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Fiscal Year 2008 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 2008, 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 and added holdings to an additional 804,958 existing
records.
238 Minitex libraries were subscribed to CatExpress, OCLC's cataloging service for small libraries, during FY08.
BATS staff:
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Provided 53 training sessions (14 in-person and 39 webinars) on 26 topics for 605 participants around the
region. This is a 19 percent increase in the number of participants in training sessions over FY07.
- Conducted over 1,600 support interactions (via telephone or email) with Minitex/OCLC participants.
- Visited 13 libraries for special consultations.
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Contract Cataloging (ConCats)
Twenty-three projects for libraries and organizations in Minnesota and North Dakota resulted in 6,303 titles
cataloged and 6,778 items processed in FY08. Institutions served included 15 academic libraries, one public
library, five 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:
- Completed an extensive inventory project for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which was begun in FY06.
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Performed additional activities related to projects for the Hong Kierkegaard Library and the libraries at St.
Cloud State University, North Dakota State University, Dakota State University, Fort Berthold Community College,
and the Children's Literature Research Collections and the Forestry Library at the University of Minnesota, Twin
Cities.
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Cooperative Purchasing & Electronic Resources Services (CPERS)
CPERS activity for FY08 included building awareness and usage of the databases available through the Electronic
Library for Minnesota (ELM). 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 FY08.
CPERS staff:
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Managed subscriptions, renewals, and support for hundreds of electronic resources and services and 60-plus library
products for over 2,000 participating libraries.
- One of 3M's largest tattletape distributors—CPERS sold over 7 million tattletapes.
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Computype's largest customer for barcode labels—CPERS coordinated barcode purchases for over 500 libraries in
the US.
- Provided ongoing technical support for ELM.
- Hired Anne Hatinen, our new Electronic Resources Librarian, and redistributed accounts.
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Coordinated and staffed exhibits at numerous conferences and events, including professional library and education
conferences in Minnesota and the Dakotas.
- Provided outreach to participating libraries through various communications—blogs, elists, newsletters.
- Produced and sent spring and fall catalogs to over 3,200 K-12 schools in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
- Coordinated spring and fall trials of selected databases.
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Delivery System
Fiscal Year 2008 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 16 percent over FY07 to more than 1.033 million
items.
Following a Request for Proposal process, Delivery Service staff signed new contracts with three couriers: one
for the Twin Cities metro area, one for Greater Minnesota and the three North Dakota delivery locations, and one
for South Dakota libraries.
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 FY08—more than 392,000. 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, 60 percent of requests for books were
filled as were 85 percent of the requests for photocopies of articles—with an overall fill rate of 66 percent.
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 140,316 requests. Of total, 125,609 were filled—56,524 for book loans and 69,085
for copies of articles. The fill rate was nearly 90 percent.
An additional 52,340 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. Fifty-seven
percent of the requests were filled with an average turnaround time of 1.1 days, generating $256,463 in revenue.
Electronic delivery of requested items continued to be an important service during FY08. More than 85 percent of all
filled photocopy requests were delivered electronically, 38,172 via Ariel and 34,896 through the Minitex Electronic
Document Delivery (MEDD). Sixty-three 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.
More than 180 staff members from Minitex participating libraries attended the 17th Annual Minitex Interlibrary
Conference with "Forecasting the Future of Social Computing" and "ILL and the Electronic Environment: We're Living
in Interesting Times" being the primary presentations. 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 1.33 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
- College of St. Scholastica
- 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. John's University
- St. Olaf College
Materials stored in MLAC are available to students and others, primarily through interlibrary loan. Staff
retrieved 17,574 items for patrons during FY08—a 3 percent increase from the number of retrievals as
were recorded in FY07.
More than 190,000 items were added to MLAC during FY08, more than double the number of volumes accessioned
in FY07. This was due to a large transfer of older monographs from the University of Minnesota Libraries,
Twin Cities.
MLAC is divided between space allocated for items the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities collection and
that reserved for items from other Minnesota libraries. The Twin Cities Campus portion is about 87 percent
filled, while the Greater Minnesota portion is about 86 percent of capacity. It is expected that MLAC will
be filled by the end of Calendar Year 2008. After capacity is reached, staff will not be able to accept
additional deposits, but will continue with lending, photocopying, scanning, and storage of collection
materials.
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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.
During FY08, MULS staff expanded their use of communications tools, initiating an online blog to provide
information to staff members of libraries that provide holdings information for the MULS database. We also
worked with staff of the University of Minnesota Libraries and the MnPALS consortium to help them build
functionality to take advantage of a program that allows for automatic update of their holdings information.
During FY08, 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 2008, Reference Services continued to provide major support for the Electronic Library for
Minnesota (ELM), prepared and presented in-person and webinar workshops and training sessions, and maintained
the reference referral service, which answers reference questions for Minnesota libraries.
Reference Services staff:
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Shared information and their expertise through 145 in-person and webinar training sessions on 19 topics
related to ELM attended by more than 1,300 library and school media staff.
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Recorded 17 webinars and tutorials about ELM so library staff, college faculty, school teachers, and others
could view them whenever they wish.
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Presented or facilitated 71 workshops on 18 reference-related (non-ELM) topics to more than 900 attendees on
topics ranging from Podcasting to Harnessing Google for Everyday Tasks, Library 2.0, Best Practices in Online
Reference Services, and MINITEX Partnerships.
- Staffed exhibits and presented programs at 16 professional library and education conferences throughout Minnesota.
- Answered reference referrals from all types of libraries in Minnesota.
- Maintained active blogs on Reference, Digital Reference, and ELM.
- Wrote and published 12 issues of their monthly publication, Reference Notes.
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