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Fiscal Year 2007 Program Activities: Facts & Figures

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MINITEX's activities are carried out by the following Programs & Services:

Bibliographic & Technical Services (BATS)

In Fiscal Year 2007, approximately 434 MINITEX-region libraries participated in OCLC (the world's largest cooperative cataloging and resource sharing service). The 193 Governing OCLC members in the MINITEX region contributed 22,603 original records to the OCLC WorldCat database (1,765 more than in Fiscal Year 2006) and added holdings to an additional 804,958 existing records (a 9.7 percent increase over Fiscal Year 2006).

16 additional institutions subscribed to CatExpress, OCLC's cataloging service for small libraries, bringing the number of MINITEX CatExpress participants to 241.

BATS staff:

  • Provided 54 training sessions (16 in-person and 38 webinars) on 20 different topics for 547 participants around the region. Ten of the training topics were new for Fiscal Year 2007.
  • Conducted over 1,584 support interactions (via telephone or email) with MINITEX/OCLC participants.
  • Visited five libraries for special consultations.

166 persons attended the MINITEX/OCLC Users Group meeting in October 2006. BATS staff shared their expertise during the Meeting's break-out sessions and through presentations at library professional organization conferences throughout the three-state region.

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Contract Cataloging (ConCats)

23 projects for libraries and organizations in Minnesota and North Dakota resulted in 3,528 titles cataloged and 4,648 items processed in Fiscal Year 2007. Institutions served included 13 academic libraries, two public libraries, six special libraries, and one miscellaneous organization. Formats cataloged included books, serials, visual materials, cartographic materials, sound recordings, computer files, music scores, mixed materials, and Web sites.

ConCats staff:

  • Continued an inventory project for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which was begun in Fiscal Year 2006.
  • Performed additional activities related to projects for the libraries at St. Olaf College, St. Cloud State University, and North Dakota State University.

Using University of Minnesota students to provide foreign language expertise, ConCats cataloged materials in Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Ukrainian, and Urdu, as well as numerous European languages.

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Cooperative Purchasing & Electronic Resources Services (CPERS)

CPERS activity for Fiscal Year 2007 included important strides in building awareness and usage of the databases and other electronic information resources available through the Electronic Library for Minnesota (ELM) and, through related arrangements, in North Dakota and South Dakota. ELM resources provide a common core of information for Minnesota library users regardless of their age, educational status, or location.

Through CPERS' negotiation of discounts for library products and resources, libraries realized substantial savings during Fiscal Year 2007.

Electronic Library for Minnesota (ELM)

CPERS staff:

  • Assisted in revision of ELM promotional and educational materials.
  • Prepared graphics used at the MINITEX/MnLINK/University of Minnesota Libraries/Minnesota Digital Library exhibit booth at the 2006 Minnesota State Fair.
  • Provided ongoing technical support for ELM.

Working with a task force made up of representatives of various libraries throughout Minnesota and the Dakotas, MINITEX staff made the decision to extend the contracts for most ELM resources for an additional two years. The extended contract went into effect July 1, 2007.

Workshops, Training, and Demonstrations

CPERS staff:

Coordinated and staffed exhibits and/or presented programs at numerous conferences and events, including professional library conferences in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

Conducted 10 site visits to K-12, public, and regional libraries in the MINITEX region.

Cooperative Purchasing

CPERS staff:

  • Managed subscriptions, renewals, and maintenance for a wide range of products for participating libraries.
  • Produced and sent spring and fall catalogs to over 3,200 K-12 schools in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

During Fiscal Year 2007, MINITEX remained:

  • One of 3M's largest tattletape distributors, selling over 8 million 3M tattletapes.
  • Computype's largest customer for barcode labels and coordinated barcode purchases for 500 libraries in the U.S.; 15 new barcode libraries were added during Fiscal Year 2007.

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Delivery System

Fiscal Year 2007 was a challenging year for staff of the MINITEX Delivery System. With the marked increase in the number of interlibrary loan requests moving among Minnesota libraries and throughout the MINITEX region, the volume of materials handled by Delivery System staff increased more than 30 percent over Fiscal Year 2006—to more than 900,000 items processed.

