Technical Services Monthly Report

January 2003

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

With the new Technical Services organization, the TechForce has begun holding weekly meetings each Wednesday morning. Brief summaries of these meetings will be accessible via the Technical Services web pages at http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/rs/techserv/Administrative/TechForceminutes/TSTFminutes.htm

The RIP Task Force submitted its final report to the TechForce at the beginning of the month. Of note: over 600 of the DLC books are already finished. The task force also met with TechForce to discuss the report and the work that has been accomplished thus far and to identify areas for further investigation. The RIP recommendations, can be found in the TechForce documentation under http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/rs/techserv/Administrative/inventoryproject.htm

Pete Wilson convened a meeting of the Cataloging Workflow Task Force (other members include Becky Atack, Alice Cunningham, Bryan Kurowski, and Monica Sanchez). They have begun implementing a few changes already to improve the workflow, and are in the process of reviewing others.

With the help of Nancy Boggess-Korekach and Catherine Gick, Mary Charles Lasater conducted a “hypertext searching” session in the Electronic Classroom on Jan. 6, which was very well attended. An additional session for Central Reference staff had to be postponed due to the inclement weather.

The Serials Solutions group held an open house in the electronic classroom on Jan. 10. Ann Ercelawn, Zora Breeding, and Roberta Winjum, members of that group, helped to give demonstrations and answer questions about the Serials Solutions Marc records currently loaded into Acorntest.

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

Linda Davis was reassigned from the former Maintenance team to the Cataloging and Authorities team in January, although she continued to work from the Annex. CAT began preparations for her physical arrival in the GLB on February 3. Linda will be responsible for all the maintenance- related activities that were formerly done by both her and Clint Grantham. CAT is very much looking forward to having Linda on their team.

In addition to their own duties, Susan Timmons and Ibtisam Latif from Order Services spent a couple of mornings in Binding and Marking helping out. Many thanks!

Zora Breeding, Sue Davis, Mary Charles Lasater, Pete Wilson and Michael Scott attended the ALA midwinter conference in Philadelphia. Among other activities, Zora, Dale Poulter and Rick Stringer-Hye, met with Peter McCracken and Tim Granquist of Serials Solutions. Also at ALA, Mary Charles Lasater learned at the Big Heads meeting that OCLC has backlogged original title cataloging tapeloads from most of the large research libraries. For some of these libraries, their original cataloging has not been tapeloaded for 3 years. This information explains why we have to do more original cataloging on OCLC for current titles. We suspect there will be more information to come on this matter

Michael Scott enrolled in the master's program in Latin American Studies, taking Brazilian Civilization and Intermediate Portuguese.

Sue Davis attended the first meeting of the newly created Digital Collections Committee.

Several staff attended the OCLC video on the Patriot Act as well as Scott McDermott’s interesting brown bag on his new book.

Most staff were able to attend Paul Gherman's "State of the Library" address.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

The stream of materials, both physical and virtual, continued to be heavy throughout the month of January. Due to the progress of many special projects, the accumulation of LC-copy books awaiting processing grew to a backlog of about three months. Susan Bell worked with Yuh-Fen Benda, Bryan Kurowski and Jeff Taylor to come up with a plan to bring the overflow of LC copy cataloging books back to a reasonable turn-around time. Their efforts, with additional processing help from Ann Barnette, Michael Scott and Zora Breeding, were very effective and the backlog was reduced to a more manageable amount – LC books are now being processed within a month of their arrival in the workroom.

A new shipment of Vanderbilt theses arrived and is being processed. Jeff Taylor does the initial processing and Ann Barnette and Mary Charles Lasater supply the subject analysis. Ann Barnette continued work on the project to add newly available URL’s to the records for Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Jeff, Bryan, and Zora Breeding worked on the University of California Press project, which involved adding URL’s and records for the UC Press public access electronic titles that were not duplicated in Acorn by NetLibrary. Mary Charles finished work on cataloging the remaining titles in the Oxford Online Reference collection. Ann Ercelawn worked on United Nations publications, Pia serials, a few Baudelaire titles, and a great deal of maintenance work on CONSER serial records due to year end changes. Denise and Mary Charles continued work on the Peabody theses project (not to be confused with newly arrived theses). Bryan and Jeff continued to catalog RIP books from the inventory. Yuh-Fen found time to analyze a few more titles from the Chinese dynasty set. Becky Atack and Yuh-Fen continue to bring large numbers of new series authority records into Acorn.

