Technical Services Monthly Report

November 2002

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

The biggest news this month was the announced reorganization of Resource Services. RS will cease to exist after Jan. 1, as Flo Wilson becomes Deputy University Librarian. Roberta Winjum will become Assistant University Librarian with responsibility for Technical Services. Pat Johnson will begin spending most of her hours in OUL, providing administrative support. Maintenance activities done by staff at the Annex will all be taken over by Linda Davis, who will move to the Cataloging and Authorities Team under Ann Ercelawn’s supervision. The reorganization will also affect some working groups. RSIG will cease to exist after Jan. 1 and the responsibilities of that group will fall to TechForce. The RS Management Team will also cease to exist.

TechForce finalized the charge to the newly created Cataloging Task Force. Pete Wilson will chair; other members include Monica Sanchez, Alice Cunningham, Becky Atack and Bryan Kurowski. This group will look at all forms of cataloging workflow and make recommendations for improvements.

Due to increased efficiencies in Order Services workflow described below, OS staff has been able to resume searching Series Standing Order titles, a task that had been assigned to the Cataloging and Authorities Team some time ago. Not only did Order Services take on the task for current materials, but also CAT was able to send back to Baker the SSO titles waiting for processing in their area. We appreciate OS’s willingness to help out in this way.

The RIP Task Force continued deliberations on what to do with the bibliographic records returned from OCLC’s Retrocon-batch service. Good progress is being made in cataloging the titles with LC copy. The inventory decreased by almost 2 percent in November due to the efforts of Bryan Kurowski and Jeff Taylor in processing this material.

Nov. 22, Jody Combs, Roberta Winjum, and Mary Ellen Wilson met with Pat Johnson to discuss how several of her Baker responsibilities might be redistributed. Linda Hand and Rita Breen agreed to share the responsibility of liaison with the Mathews Management Company (reporting problems, etc.)

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

Mary Charles Lasater traveled to La Vergne to conduct NACO training for catalogers from Ingram. Ann Ercelawn traveled to the Music Library to conduct training in local series procedures for Michael Scott and Catherine Gick.

The authorities staff, Mary Charles Lasater, Denise Chavez, and Sue Richardson, hosted an event to celebrate one million authority records in Acorn and 10,000 authority records on Acorn created or modified by our own catalogers as part of NACO.

Nov. 19, Monica Sanchez attended the NALA Customer Service Workshop.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES TEAM:

The flow of materials to Cataloging continued to be heavier than usual for the time of year. We are hoping that we are seeing a “bump” caused by the increased efficiency in Order Services and that soon materials will slow down to a more normal pace so that we can catch up. Materials in all subject areas are heavy. Besides regular cataloging duties in all subject areas, we also struggle to keep up with the various ongoing projects. Mary Charles Lasater, Jeff Taylor and Denise Chavez restarted the Peabody theses project that had been on hold while we tried to deal with new materials. Pete Wilson is attempting to make a dent in cataloging the ICPSR codebooks, which involves a great deal of cleaning up of old outdated Acorn records. Don Jones is working on Baudelaire materials and Pia unique “duplicates” (material from the boxes of Pia duplicates identified by Clint Grantham to be unique titles, not dups). Ann Barnette has made good progress on adding URL’s and Internet Library item records to the Lecture Notes standing order titles. Becky Atack is working on the series clean up associated with the last NetLibrary record load. Sue Richardson is working on the unauthorized headings associated with the EEBO load. Ann Ercelawn cataloged BioOne and Haworth e-journals and started cataloging a large collection of United Nations official documents for Larry Romans. Bryan Kurowski and Jeff Taylor are cataloging the RIP (inventory reduction project) titles.

Mary Charles Lasater held a meeting of the CAAG Format Policies TF. Many members of CAT are also members of that group, including Zora Breeding, Ann Ercelawn, Pete Wilson, Michael Scott, Denise Chavez, Bryan Kurowski, and Jeff Taylor. That group is making good progress.

