Technical Services Monthly Report
October 2002
DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:
The RIP (Reduction in
Inventory) Task Force (Susan Bell, chair) finalized procedures for cataloging
all inventory books for which LC copy was returned. Bryan Kurowski and Jeff Taylor have begun to catalog these
materials as they are sent from the Annex (in boxes marked “RIP catalogers” –
remind anyone of a certain Halloween costume theme?)
Ann Ercelawn, Zora
Breeding, Mary Ellen Wilson, Chris Waldrop, and Roberta Winjum met with the
group looking at Serials Solutions records.
An updated set of Marc records was received and loaded into the test
database. The current plan is for the next load to be added to the live Acorn
database.
Zora Breeding, Chris
Waldrop, Monica Sanchez, and Mary Ellen Wilson met with Jo Williams Hall and
Becky Williams from Belmont to answer their questions about Sirsi as Belmont
considers which ILS system to move to.
PERSONNEL:
The Staff Forum,
focusing this year on digitization, with guest speakers Liz Bishoff and Tamara
Miller, was well attended by Technical Services and other staff. Roberta Winjum
and Sue Davis completed their service on the Vanderbilt Libraries Staff Forum
Committee, which planned the forum. For those who were unable to attend, there
are still paper handouts available--1) a list of local digitizing projects, and
2) Liz Bishoff's PowerPoint presentation.
Please contact Sue if you would like a copy. A web page of the
presenters’ PowerPoint presentations is still in the works.
Ann Ercelawn taught a
SCCTP Electronic Serials Workshop as a pre-conference to the Kentucky Library
Association meeting.
Roberta Winjum
attended the 22nd Annual Charleston Conference on Book and Serial
Acquisitions, including a pre-conference entitled "From Selection to
Access: Best Practices in the Collection Development/Technical Services
Workflow"
Most staff were able
to attend the Library Service Awards. Pat Johnson was honored for 30 years of
service to Vanderbilt. We also celebrated Kathy Ma’s and Don Jones’ 25 years
with Vanderbilt. Sue Caldwell
Richardson was honored for twenty years. Ann Mallette was honored for her 10
years at Vanderbilt, having spent almost all of it in the binding and marking
unit. Denise Chavez received her third porcelain acorn. Congratulations and
thanks to all.
Some also attended
the Benefits Fair, Breast Cancer Forums and the “Buck Green goes to Vanderbilt”
video showing.
Once again the
Cataloging and Authorities Team managed to pull off a group theme for the
Halloween party, although they are not sure that they enjoyed receiving
compliments on looking dead.
The flow of books
remains steady and team members continue to scramble to try to keep on top of
the onslaught. Pete Wilson has started
helping Don Jones to review Michael Scott’s cataloging. Michael has added Latin
American Anthropology and Classical Studies to his subject responsibilities and
will be helping Pete with the 4200 Latin American Studies. Becky Atack is trying to take on more of the
French materials cataloging as part of her LA4 duties. Denise Chavez had to give up helping to
search the curriculum lab materials because she became backlogged in her
authorities work due to the CatME software problems which were only recently
resolved. Susan Bell is valiantly
trying to keep up with the TN textbooks cataloging in addition to her other
duties. Zora Breeding has taken on more
of the history materials in an attempt to help out. Yuh-Fen Benda continues to analyze the Chinese dynasties set and
keep up with searching and LC materials.
Jeff Taylor processed a batch of Peabody theses that were complicated by
the fact that some were bound in the wrong color and others did not have title
pages. He also cataloged more of the
USGS cdroms and Loeb Classical Library books.
Catalogers are working on electronic resources titles identified as
problems (either not cataloged or having broken urls in Acorn). Sue Richardson began work on the
unauthorized list run against the Early English Books record load.
The big news in
authorities this month is that the number of authority records in Acorn reached
one million! The authority records
returned from the latest netLibrary record load pushed us over the million
mark. Mary Charles Lasater is planning
a celebration. Another authorities
milestone is that Vanderbilt has created or edited over 10,000 authority
records in the national authority file since we joined NACO in 1995.
Mary Charles Lasater
agreed to chair a CAAG subcommittee that is looking at our Sirsi policies in
preparation for the reindexing scheduled for Thanksgiving. The first meeting included CAAG members Mary
Charles, Zora, Ann Ercelawn, Nancy Boggess-Korekach, Catherine Gick and Eileen
Crawford. Additional attendees were
Pete Wilson, Michael Scott, Jeff Taylor, Denise Chavez and Bryan Kurowski, some
of whom had helped to review Sirsi policies in the past.
Zora Breeding and
Roberta Winjum met with the Circulation Advisory Group to recruit members to
serve on the joint CAAG/CAG committee to study item types. The new group will include: Zora, Nancy
Boggess-Korekach, Rodger Coleman, Clint Grantham, Ann Martin, Stacy Owens,
Debra Stephens and Linda Tesar.