Extended Delivery staff hours continued from the previous fiscal year with workers processing deliveries and preparing outgoing tubs from 7:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, which means a reduction of one day of delivery time for many MINITEX delivery sites.

The MINITEX Delivery System provides the backbone delivery network for library interlibrary loan throughout Minnesota and the Dakotas. Local libraries build upon that backbone by linking it with their local and regional delivery systems, which move materials among their branch and cooperating libraries.

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Document Delivery

Document Delivery staff processed a record number of requests for book loans, journal articles, and other materials during Fiscal Year 2007—more than 387,000. The requests came in from academic, public, state government, school, and special libraries and directly from library patrons via the MnLINK Gateway. Of the total, 63 percent of requests for books were filled as were 86 percent of the requests for photocopies of articles—with an overall fill rate of 71 percent.

The Document Delivery staff maintained these impressive numbers despite the continued sizeable increase in request volume that has followed integration of the MnLINK Gateway into MINITEX. The total number of requests received by the MINITEX Office jumped 36 percent from Fiscal Year 2006.

The Gateway allows library staff and library users to search the collections of many Minnesota libraries at the same time. Minnesota library users made more use of the Gateway's Get-It button, which allows individual library patrons to request items themselves without having to go through their local library's Interlibrary Loan Offices. Heavy use of the Get-It button has led to double- and triple-digit percentage increases in the number of interlibrary loan requests received by some Gateway libraries.

Document Delivery staff searched in the collections of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Libraries and Minneapolis Public Library for items to fill 135,438 requests. Of these requests, 52,318 requests for book loans and 70,132 for articles were filled—for a fill rate of 90 percent.

An additional 54,843 requests for loans and photocopies from institutions worldwide were received and processed by Documents to U, a lending service provided by MINITEX staff for the University of Minnesota Libraries. 60 percent of the requests were filled with an average turnaround time of 1.1 days.

Electronic delivery of requested items continued to be an important service during Fiscal Year 2007. More than 80 percent of all filled photocopy requests were delivered electronically, 39,969 via Ariel and 32,390 through the MINITEX Electronic Document Delivery (MEDD). 63 percent of the electronic fills (more than 45,000 articles) were scanned from the original publication in four campus libraries and transmitted directly to the individual requestor or the requesting library.

Ariel software provides electronic delivery of the article to the requesting library where staff can print it for the patron or forward it directly to the patron as a PDF file. For material delivered via MEDD, MINITEX staff notify the patron of the article's availability—providing instructions for retrieving the article in a process similar to retrieving an Internet greeting card. MEDD articles can be viewed up to five times or for seven days after email notification (whichever comes first). MINITEX staff uses MEDD to deliver articles electronically to libraries that lack Ariel software, primarily public libraries or K-12 school media centers.

The 16th Annual MINITEX Interlibrary Conference was held in May with "Resource Sharing: Making a Difference" as its focus. The primary speaker was Roy Tennant, California Digital Library, who provided the keynote address, "Tips for Effective Technology Change Agents," and a second address, "Top Technologies and Trends and What to Do about Them." Bill DeJohn closed the day with a report assessing the status of resource sharing in the MINITEX region and looking to the future.

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Minnesota Library Access Center (MLAC)

Since its opening in January 2000, staff have accessioned over 1.13 million items for permanent deposit in MLAC, a high density storage facility for important, but little used, print materials owned by Minnesota libraries.

MLAC holds items deposited by the libraries of:

  • Bethel Seminary
  • Carleton College
  • James J. Hill Reference Library
  • Macalester College
  • Mayo Foundation
  • Minneapolis Public Library
  • Minnesota State Law Library
  • Minnesota Legislative Reference Library
  • Minnesota State University, Mankato
  • Minnesota State University Moorhead
  • St. Paul Public Library
  • University of Minnesota, Duluth
  • University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
  • William Mitchell College of Law
  • St. Olaf College
  • St. John’s University

Materials stored in MLAC are available to students and others, primarily through interlibrary loan. Staff retrieved 17,005 items for patrons during Fiscal Year 2007—virtually the same number of retrievals as were recorded in Fiscal Year 2006.

