Technical Services Monthly Report

Dec. 2003

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

After several attempts, and a great deal of help from both Dale Poulter and Ebsco, the Ebsco invoice was loaded into Acorn. After a project this fall to update our Purchase Order numbers in Ebsco’s records, fewer than 30 titles remained that had incorrect PO numbers, requiring manual linking to their orders. The invoice has now been paid, for slightly over $600K. The Elsevier titles that we changed from print to online at the last hour have not yet been billed.

At a December TechForce meeting, the Rush Task Force (Mary Ellen Wilson, Susan Bell, Sheranda Lee and Rita Breen) presented their report. The document will now go to teams for TS-wide comments. The Rush Task Force is currently looking at existing procedures and updating them. Toward that end, Mary Ellen Wilson met with Ann Martin and Janet Thomason at the beginning of the month to gain a better understanding of how Holds work.

Two meetings of the Electronic Resources Task Force concentrated on reviewing the data elements an electronic resources management system should contain. For now, the Electronic Resources Task Force is going on hiatus while the library devotes its efforts to SFX and MetaLib implementation and strategic planning, and while we wait for vendors to develop their e-resource management systems.

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

Mary Charles Lasater presented a workshop on Authority Control in Acorn to interested library staff.

Ann Ercelawn presented a workshop on Series Authority Control in Acorn for non-catalogers. Ann also taught an Electronic serials class in Gainesville, FL on Dec. 12.

Several staff met with the OCLC representatives who were here to present the various reports they had run against our list of unique holdings.

Sue Davis continues to work with John Haar and Kathy Smith on the fragile book policies requested by CDAG. The group is making good progress.

The Preservation Team continues to benefit from our volunteer extraordinaire, Jing Liu. She worked more hours than originally promised and will likely return in January. Thanks, Jing!

Order Services hosted a reunion of the former Resource Services divisions for a Christmas get-together, and a good time was had by all. Our thanks to all who contributed to this event, and our special thanks to LITS for providing the perfect location!

Many of us also enjoyed the Special Collections reception.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

We anticipate beginning to catalog the Morris Wachs collection in January. The RIP (Reduction in Inventory Project) has been put on hold for about a year to accommodate staffing needs in other areas. Ann Ercelawn is happy to report that she finished the last of the Pia serials. Becky Atack reports that she only has one more box of Pia “dups” to process. Susan Bell continued to process items from the Roller children’s literature gift collection for Peabody. She also continued to spend time each week at Peabody processing the TN gift textbooks. Mary Charles Lasater and Jeff Taylor cataloged more Peabody Ed.S. theses. Pete Wilson continued to make records for the manuscript collections in Special Collections.

Jeff Taylor received and processed a new batch of Peabody theses. Ann Ercelawn cataloged more government documents and some new Arts books. Don Jones worked on Pia, Baudelaire and Science materials. Yuh-Fen Benda took extended leave to visit her family in December. Ann Barnette helped with the LC books during Yuh-Fen’s absence. Before leaving, Yuh-Fen finished cataloging the Arkangel complete Shakespeare titles on CD. Zora Breeding cataloged additional titles in the Gutenberg-e database and worked with Mary Beth Blalock to resolve a treatment issue with the archival CD-ROMs for the Digital History Archives. Bryan Kurowski cataloged another large shipment of Lecture Notes in Computer Science titles. Mary Charles Lasater and Denise Chavez worked on clean up associated with the LCSH unauthorized headings list. Linda Davis worked on withdrawals for Management, Peabody and others. Linda is also preparing for the workshop session of How to Withdraw a Book, which will be given for all interested staff in January.

Ann Ercelawn reports that Vanderbilt volunteered to participate in SerialsSolutions' beta test of a feature that will allow us to edit holdings on our e-journal records.

Zora Breeding met with Yvonne Boyer to learn about the Morris Wachs collection. She also met with Juanita Murray and Kathy Smith to review the cataloging needs of Special Collections and their plans to use the reassessment money earmarked for special collections cataloging.

CAT Statistics:

1528 new titles cataloged, including 291 original contributions or national level enhancements to the OCLC database and 933 local modifications

192 titles recataloged

25 reconned

228 items withdrawn

4800 new or modified authority records from Marcive

663 name, 394 subject and 41 series headings changed on Acorn bibliographic records (not part of new cataloging activity)

Appx. 300 series authority records brought into Acorn

138 authority records deleted

At the beginning of Jan., Copy Cataloging's green "Start here" flag was near materials received on 11/12.

ORDER SERVICES:

Statistics:

Received and processed:

Serials/Periodicals: 3800

Approvals: 900

Added to Acorn:

SSO's: 130

Gifts: 252

OS placed 1054 new orders, and Speed Cataloged 1024 titles.

Receiving is current for all materials.

Special Projects: Verifiers continue to assist with the Special Collections metadata project and Peabody projects, as well as more routine materials.

PRESERVATION:

Binding:

998 monographs

48 rebinds

701 periodicals

129 serials

1876 volumes total

1091 new Central paperbacks sorted and 531 (49%) selected for immediate binding. Many of these paperbacks were gift items, causing the higher than usual percentage. For the calendar year of 2003 we sorted 14,519 paperbacks and selected 41% for immediate binding.

70 monographs rebarcoded in preparation for binding. The new Central monograph binding policy (not binding until the paperback physically needs it) has had a dramatic effect on the quantity of these items.

603 Acorn records updated as a result of binding

Heckman has assigned a new, inexperienced customer service representative to Vanderbilt. Although our binding profile is complicated, Karen Pillow and Machelle Keen will gladly help the new person with what she needs to know.

Marking:

3789 volumes

132 unbound serials

234 RUSH items

26 reels of microfilm labeled

At the beginning of Jan., the oldest items on the marking shelves dated from December 30, meaning that the marking backlog has been eliminated. For the first time in months, the team did not need to call upon any outside TS help.

Repair:

318 volumes were repaired with 444 treatments

December saw an influx of many hundreds of items needing repair, most coming from Central's circulation returns. The lab now has the biggest repair backlog in its history. However, a banner month for productivity in the repair lab saw both a large wrapper order and many spine repairs. Materials from 6 libraries were treated.