The Staff Satisfaction Survey discussion group meetings were a highlight for this November. Many attended Flo’s presentation on the topic, and teams held meetings to gather input.

The Series Workflow Task Force (Yuh Fen Benda, Yan-Xia Zhong, Brian Kurowski, and Laurie Power, chair) held its first meetings. Laurie has been observing how various OS members deal with series.

The Inventory Reduction Project Task Force held its first meeting. Rich Murray is chairing that group. Other RS members are: Susan Bell, Nancy Boggess- Korekach, Zora Breeding, Sue Davis, Peg Earheart, Don Jones and Pete Wilson.

The Telecommuting Task Force (Jody Combs, Mary Charles Lasater, Lisa Shipman, Chris Waldrop, and Roberta Winjum, chair) finished the draft Telecommuting Policy and submitted it to Flo Wilson.

Linda Davis continues to help the Marking and Binding staff with editing of Acorn holdings records. Debbie Williams continues to assist Binding and Marking with their processing as time allows.

Sue Davis worked on two surveys during November. One was a short preservation survey for SOLINET. The second was the annual ARL preservation statistics questionnaire. The ARL survey is still in the data collection stage, but is nearing completion soon.

Roberta Winjum completed the Collection Growth and ARL statistics for 2000/2001. For those with access, these can be found on the G: drive in the RS/RSStatistics/CG0001 and RS/RSStatistics/ARL20002001 folders.

The biggest news was Norma Riddick’s announcement that she plans to retire from the Cataloging and Authorities Team at the end of January. She will continue to work until May at much reduced hours to help with the transition. The team is dismayed at the thought of losing Norma’s 25 years of expertise and dedication. Her absence will be greatly felt. While team members deal with their distress at this news, Norma is smiling from ear to ear.

Ann Ercelawn traveled to Edina, Minnesota to teach the SCCTP's Basic Serials Cataloging Workshop to 20 people under the auspices of MINITEX. She also attended the AACR2 and Metadata Institute sponsored by ALCTS in Grapevine, TX.

Mary Charles Lasater taught a NACO training workshop in Chicago. She also completed NACO training for MAT Trotter and Yuh-Fen Benda here at home.

Zora Breeding and Sue Davis attended the Information Alliance meeting in Knoxville on Nov. 2. Sue facilitated the group discussion about Special Collections and Archives issues.

Ann Ercelawn and Yuh-Fen Benda took a class on using cascading style sheets.

Several staff attended Ann Womack’s informative talk and slide show on French cathedrals. Some were also able to attend the Special Collections Archivist candidate presentations.

The serial receivers enjoyed a tour by MAT Trotter of the Divinity Library.

601 items circulated. Central Deweys were the highest circulation category - 164 items

259 patrons requested their Annex retrievals via the Web

474 pages were reproduced for 44 Inter-Library Loan patrons

39 ILL requests could not be processed

21 patrons requested volumes that the Library Annex does not own

54 of the items requested for circulation came from the RS Inventory. These included Rush Cataloging requests, requests from Inventory for Inter-Library Loan, and miscellaneous requests from the individual Catalogers.

Although we eagerly awaited the first Faculty Delivery Request (FDR), none for Annex materials surfaced.

2305 Acorn records edited

569 withdrawals processed

1 Central volume was re-instated

11 titles were reconned

3 intra-library volumes were processed.

67 linear feet of new transfers were received from the campus libraries. Science has begun a new transfer project for older Periodicals. Central and Law also sent new transfers. Joe Collins is working on a special project to create additional space for Science TK periodicals.

40 new volumes were received for RS Inventory.

11 visitors included guests from Arts and Science, Baudelaire Center, I.T.S., M.I.S, Office of the University Librarian, Special Collections, and the VU Theatre Department. Staff from the Helguera Project and Special Collections made multiple Annex visits.

Peg Earheart met with Yvonne Boyer regarding the Picture Files, and with Al Stewart regarding future shelving needs.

Once again, the team kept busy, mainly with cataloging. When not actually typing madly into Acorn and OCLC, team members went to meetings, taught classes, took classes, observed the work of others, tried to map out how we do our work, attended presentations on a variety of topics, and solved all manner of bibliographic problems.

