Technical Services Monthly Report
September 2002
DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:
The Reduction in Inventory Project Task Force (Susan Bell,
chair) was busy with procedures for phase one of the project, which has to do
with cataloging the 1,190 materials that had LC copy returned from OCLC’s
retrocon-batch service. Their intention is to process approximately 40 books
per week. During the month, Annex staff sent 87 RIP items from the RS
Inventory RIP catalogers. These were for Music, Peabody and Science holdings.
(Meanwhile 20 new books were added to RS Inventory). Jeff
Taylor and Bryan Kurowski are now completing the cataloging of these RIP
materials.
Ann Ercelawn,
Angel Bruner and Charlotte Lew worked feverishly to get the new TS Web
Documentation page ready for its Sept. 6th debut. Good work, Ann, Angel and
Charlotte! We also thank Dale Poulter, Suellen Stringer-Hye, and Chris Benda
for some technical assistance. We hope that the redesigned site makes our
documentation more readily accessible.
Ann Ercelawn, Rick
Stringer-Hye, and Roberta Winjum met to discuss the Serials Solutions records
that they have been examining in Acorntest and come up with a list of
recommendations for improvements.
Roberta Winjum is working on the Collection Growth and ARL
statistics again this year, and finding it very challenging to count our vast
e-resource collection. Attempting to provide figures for electronic government
publications is particularly interesting.
Zora Breeding, Sue Davis, Mary Ellen Wilson, Chris Waldrop,
Roberta Winjum, and others attended a meeting with Solinet
representatives. Our conversation
included issues pertaining to PromptCat, OCLC Connexion and CatMe, as well as
billing, preservation and other concerns.
The 2002 Staff Forum Committee (Roberta Winjum, chair, Sue
Davis, Jody Combs, and Teresa Gray) finalized plans for the forum, scheduled
for Oct. 8.
The Baker Building staff had an opportunity to review our
emergency procedures this month. Pat
Johnson met with Order Services staff to discuss the upcoming fire drill, and
her responsibilities as the Fire Warden for our group. We all participated in the Fire Drill on
Sept.25. Pat reports that we (that is,
ALL occupants of the building) successfully cleared the building in 4 minutes.
The Technical Services Workflow Task Force has been renamed
the TechForce. We are now able to leap small buildings if someone gives us a
hand.
PERSONNEL:
Many staff were able to attend some of the University
Employee Celebration Month activities. In particular, Pat Johnson crossed the
stage of Langford Auditorium to receive congratulations and thanks for her 30
years at Vanderbilt. She and other 30-, 35- 40-, and 45-year Vanderbilt
employees were also honored at a reception at Chancellor Gee’s home on Sept.
30.
Congratulations to Kathy Ma and Don Jones, who celebrate 25
years with Vanderbilt this year. In addition to receiving their chairs, each
also received a visit from Paul Gherman and Flo Wilson to deliver a gold
balloon and cookies.
Denise Chavez was honored for her third porcelain acorn at
the "Acorn Notes Recipient's Lunch" at the University Club.
We're also pleased
to congratulate Yan-Xia Zhong, who completed the Naturalization process to
become a US Citizen. Congratulations,
Yan-Xia!
Susan Timmons was hired as a Serial Receiver, taking the
place of Gina Berry. Susan has worked previously in the Law Library and in the
corporate library of Ernest and Julio Gallo.
She has most recently worked as a temp in the Management Library. Gina Berry brings to her new position in
verification multiple language skills, including Russian, Czech, French, and
German.
Daphne Walker returned to Preservation from her summer leave
of absence. Preservation also hired a student, Adrienne Fischer, to help in
Binding and Marking.
Becky Atack has agreed to serve on the Staff Council
Follow-up Committee.
Ann Ercelawn was an official reviewer of the SCCTP's Basic
Serials Cataloging module. She also did some work for NASIG's Evaluation and
Assessment Committee.
Pete Wilson’s work on ISAG and its Acorn and Virtual Catalog
Task Force focused on looking at ways to correct problems found in our
implementation of the new Sirsi software, as well as thinking about future
directions.