One of the major information access trends this is discussed currently is whether copies of various publications are available online through the World Wide Web. MLAC staff reviewed the requests they received and reported that only about 15 percent of material requested was available online—indicating the value of having these print materials available for scholars, students, and other Minnesotans.

More than 97,000 items were added to MLAC during Fiscal Year 2007. MLAC is divided between space allocated for items the University of Minnesota Libraries, Twin Cities collection and that reserved for items from other Minnesota libraries. The Twin Cities Campus portion is about 72 percent filled, while the Greater Minnesota portion is about 82 percent of capacity. Because of the way material is stored in high-density facilities of this type, 98 percent of capacity is regarded as fully filled.

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MINITEX Union List of Serials (MULS)

MULS is an online database of more than 390,000 summary holdings attached to more than 166,000 bibliographic records, which identify journals, periodicals, newspapers, and other serial publications owned by 200 libraries in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. It is used to support interlibrary loan of copies of articles from these publications.

After a year of major change for MULS in Fiscal Year 2006, Fiscal Year 2007 was year of consolidation as staff worked to train participating library staff on how to maintain their libraries' holdings through the new OCLC Connexion interface. Staff developed new training programs and materials, among them a blog for discussion with library staff and supply articles to the monthly MINITEX/OCLC Mailing on a regular basis.

During Fiscal Year 2007, the MULS database was available through OCLC WorldCat. The OCLC Resource Sharing system uses the information included in MULS holdings to route interlibrary loan requests, assuring that MULS libraries receive appropriate requests—requests for which they have indicated they hold the appropriate issues.

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Reference Services

During Fiscal Year 2007, Reference Services continued to provide major support for the Electronic Library for Minnesota (ELM), prepared and presented Internet-based seminars (or webinars) and other training sessions, and maintained the reference referral service, which answers reference questions for Minnesota libraries.

In support of the Electronic Library for Minnesota (ELM), Reference Services staff:

  • Shared information and their expertise through 126 in-person and webinar training sessions on 15 topics with more than 1,900 library and school media staff and staffed booths and presented programs at 16 professional library and education conferences throughout Minnesota. The number of sessions presented was more than double the FY06 figure, while the number of session participants increased three-fold.
  • Helped plan the ELM exhibit at the 2006 Minnesota State Fair, trained MINITEX and other volunteers who agreed to staff the ELM booth at the Fair, and prepared sample searches, scripts, and Frequently Asked Questions documents.

In support of Reference Referral and other activities, Reference Services staff:

  • Answered reference referrals from all types of libraries in Minnesota.
  • Prepared and presented 44 workshops on 10 reference-related topics including instant messaging, WebJunction Minnesota, Library 2.0, Best New Technologies, podcasting, and the Research Project Calculator.
  • Maintained three active blogs on Reference, Digital Reference, and ELM.
  • Wrote and published 12 issues of their monthly publication, Reference Notes.

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Serials Exchange

Serials Exchange staff filled requests for 280 books and references items and 223 issues of serial publications during Fiscal Year 2007. Requests were received from academic and public libraries as well as from Minnesota state government libraries.

Because of the great increase in the number of items moving through the MINITEX Delivery System, Serials Exchange was detailed to work with Delivery staff for many hours weekly.

MINITEX continued our relationship with Books for Africa (BFA), a Minnesota-based organization that sends books donated by publishers, schools, libraries, organizations and individuals to Africa. MINITEX Serials Exchange donated more than 400 boxes of non-textbook books to BFA that were not of interest to regular Serials Exchange users.

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MINITEX Participating Libraries, Fiscal Year 2007

  • 158 Academic Libraries
  • 180 Public Libraries
  • 89 Special Libraries
  • 1731 K-12 School Libraries