Zora Breeding and
Pete Wilson met with Juanita Murray, Kathy Smith and Teresa Gray to discuss
cataloging needs and projects in Special Collections. It was good to get a comprehensive list of all the work that has
been identified and some guidelines for setting priorities.
The entire team has
had a very productive month. There are
very few materials awaiting processing in the mailroom – most materials are
being processed within the week that they arrive in Order Services; all serials
and periodicals within 24-48 hours.
Order requests are also very current; the oldest requests are from the
last week in October.
We continue to update
and add procedures to the OS web pages.
John Laraway from
Blackwell’s Book Services met with Mary Beth Blalock, Monica Sanchez, and Mary
Ellen Wilson on Oct. 30 to discuss the Blackwell’s approval plan.
Serials:
Chris Waldrop and the
serials receivers have been busy processing a number of journal cancellations;
Most of the Blackwell Publisher print journals have been cancelled in favor of
the online edition only (for Central, Science, Education, and Music), and many
Academic Press print journals have been cancelled (for Central and Science);
online access is available through Science Direct. Together, these represent approximately 200 print cancellations.
Monographs:
Partly in response to
the changes made earlier this year in the series verification procedure, Monica
has been training staff possessing specific language skills to receive firm
orders in those languages. This has
been proceeding very well. We have also been processing a portion of the Series
Standing Order titles, rather than send them directly to Cataloging to add
records.
Statistics:
Orders Placed: 1186*
Firm orders recd:
1793
Approvals processed:
907
Gifts added: 240
SSOs added: 60
Serials/Periodicals
recd: 4380
Speed Cataloged: 1104
titles
*Of the orders
placed, 58 were placed using OS's Procurement card. As of this month, we have made some minor changes to the way the
orders for these Procurement card orders are created in Acorn, (including information linking to the
PaymentNet records) that we hope will streamline this process for the
future.
Sue Davis and
Charlotte Lew labored away on PUP with Kathy Smith. Over the course of three visits, the trio reviewed and cleaned
366 volumes from Peabody's upper vault.
The project should wind down by the end of year, but we aren't taking
bets quite yet.
Sue Davis updated the
Disaster Response Supplies and Resources List and sent out paper copies to all
the library locations originally sent the red binder response manual. She also posted the 2002 update on the web
at:
Sue Davis uploaded
PEM data and ran reports for both Special Collections and the Annex. There were some software/hardware snags, but
George came to the rescue again.
Munter's returned the 6 boxes of water-damaged Science periodicals from their vacuum freeze-drying adventure to Ft. Worth, TX. The dried books were still warped and cockled, but they were salvaged before mold had time to set in. Rebinding most of those volumes will bring them back to a useful shelf life. Other volumes that were air-dried locally were also sent to the bindery. The rescue operation appears to be over.
Sue Davis met with
the Graduate School staff member in charge of binding theses and dissertations.
The Graduate School was unhappy with the current binding quality and was
looking to change binderies. Sue
arranged a meeting with a Heckman Bindery representative. Signs are looking good that the School will
be switching to Heckman, especially since they could piggyback on our price
discounts and delivery schedule. As in
the past, Graduate School staff will manage and process their own shipments.
Sue Davis accompanied
Juanita Murray, Kathy Smith, and Strawberry Luck from Special Collections to a
meeting in the Art and Art History Dept. todiscuss the possibility of moving
the Contini-Volterra Photo Archives collection to Special Collections.
Subsequent discussions are continuing.
Binding:
1,153 volumes
processed for binding
381 new monographs
10 rebinds
603 periodicals
159 serials
164 items
rebarcoded
Of 1,374 new Central
paperbacks, 603 (44%) were selected for immediate binding
554 Acorn records
updated as a result of binding.
All Heckman invoices
have been paid except for some from the Oct. 10 shipment.
The 2003 Heckman
Bindery pickup and delivery schedule has been posted to the web at:
The regular 2-week
turnaround schedule continues with the usual exceptions of July 4,
Thanksgiving, and Christmas holiday weeks.
Regarding the
remaining bindery pickup/delivery shipments for 2002, please note that there
are ONLY three more scheduled before January 2003 due to the upcoming holiday
gaps in the schedule. Those shipment
dates are Nov. 7, Nov. 21 and Dec. 12.
Sue Davis and
Machelle Keen reviewed the recently updated Heckman binding profile and
discovered additional fine-tuning is necessary. The bindery is undergoing internal procedural streamlining, which
in turn is affecting some of their product lines and some of our internal
procedures. Hence, the more frequent tinkering
with the profiles. However, over the last year much profile cleanup has
happened thanks to Machelle's hard work.
Marking:
3,829 volumes labeled
229 unbound serials
160 RUSH items
21 reels of
microfilm.
477 microfiche labels
As of Nov. 1, the
oldest items on the marking shelves arrived Oct. 24.
Repair:
197 volumes were
repaired with 278 treatments.
The vast majority of
items belonged to Central Library, although staff also repaired items from
Divinity, Peabody, Science/Engineering, Law, Music, and Special Collections.
Work was divided among spine repairs, enclosure boxes, and a special project or
two.