Another shipment of doctoral and masters theses arrived and is being processed. The circulating copies have been sent to the libraries. Jeff Taylor, Becky Atack, Ann Barnette and Yuh-Fen Benda all worked various aspects of theses processing. Ann Ercelawn worked with Rick Stringer-Hye to clean up the e-journal database and associated Acorn records. Ann also worked with Nancy Boggess-Korekach to create a report of records converted from Notis with ‘catstat:c’ coding, some of which need to be shadowed in Acorn. Jeff and Becky worked on more Rush Music CDs. Jeff cataloged several large boxed CD sets. Denise Chavez concentrated on working through more of the split headings report. Mary Charles Lasater, Jeff and Becky also helped with this effort. Jeff worked on the broken links in Acorn report. Yuh-Fen helped out LITS by ghosting 51 old Zenith workstations in preparation for their being given to Virtual Schools. The last of the Music outsourced material returned and was checked and processed by Jeff.

A total of 3185 new titles were processed in RS in November. CAT processed 2229 of these. We made changes to 3464 name, subject and series headings on existing Acorn records. Marcive delivered 4333 new authority records that match headings on newly added records.

Order Services has remained fairly busy this month, particularly in the area of processing approvals and receiving orders. All totaled, OS processed 1266 approvals, added 172 gift titles, and added 1204 new orders. Receivers also speed cataloged 942 titles. In addition, over 4088 new serial/periodical issues were received in Acorn.

Incoming order requests are very light - the oldest requests awaiting processing were received in OS for processing within the last week. Verification continues to focus on approvals, gifts, and assisting with the receipt of firm orders.

Incoming firm orders remain very heavy, necessitating the continued recruitment of additional staff within OS to help in the receiving process. Serials remain current, most issues being processed with 1-2 days of their receipt in the OS Mailroom.

The print copy of the Ebsco invoice has been received, and will be distributed to the libraries shortly. We will load the invoice as soon as we receive the electronic file from Ebsco.

Over the course of the last month, we also began to receive the first of the physically processed Leisure Reading Collection books from Ingram. Those that can be speed-cataloged in OS are now being sent directly to Central Circulation, and on to the shelves. We still have a few minor bugs to work out (with the invoicing, etc.), but we are optimistic that the process will help us to get the books to the patrons more quickly.

On the 27th we received a visit from John Laraway/Blackwells. John updated us on a new feature available from Collection Manager, including e-Notes, an electronic new title notification service. A visit from Kelvin Watson/Ingram on the 8^th was also informative, among other things in teaching us to use iPage more effectively.

Binding, marking, and repair continued at a high rate during November. The team can report some progress on the backlogs, but is by no means caught up quite yet. We are falling slightly behind in the repair end of things. Because we've pulled Charlotte Lew into the marking workflow, she was not able to repair as many items as usual. Our student has been a great help this fall, but will leave early December to focus on final exams. We hope to have her back next semester.

2,168 volumes sent to bindery, including:

1,361 new monographs

37 rebind monographs

572 periodicals, and

198 serials

There is still a backlog of a few weeks for some monographs waiting to go to the bindery, but there are no books for mylar binding, periodicals or serials waiting. We are current receiving returned periodicals, but are still working on receiving monographs and serials for the shipment returned Nov. 15. The only paperbacks waiting for rebarcoding and binding were received in the last week of November.

Invoices for monographs are paid through mid-October billing. Periodical and serial invoices are delayed slightly until Mary Ellen Wilson trains us how to pay multiple funds on the same invoice. The Heckman invoices changed recently as a result of the bindery adding security strips to our volumes. Training for the new procedure will take place Dec. 11. The bindery knows of the delay.

Even with Linda Davis’s valuable assistance with the team's binding holdings updates, Machelle Keen and Sheranda Lee still updated 447 Acorn records.

Of the 1501 Central monograph paperbacks that Machelle sorted during November, she sent 658 (44%) directly to the bindery. The flow of paperbacks remains quite high with November being the 3rd highest total since Machelle began keeping track about a year ago.

Sue Davis met briefly with a Heckman representative about production changes at the Indiana plant. As the bindery continues to streamline its operations, sometimes the products change slightly. The team is monitoring these changes closely to make sure quality is not affected.

Another banner month in labeling. The marking shelves remain full even though we are labeling higher than average numbers. Currently, we are labeling items received in Marking November 19.

Items marked:

4,881 volumes

274 RUSH items

243 unbound serials

41 reels of microfilm

212 volumes repaired with 264 treatments

An order of 112 wrappers bulked up our November repair numbers. The order was split evenly between Central and Special Collection items. We also focussed on Central spine repairs.