Ann Ercelawn and Michael Scott
attended UT Knoxville's Scholarly Publishing Symposium.
Most of us were able to attend the
TS Web page rollout party at Baker.
Catalogers and
others spent some time catching up with Rich Murray during his brief visit.
Several enjoyed an informational brown bag on the subject of Ergonomics as well as another on changes to our health care plans.
Some also attended the Benton Chapel Memorial service for
Anthony Buchanan.
LIBRARY ANNEX:
The new 2nd Floor Peabody Room was completed on September
25th. University Archives staff (David Stringfellow and two of his students)
have already begun loading the newly installed shelves with Peabody pre-merger
archives. Vanderbilt's moving crews were here four times during September to
haul shelving components from the (non-elevator access) basement. VU carpenters
worked on the installation from September 19 through the 25th.
Annex tours were provided for new staff in the Central and
Management Libraries. Library staff that have not yet toured the Annex can
email Peg Earheart to arrange a customized tour.
Ongoing Annex projects include: Peabody withdrawals, Law, Central, Observatory, and other transfers, Law withdrawals, the Mngt./Cen Collection Decisions project, and a constant barrage of ILL and circulation requests.
1180's were prepared by Peg and mailed the last week of
September to our University tenants. This was for the 1st quarter 2002/2003
square footage leasing arrangements. The Law School’s ITS department became a
new tenant.
Peg met with Law LITS staff in the design of back-up tape
storage.
Statistics:
559 items retrieved and circulated
80 additional requests were searched for patrons but not
sent to campus.
249 of our patrons sent their requests via the Web.
7 Vanderbilt students requested 43 pages faxed.
429 pages from 54 Annex books photocopied for Inter-Library
Loan.
Transfers:
1,232 linear feet of materials transferred from the stacks of Central, Divinity, Law, and Management. We also received new VColls. from Special Collections.
Maintenance:
4,436 Acorn records edited
3 records re-cataloged.
1,379 withdrawals (1,321 were from Educ.)
8 reinstatements
20 intra-library transfers for
non-Annex materials
Visitors:
43 scholars, tenants, vendors, and visitors were on site.
Departments represented included ITS, Law School, Medical Center, M.I.S., Music
Library, OUL, Special Collections, Student Accounts, and the Theatre Dept
Buildings and Equipment:
LITS staff: Judy Carter, Fred Bidel, George Anglin, and
Mills Bell made several site visits to either repair, and/or upgrade our
hardware. Leonor Van Cotthem and Joe Collins are particularly pleased with
their now working equipment!
Normal autumn maintenance of our HVAC system received 2
visits by both the Carrier Corporation and by VU Work Management staff.
A roof leak (conveniently over the 2nd floor bathroom (and its drain) occurred. The roof itself was not the culprit this time. One of our six roof drains was stopped up with leaves.
CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES
TEAM:
The team had new PC’s installed this month and we are very
pleased with our newer faster machines. We appreciate the work of Judy Carter,
Fred Bidel and Mills Bell (and those behind the scenes at LITS) to make the
transition go smoothly and quickly. LITS further helped the CAT team by investigating
and confirming that keyword mapping was indeed partially responsible for the
problem several staff had been experiencing with Acorn crashing.
Mary Charles Lasater conducted the last of the NACO training
sessions at the beginning of the month. Denise Chavez held a training session
on using CatME for Divinity staff. Michael Scott continues his training with
Don Jones. Bryan Kurowski and Zora
Breeding worked with Gina Berry to help train her in her new duties as the
verifier for Russian materials.
Jeff Taylor
processed the remainder of the August theses shipment and cataloged 9 new
electronic theses. He also continues to catalog the Loeb Classical Library
books and is working on cataloging the Geological Survey CD-ROMs for Science. Susan Bell has begun reclassifying Peabody’s
Big Books and Curriculum Lab collections into LC classification. Yuh-Fen Benda
re-cataloged a 24-volume set of Japanese books and analyzed another 12 volumes
of the Chinese dynasty set. Jean Wright continued her work with the unconverted
Dewey materials, focusing largely on Science materials. Zora Breeding began
investigating a list of broken URL’s and missing records in Acorn for
electronic databases. Zora also investigated a problem that was reported to
CAAG that has to do with foreign subjects acting as hyperlinks in Webcat (yet
to be resolved) and a question about why limiting by language in a video search
was producing some strange results.
