Technical Services Monthly Report

July 2003

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

Zora Breeding, Mary Ellen Wilson, Sue Davis and Roberta Winjum, a.k.a. TechForce, met to discuss numerous topics. We charged a new Rush/Priority Task Force. Pete Wilson gave us an update from the Cataloging Workflows Task Force. We finalized the INeed procedure and then deferred it to the new Rush/Priority TF. We discussed automating spine label locations with Dale Poulter. Sue brought us up to date on changes to the emergency response procedures. We reviewed Nancy Boggess-Korekach’s proposed procedure for large record loads. We met with the RIP Task Force, chaired by Susan Bell, one last time to review remaining questions.

All TS books in the Cataloging Inventory that had LC or PCC level copy returned from OCLC Retrocon-Batch have been shipped to CAT and should be fully processed by the end of August. Shipments to Divinity are ongoing and will take a few more months.

The Electronic Resources Task Force (Zora Breeding, Mary Beth Blalock, Nancy Boggess-Korecach, Ann Ercelawn, Rick Stringer-Hye, Chris Waldrop, Dale Poulter (ex-officio) and Roberta Winjum, chair) held its first meeting.

Zora Breeding, Mary Charles Lasater and Ann Ercelawn, as part of their CAAG commitment, continued to review Unicorn2003 in Acorntest and send our findings to LITS in preparation for the upgrade at the beginning of August. Zora sent out “what to expect” and “what to beware of” messages to technical processing staff.

Susan Bell, Mary Ellen Wilson, Suzanne Bell, Lee Ann Lannom and Lara Beth Henderson met at the Peabody Library to plan for how best to process the continuing TN textbook gifts. Susan and Suzanne will be going over to Peabody weekly to get these materials under bibliographic control.

Roberta Winjum and Paul Gherman met with Provost Nick Zeppos, Assistant Provost Dennis Hall, and VIPPS chair Dan Cornfield to discuss our proposal for an Institutional Repository using DSpace software. The Provost approved the project. We will be setting up an advisory board, inviting Biomedical to participate, and making a presentation to the Faculty Senate.

Most of the CAT and Preservation Teams migrated to Mulberry at the end of July. Denise Chavez, as Training Coordinator, spent much time working with many of us to answer our questions and help with problem solving. We appreciate all of her help.

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

Sue Davis was active in emergency response planning during July. She met with fellow GLB representatives to discuss building wide emergency response issues. She also met with Pat Johnson to purchase additional disaster response supplies to supplement the current MESS kits. Last, but not least, Sue offered an update session to any interested TSGLB staff about the library's current emergency response planning. That presentation is available under the TS folder in the G drive under the title TSGLB Emergency Response Update. Many staff in CAT and Preservation were able to attend the session

Order Services staff provided a tour of their area to Celia Walker, accompanied by Paul Gherman. Sue Davis also gave Celia and Paul a short tour of the TSGLB, both upstairs and down, to introduce Celia to CAT and Preservation staff and their work.

Sue Davis joined Special Collections staff for the July 14 on-site visit by the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts. This visit is part of a preservation needs assessment survey.

Ann Ercelawn and Sue Davis volunteered to help with the Retirement Learning Program.

Pete Wilson traveled to Virginia to attend Cataloging Rare Book school.

Ann Ercelawn taught a Basic Serials Cataloging workshop at Ingram Book Company.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

As always, the majority of our effort was focused on cataloging new and old materials in all subjects and formats. In addition to cataloging the newly received books in their areas of expertise, the team worked on various projects: Ann Barnette, Jeff Taylor and Mary Charles Lasater were busy processing the new shipment of theses. Jeff and Mary Charles, with help from Chris Benda at Education, continued with the ancient Peabody theses cataloging project. Bryan Kurowski and Jeff Taylor received the last shipment of RIP books. Becky Atack worked on the Pia dup project. Susan Bell worked on more TN textbooks. Yuh-Fen Benda analyzed a few more titles of the "Si bu bei yao" Chinese classics book set. Zora Breeding cataloged a heap of electronic resources for Peabody. Mary Charles worked on cleaning up some authority challenges resulting from the IEEE record load. Michael Scott has been reviewing Cakchikel (Mayan) grammar in order to be able to deal with the 100+ Cakchikel titles received on the Latin American Anthropology fund. Jean Wright continued work on Department of State conversion. Ann Ercelawn continued problem-solving with the Serials Solutions product.

ORDER SERVICES:

Received and processed:

Serials/Periodicals: 4112

Approvals: 1182

Added to Acorn:

SSO's: 138

Gifts: 284

OS placed 1411 new orders, and Speed Cataloged 1052 titles.

In July, OS staff met with Jim Tucker from Ebsco Subscription Services, Bob Schatz from Franklin Book Company, and Julie Dieters from Ingram, to discuss OS' s several accounts. After our discussion with the Ingram rep, our SuperRush account was subsequently changed to eliminate the physical processing so that we may receive these high-priority materials more quickly.

There is very little backlog of requests awaiting processing - most requests are being ordered within a few days of their receipt in OS.

PRESERVATION:

A few Preservation team members took vacation during July, but mostly it was a nose-to-the-grindstone month as summer binding, especially periodicals, continued at high volume.

BINDING:

538 monographs

42 rebinds

900 periodicals

Most libraries tend to send periodicals to the bindery during the summer months and this year is no exception. Sometimes so many periodicals are sent through that the monographs have to take a temporary back seat. That has been the case recently. The early August shipment is also primarily periodicals. Hopefully, most, if not all, periodicals will be back on library shelves by fall semester.

We thank Zora Breeding for her significant contribution to rebarcoding books waiting for binding. With her help we rebarcoded a total 327 Central paperback monographs in July.

1288 new Central paperback monographs were sorted and 426 (33%) selected for immediate binding.

445 Acorn holdings records were updated as a result of binding.

MARKING:

3,452 items

205 unbound serials

201 RUSH items

153 microfilm reels

It is very apparent that fiscal year-end ordering is coming home to roost because the marking shelves are filling up faster. We are currently labeling items that arrived in the unit the third week of July.

REPAIR:

84 volumes repaired with 110 treatments

Most of those were spine repairs with assorted supplemental repairs. Central, Science, and Peabody items were treated.

Charlotte Lew took a trip home to Taiwan to visit family during the last half of July and first week of August. While she was gone, no regular repair took place. Sue Davis handled routine questions during Charlotte's absence.