TexShare Courier Service Working Group Minutes
July 25, 2000

Courier Working Group Telephone Conference 1-3 PM, July 25, 2000

April welcomed and thanked the members for their participation. Reminder that everyone should let Deborah know of any changes to their information that is posted on the web site.

Small change to June 20, 2000 minutes, the explanation that "We decided to continue the agenda because we ran out of time." After this change is made, April will get the e-mail address for Norma de Vries, TexShare's Information Specialist, and forward them to her.

Mike Robinson will be secretary for the July 25, 2000 meeting.

Participants: April Bennington, Jackie Crinion, Jo Anne Hawkins, Lee Hilyer, Linda Hughes, Deborah Littrell, Gerard Mittelstaedt, Connie Moss, Mike Robinson, Susie Thompson, Carolyn Thorne, Jerilynn Williams, Vicki Duff.

1. TExpress Shipping Guidelines: Lee will amend the guidelines to include the a specific weight limit: Individual packages should weigh less than 50 lbs. and preferably under 25 lbs. He will also add a section to cover lost items and the liability for those items. Susie suggested that he take a look at the wording for this on the AMIGOS web site. Discussed the wording of weight limit guidelines. Lee will send out the draft for WG members to review. The new packaging guidelines will appear under the Tip section of the TRANS-AMIGOS Express Gazette.

2. Compliance and understanding of guidelines: Suggestions included: Put information on the listserves Announce the updated guidelines at the next ILL workshop. Deborah will work this into her system and district meetings at TLA as well as newsletters and lists for this group. Spotlight the guidelines on the TexShare web page Susie will refer people to the Courier WG members that have questions that she feels we would be better suited to answer. Lee also said that he would be willing to answer people's questions. WG members will help notify the chair, April, of problems that would need to be announced on the listserv April will post the announcement.

3. Report card for Marquis: Discussion regarding what do we really want out of a survey? Are we looking at customer satisfaction? Are we looking at turn-around time? How would it be conducted?

Other questions: Where would the completed survey questionnaires go? Who would tabulate it--AMIGOS? Who would fill out the questionnaire--the person receiving the items or someone else? Since results would vary by what time of year the survey was conducted, when should it be done? Stress on the whole system would affect the results. For academic libraries this changes over the semester. What will we learn? When collecting turnaround time statistics, should we just use a sampling method? Put the survey on the website, send by TExpress, or mail it out? How will we use what we learn?

Susie expressed concern about the skewered data that we would collect. There are too many variables involved. The report card would be for the whole system, all of TExpress, not just Marquis.

Tabled this discussion decided not to have another telephone conference to discuss this. Instead, we will continue discussion over e-mail. We aren't ready for a group to put together a survey until we are sure what we are looking at.

4. Newsletter: Overall, everyone liked the newsletter, but there were a few suggestions: Create a link from the TExpress information on the TexShare page to the Gazette and vice versa. Create links to TExpress statistics. Change items to packages because that is what is counted for statistics. Add a link to the guidelines in the Tips section. Concern was voiced over confusion the title may cause. TRANS-AMIGOS Express is not understandable to everyone as TExpress. (It should be understood that TRANS-AMIGOS Express and TExpress are separate entities with separate funding sources.)

The next meeting will be in person in Austin before the end of October, 2000. Everyone should let April know if they have any dates that they already know will not be available for a meeting.