In authorities news, Mary Charles Lasater reports that she
is checking the work of the recent Vanderbilt NACO trainees and preparing for
NACO training with Ingram employees. Sue Richardson has begun working through
the unauthorized lists generated by the EEBO load. Another larger-than-usual
list was generated this month because of the latest NetLibrary record load.
Bryan Kurowski identified a
problem with the hypertext policies for the 8XX (series) fields in Sirsi. With
helpful advice from Mary Charles Lasater and the diligence of Nancy Boggess
Korekach in LITS, this problem was fixed, and the hypertext cross reference
links in the 8XX fields now work properly.
ORDER
SERVICES:
We began the month interviewing candidates for our LAIII
position (Monica Sanchez, Chris Waldrop and Mary Ellen Wilson). We were fortunate to be able to hire Susan
Timmons, effective September 23.
Several OS team members worked to get the documentation for
Order Services web pages ready – Angel Bruner, also a member of the TS Web Task
Force, coordinated this activity and did a great job of organizing the OS pages. We also appreciate the work of Alice
Cunningham, Gina Berry, and Chris Waldrop who did an excellent job of updating
much of our documentation and preparing it for the web.
Materials are moving smoothly through Order Services. Serials and Periodicals are being processed
within 24-48 hours of receipt. We are also making progress against the
end-of-year onslaught of materials now being received, and have nearly cleared
the mailroom shelves of firm orders and approvals.
Statistics:
662 approvals added
270 gift titles added
1840 firm orders received.
822 titles speed cataloged
3707 serial/periodicals processed
1509 new titles ordered (550 of these on CM and GOBI)
Chris Waldrop has been training Susan Tidwell this month in
the fine art of serial check in. Chris
has also been working on a project to add our subscriber numbers to Acorn
records to facilitate activating online access.
Monica Sanchez
reports that we continue see an increase in the number of Special Collections
titles ordered, as well as materials for Reserves.
Jim Tucker, Ebsco sales rep, treated us to a demonstration
of Ebsco’s Electronic Journal Service.
PRESERVATION:
On Labor Day, Charlotte Lew was called upon for quick action
when a leaky sprinkler in Science damaged approximately one range section of
bound periodicals. Charlotte responded immediately with fans and gloves and
called in Sue Davis as back up. Six boxes of soggy periodicals were sent for
vacuum freeze-drying and several dozen more were air-dried with fans and dehumidifiers.
On Sept. 17, Sue, Charlotte, and Machelle visited the triage room and reviewed
all the now dried, but cockled and warped, volumes for rebinding, replacement,
or repair.
Sue Davis and Charlotte Lew joined Kathy Smith for two more
PUP sessions in the Peabody Library. The team reviewed, cleaned, and sorted 203
volumes in the month. The project appears to be more than half way completed.
Sue Davis sent out copies of the 2001-2002 ARL Preservation
Statistics Questionnaire to all the division directors.
Binding:
1,426 volumes sent, including
800 new monographs,
8 rebinds,
485 periodicals,
133 serials.
805 Acorn records related updated
1,274 new Central paperbacks sorted; 540 (42%) selected for immediate
binding.
101 monographs rebarcoded in
preparation for binding
There are no significant backlogs of materials waiting
either to go out to the bindery or to be received from return shipments.
Marking:
2,880 volumes labeled,
168 RUSH requests
233 unbound serials
165 microfilm reels
As of Oct. 2, the team was
labeling items received in the unit on September 23.
Repair:
150 volumes were repaired with 254 treatments.
The bulk of the month's work was split almost 50/50 between
spine repairs for Central and enclosure constructions for Special Collections.