Technical Services Monthly Report
February 2003
DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:
A highlight of Technical Services deserving of special note
is the performance of Order Services. Currently their work is up to date, and
has been for some time. Purchase requests are being added to Acorn within a
matter of days of their receipt at Baker. Firm orders, serials, and periodicals
are all being processed in Acorn within a few days of their receipt in the
Baker Mailroom. We believe this is due to a trained staff, improvements in
procedures, and the effective use of automation. Congratulations, OS, on this
achievement!
At the TechForce meetings, the budget was discussed, the
evaluation process was agreed upon, a new TS mission statement and TS goals and
policies were discussed, and a variety of other issues were handled. Summaries
of most of these meetings are now available at http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/rs/techserv/Administrative/TechForceminutes/TSTFminutes.htm
As a result of a TechForce idea, Zora Breeding wrote up a
draft proposal for a new procedure called Immediate Need or INEED. The INEED procedure proposes to serve
patrons having an immediate need for an in-process item by allowing it to
circulate prior to completing its cataloging. Roberta Winjum will take the
proposal to LMC.
The Cataloging Workflows Task Force (Pete Wilson, chair)
discussed the reaction to re-searching of RUSH titles and NC copy in Order
Services. Alice Cunningham and Monica Sanchez have been working to determine
what materials may benefit from being re-searched by OS staff prior to shipping
to GLB. The successful result is that many books that might have been sent over
to Cataloging without copy (NC) are now being speed cataloged in OS.
Roberta Winjum worked closely with Dale Poulter and Rick
Stringer-Hye to finish up a few remaining problems with the Serials Solutions
titles. We hope to load the next update into Acorn in March, following final
testing and approval from ISAG.
Sue Davis and Charlotte Lew began planning for the library's
first Preservation Awareness Week scheduled for April 7-11 (National Library
Week). A special daily event is planned each of 4 days that week, including an
afternoon at the movies. Details will be forthcoming as the planning evolves.
Roberta Winjum and Team Leaders consulted about the required
budget reductions and then met individually with the staff that will be
affected by the reductions prior to Paul Gherman’s budget address.
PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:
This month we welcomed
Linda Davis to the GLB. Ann Ercelawn and Zora Breeding prepared her new work
area and planned a welcome event for her first day. Together the three will be
looking at her responsibilities. The new arrangement seems to be working well.
Mary Charles conducted the rescheduled meeting on Hypertext
issues for the Central Reference staff.
Ann Ercelawn traveled to Memphis to conduct a Basic Serials
Cataloging workshop for library staff there.
Technical Services staff was well represented at the Service
Quality 101 seminar offered by Dennis Clark and Sharon Weiner.
Staff enjoyed the brown bag given by Eileen Crawford and
Susan Widmer. Some staff also were able to attend Jody Combs’ informative
presentation on computer security.
All team members worked on their self-evaluations during the
month.
CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:
The flow of new materials finally ebbed somewhat toward the
end of the month, possibly due to Order Services staff being busy with
self-evaluations. Michael Scott is the exception, reporting an increase in his
materials. We received a few new theses this month. Zora reports seeing many of
the new Whitesell German gifts coming through. Ann Ercelawn is working on UN
documents. Susan Bell is making some progress on cataloging the Tennessee
textbooks. All are busy with normal materials in their subjects.
Zora Breeding met with Ann Barnette and Becky Atack to
discuss the most effective way for the LAIVs to prioritize their time to help
with the most pressing backlogs of materials in this room. As a result we were
able to make some significant progress on a couple of the most serious
backlogs.
Don Jones and Zora Breeding met with Yvonne Boyer to discuss
adding some Pia duplicates to the collection. Becky Atack agreed to take on
this project, with Don’s support.
Zora met with Janice Adlington to discuss adding records to
Acorn for the individual databases within our Past Masters e-resource. They are
reviewing some Marc records loaded into AcornTest. Janice and Zora also
discussed adding access to new titles available electronically through
CogNet. Jeff Taylor was able to help to
add URL’s to existing print equivalents in Acorn.
Ann Ercelawn, with some input from Pete Wilson and Zora
Breeding, worked with Mary Beth Blalock to document in the Central CD-Rom
procedures how to deal with new titles being added to the ERL server and titles
moving from the ERL server to a different location.
Ann Ercelawn conducted NACO series training for Michael
Scott and Catherine Gick.
Mary Charles Lasater met with Dana Currier of TV News to
share some information about sources for personal and geographic names.
