6/17/2003 BOARD OF LIBRARY TRUSTEES Minutes

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lashpee Public Library P.O. Box 657 Mashpee, Ma 0649 During the month of May 2003,the library circulated 7,871 items. This brings our year-to-date figure to 103,414 items checked out at the library. This is about 2,600 iters less than last year but as discussed last month, the change to a longer loan period for videos accounts for much of the difference. , Another difference has been the way the network fills requests among member libraries. The old software used a random generation factor to decide which library would be asked t fill request. The new software, Millennium, selects the first available library staving from the top or bottom of the list of owners. Mashpee is usually in the middle range of libraries and is asked t fill requests much less often than we could supply the item. The libraries being asked most are inundated and over-burdened. CLAMS has been working with Triple I to modify how the requests are distributed. All libraries have been keeping track of the number of request they're asked to fill. They've made some progress but the load has not yet been equalized. As this situation improves, we should regain some of the transactions we`re currently losing. CLAMS switched to Phase 2 of Millennium this past week. Staff~attended training sessions in the various modules prior to the switch on June e. We are getting used to a different look to the screens. Data now appears in grids rather than drop down menus and some icons have been rearranged for the usual location on the screen. Most of the changes in circulation are cosmetic. . Cataloging and Serials have the most content changes as well as a number of enhancements. I attended an interesting workshop at SEMLS earlier in the month. The theme of the workshop . was improving accessibility for patrons using computers. Cathy Lu sier, Assistant Administrator for Technology for SEMIS demons JILL various settings available in the Windows operating system of most computers. She showed us how the size of print and background colors can be set to accommodate patrons with low vision. Other settings could be useful for patrons with poor motor skills. These options could be set up without having to purchase new equipment. I will be looking at how we might make use of this information on our CLAMS catalogs. On a related topic,, Mashpee's MIS department has been working with the library to improve the security aspects of the public computer workstations. Over the gears, we have found that some patrons would change settings or download programs ontD our computers despite a policy prohibiting this. Its impossible to know which patrons are responsible, so the MIS department has been reconf Bring the computers to make it much more difficult for patrons to alter settings. There are also concerns abort picking up viruses from the Internet. We have had mined results thus far. In tightening up some things, we discovered the other functions like printing have been made more complicated. I will continue to work with Steve Buss, MIS Administrator,to achieve a happy median.