Service Quality Improvement Council

Minutes
February 10, 1999

Present: Sue Crockford-Peters, Suzanne Eggleston, Emily Horning, Kenny Marone, Fred Martz, Danuta Nitecki, Sandy Peterson, Andy Shimp, Paul Stuehrenberg (chair), Joan Swanekamp

Absent: Betty Cohen, Ellen Cordes, Jan Glover, Rich Richie

I. Workstations

Discussion of the proper use of the public workstations continued. Suggestions on this topic were offered from a recent meeting of the Reference Group (Suzanne Eggleston, chair). Controversial uses of the workstations were discussed (i.e., viewing websites involving child pornography, materials distasteful to other library patrons, and the use of the workstations for profit). It was decided to form an "ad-hoc" committee on workstations to better define the service implications of this issue. The "ad-hoc" committee will produce a first draft of a programmatic statement on public workstations, including a policy on their use.

II. Orbis enhancements & MPG

Fred Martz spoke on Orbis enhancements introduced at the American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference. New enhancements to Notis will be available and may change YUL's approach to Crossplex. The library will postpone exploration of Crossplex until July to see whether Notis improvements will be provided as expected this summer. The first phase of these enhancements - including such patron empowerments to view one's loans, fines, and recalls - is scheduled to be available sometime this spring. Notis, with these enhancements, uses a similar technique as CrossPlex. The next phase of development will enable library patrons to execute transactions (e.g., renewals requests); this feature is scheduled to be available within 6 months to a year. A set of improvements to Webpac also will be introduced.

A brief discussion of MPG (Multi-Protocol Gateway) services followed.

III. Revised listing of  factors most relevant to measure service quality at YUL were distributed to SQIC members to pass on to student participants. They will be returned to Danuta Nitecki within a week.