive such reminders.] Reminder notices will be sent 7 days in advance of the due dates for non-reserve loans of 7 days or longer.

As soon as the patron load can be modified, US mailing addresses will be used for readers without email accounts to avoid unnecessary delays in delivery which might be encountered with Campus Mail delivery. Postal savings are expected despite increased use of US mail because the majority of notices will be sent on email. The other change to the notification service is to the schedule for sending out overdue notices for non-reserve loans: henceforth, the first overdue notice will be issued the day after the due date; the 2nd, two weeks after the due date; and the final notice, 4 weeks after the due date. Bills for replacement will continue to be issued 5 weeks after the due date.

The Non-Roman Script Task Force's findings will be posted online.

The Journal of Academic Librarianship has published the results of Danuta's user expectations survey ("Measuring Service Quality at Yale University's Libraries," Danuta Nitecki and Peter Hernon, Journal of Academic Librarianship, July 2000, vol 26, no. 4).

Suzanne Eggleston announced that the library-wide reference services Website is ready to go live. The proposed Website and its programmatic statement will be reviewed at the next meeting of the Council. Suzanne will issue the url to Council members.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:05 p.m.