Statistics:
The team cataloged 1906 of the 2921 new titles processed by
TS in February.
3315 authority records were added to Acorn to match new
headings on records.
Another 2965 authority records were replaced.
ORDER
SERVICES:
Along with Dale Poulter, Nancy Boggess-Korekach, and Anne
Martin in LITS, Mary Ellen Wilson participated in a conference call with
Jane Grawmeyer at Sirsi to set up a test for sending orders to YBP via EDI. The
initial test was a success, and further testing continues.
Monica Sanchez met with the verifier/receivers to review subject
and duty assignment, and to make adjustments as warranted.
Monica Sanchez, Chris Waldrop, and Mary Ellen Wilson met
with Deborah Brooks and Leslie Reynolds from the Management Library to discuss
ordering procedures.
Chris Waldrop and Mary Ellen Wilson participated in beta
testing Sirsi's new Acquisitions Wizards for recurring orders.
Last year a decision was made to cancel the print
subscriptions to all titles published by Blackwell for Central, Science, and
Education. Since then, Chris Waldrop has been working with Mary Beth Blalock
and Rick Stringer-Hye to make sure we have online access to all of these
titles. Most were already available through the Ingenta service, but in the
past month considerable effort has gone into making sure that these titles were
also active in Blackwell's own Synergy web site. For some reason many weren't
active, but after a lot of diligence by representatives at Ebsco and Swets and
in Order Services all but a few of the titles in Synergy are now active. The
rest are expected to be activated shortly.
All verifiers and receivers have been processing new orders
and incoming materials upon receipt at Baker, with very short turnaround times.
Serial receivers continue to process serials and periodicals
within 24-48 hours of their receipt in Baker.
Statistics:
Received and processed:
Serials/Periodicals:
3577
Firm orders: 1360
Approvals: 883
Added to Acorn:
SSO's: 227
Gifts: 181
In addition, 1794 new orders were placed, and 811 titles
were cataloged.
PRESERVATION:
Preservation staff met with Anne Martin to discuss potential
labeling improvement. Several ideas surfaced for streamlining some of the
functions, such as automating the creation of location in the Comments field.
More investigation and development remain to be done, but there is optimism
that improvements can be made.
Sue Davis and Charlotte Lew trained two Peabody students to
help clean the Peabody historical textbook collection, which is quite dusty and
dirty. Mary Beth Blalock is reviewing the collection for the Center for
Research Libraries and Special Collections.
Twice recently during rainy days some new library materials
got wet while sitting in the open white plastic tubs. Both times the messengers
noticed the problem immediately and notified Preservation in time for a rescue.
Sue Davis, with Pat Johnson's help, is investigating the possibility of closed
tubs similar to those used by ILL.
Good news! Heckman Bindery has announced that they will not
increase prices for the next fiscal year. While the announcement is not yet in
writing, it was certainly good to hear during these tight budget times.
A couple of small book repair projects deserve special
mention. 1) Charlotte Lew built portfolios for two tiny miniature books, one
3" and one 1.5", so the items wouldn't get lost on the shelf. 2)
Charlotte flattened, removed old tape, re-backed with Japanese tissue, and
encapsulated an early campus map for Special Collections. The results were
quite striking.
Interesting question of the month: The Law School
Registrar's only copy of its Bulletin from the early part of the 20th century
has disintegrated into broken, brittle pieces from heavy use. Law Library staff
consulted with Sue Davis, who in turn consulted with University Archives staff
who discovered that some of the issues are available in the Archives.
Binding:
817 monographs
9 rebinds
563 periodicals
267 serials
288 Acorn holdings records updated to reflect the binding
activity
949 new Central paperback monographs sorted; 383 (40%)
selected for immediate binding.
230 previously circulated paperbacks rebarcoded in
preparation for binding.
There is a small backlog of items awaiting rebarcoding, but
it is a priority for March.
Karen and Machelle are working on Heckman Bindery invoices
from the January 2003 shipments.
It was a typical month of total binding activity, but a
library-by-library count reflects higher than usual activity by Divinity,
Mngt., and Peabody. Fortunately, a corresponding decrease in Central's numbers
kept the total amount in the moderate (and manageable) range.
Marking:
4,258 volumes
204 unbound serials
172 RUSH items
49 reels of microfilm
labeled
As of March 3 staff are labeling books that arrived in the
area on Feb. 18.
Repair:
241 volumes were repaired with 302 treatments
The bulk of the month's work focused on spine repairs and
wrapper boxes for the Baudelaire Center, Central, Divinity, Law, and Special
Collections.