Zora Breeding called the first meeting of the joint CAG/CAAG Item Types Task Force (ITTF). Rodger Coleman will chair that group. We are hoping that some improvements can be made to increase the viability of the item type as a search aid.

ORDER SERVICES:

Once again, OS has had a very productive month. There are very few materials awaiting processing in the mailroom; firm orders and serials are no more than 2 days old (from the date of their receipt in the mailroom). The serial receivers are processing periodicals within 24 hours of receipt. Purchase order requests are current; orders are being processed within the week (or less) of their receipt in OS. Unusual for this time of year, OS has also been able to process a fair number of gifts as they are received from the libraries.

Everyone has worked very hard to bring materials up to their current status. We have benefited greatly, as well, from the several changes in workflow that have been implemented over time:

- The continuing efficiencies of vendor website ordering/receipt of PromptCat records (CM and GOBI firm orders have accounted for 44% of our firm orders so far this fiscal year, as well as last; and we receive PromptCat records for ALL of our domestic approvals.)

- Elimination of BFAS, freeing up nearly a full-time position for other responsibilities, as well as offering other efficiencies within our over-all procedures

- Changes in series verification process, allowing for faster processing of orders

at the front end. This change has also allowed us to reconfigure the way materials are received - adding more staff to the receipt process.

In November:

Orders Placed: 1277

Firm orders recd: 1060

Approvals processed: 636

Gifts added: 208

SSOs added: 61

Serials/Periodicals recd: 3580

Speed Cataloged: 738 titles

Nov. 12, Chris Waldrop, Mary Ellen Wilson, and Roberta Winjum met with Jim Tucker from Ebsco. The Ebsco renewal invoice has been received, but has not yet been posted in Acorn. We continue to await the electronic file from Ebsco, which we expect to receive soon. A copy of the appropriate portion of the paper invoice has been forwarded to each division library.

All other invoices are current.

Nov. 14, Mary Ellen Wilson and Roberta Winjum met with representatives from Internal Audit to give them an overview of the workflow in Order Services. The flow charts that were created for the Work Flow Task Force were very helpful in illustrating some of the workflows for them.

Nov. 21, Chris Waldrop and Mary Ellen Wilson met with Mary Beth Blalock and Janet Thomason to discuss serials claims. As a result, Mary Ellen will look at the claim reports to further fine-tune them.

PRESERVATION:

Sue Davis visited the Peabody Library during one of the rainy periods to check on a foundation leak (later found to be accompanied by a steam pipe leak). She spent some time there touring other environmental trouble spots with Cheryl McClure.

Sue met with Mary Beth Blalock about an historical textbook project. This collection is currently housed in the Peabody library.

At Mary Beth Blalock's request Sue provided 7 years' worth of Central binding data.

The annual ARL Preservation Statistics questionnaire has been completed and submitted on time. Sue and Dewey worked together on another survey for Special Collections' preservation assessment planning.

The team's only student assistant became too busy to keep up with her part time job in the library, so she stopped working early in the month.

Binding:

851 monographs

38 rebinds

460 periodicals

110 serials

1,459 total volumes sent.

568 Acorn holdings records updated

1,021 new Central paperbacks sorted; 448 items selected for immediate binding.

79 volumes rebarcoded in preparation for binding.

The oldest bindery invoices still to be paid are the serial/periodicals ones dating from November 8.

There is a small backlog of monographs waiting for economy binding due to our testing a new cover material for this category of binding. The material we traditionally used (a C-grade buckram) is no longer available at Heckman Bindery. So far the new material appears to look great and work well.

REMINDER: There is only one binding shipment scheduled before the end of the year -- December 12. The next shipment pickup will occur January 2, 2003.

Marking:

3,403 volumes

150 RUSH volumes

199 unbound serials

43 reels of microfilm

As of today the oldest items on the marking shelves date from Nov. 20.

Repair:

112 volumes were treated with 217 repairs.

The items came from several libraries: Central, Baudelaire, Divinity, Education, Science/Engineering, and Special Collections. A significant amount of time was devoted to preparing a large order of wrapper boxes and triaging an influx of materials from Central Circulation.