Mary Charles Lasater and Denise Chavez worked on the authorities cleanup associated with the large numbers of withdrawn titles being reported by the libraries. Denise prepared a file of 400 authority records that need to be deleted from our file, which was sent to Marcive. Deleting these records is the only way currently available to us to prevent blind references from displaying in Acorn. Due to the large numbers of recently withdrawn titles, this file represented only a small portion of titles waiting to be processed.

Michael Scott’s training continues to progress. He is working independently on many of his materials. Don Jones, with some help from Pete Wilson, continues to review and revise Michael’s original cataloging and OCLC enhance work.

Mary Charles continued to review the NACO contributions of the most recently trained catalogers and is pleased to report that Catherine Gick, who came to the library with previous NACO experience, completed the formal review process and become independent for personal and corporate name contributions this month.

Bryan Kurowski experienced his first-ever successful e-mail report to the Library Of Congress regarding an error in the call number Cutter for a particular title. The error was acknowledged and promptly corrected by LC support staff. Congratulations, Bryan!

Statistics:

2198 new titles cataloged in CAT

264 titles re-cataloged.

3074 new Authority records added to Acorn

1961 authority records were replaced, either due to local modifications or because of changes to the national authority file.

ORDER SERVICES:

OS has been extremely busy this month processing routine materials. Most materials are currently being processed within 2 working days of their receipt in the mailroom - monographs and serials/periodicals alike. In general, everyone has been kept very busy working to keep ordering and receiving up to date, and they have done an excellent job of it.

The Ebsco invoice has been finalized - all have been posted and paid in Acorn, and the University has been reimbursed for the prepayment that they made on the library's behalf.

Swets and Harrassowitz have not yet been completed, but are in the works.

New orders placed:

1655 (717 of these on CM or GOBI)

Received and processed:

Serials/Periodicals: 3915

Firm orders: 1216

Approvals: 1113

Added to Acorn:

SSO's: 255

Gifts: 178

Speed Cataloged:

959 titles

PRESERVATION:

The team was snowed under during January and we're not just referring to the outside weather. End-of-semester returns and a shift in cataloging priorities created backlogs in every unit. We have worked our way through most of the biggest backlogs, except for some items needing re-barcoding prior to binding and items needing spine repairs in the lab. The statistics provided below will bear out the tale of our localized blizzard.

Charlotte Lew and Sue Davis (along with Kathy Smith) are cheering the end of the PUP project. The trio cleaned/inspected/sorted/boxed 856 books in January. Over the course of the 7-month project, they processed 3,255 items. The range of materials in the Peabody Upper Vault Collection was wide, encompassing everything from Peabody publications and items with Peabody connections to novels and atlases.

Sue and Charlotte consulted with Carrie Sprouse on designing lids for open microfiche containers in Central's Media Center. The resulting lightweight cardboard lids will protect the fiche collection from further dust abrasion and light damage. Carrie will be constructing all the lids herself and reports the project is well underway.

BINDING:

1,414 monographs

71 rebinds

905 periodicals

87 serials

2,477 volumes total

Machelle Keen reports it's the highest monthly total in three years. As a result of all that binding, the holdings updates on Acorn also increased significantly. Patti Skipper, Sheranda Moore, and Machelle together updated 959 records.

1202 new Central paperbacks sorted and 457 selected for immediate binding (38%).

234 monographs rebarcoded in preparation for binding and whittling away on the rest

Heckman Bindery announced a new partnership between SF-Systems, a binding software company, and SIRSI for a product that promises to eliminate the double keying now required by LARS. SIRSI's press release can be found at:

http://www.sirsi.com/Sirsinews/20030124sfsystems.html

While the press release states the product is available immediately, a SIRSI representative at ALA told Sue Davis it would be June. Sue will investigate this exciting new development.

The oldest Heckman invoices waiting for processing date from the end of December, 2002.

MARKING:

3,835 volumes

246 unbound serials

175 RUSH items

22 reels of microfilm labeled

Since the materials are coming in so fast, the entire team has pitched in to keep the marking shelves from overflowing. Currently, we are still not caught up to where we'd like to be, but are getting closer. As of Feb. 3, we are labeling items that arrived in the unit on Jan. 20.

REPAIR:

163 volumes were repaired with 248 treatments.

The focus during January was spine repairs, which comprise the largest backlog. While most of the work was performed on Central items, the staff also worked on a few items from Special Collections and Management.