Technical Services Monthly Report
June 2003
DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:
In coordination with LITS, the Fiscal Year Rollovers were
accomplished with nary a hitch. Unicorn
reports worked as expected, though of course it required Dale Poulter's
intervention to roll order claims into the new orders. (Thanks, Dale) After closing for
Independence Day, Order Services was once again up and running by July 7th.
As part of the efforts of CAAG and AVCTF, Ann Ercelawn, Mary
Charles Lasater, Pete Wilson, Zora Breeding, and Roberta Winjum were involved
in discussions about aspects of Unicorn 2003 that are being planned and
tested. Some meetings between CAAG
members and the AVCTF addressed questions about the implementation of library
groupings and the tab record display.
The AVCTF has postponed the implementation of this kind of display.
At ALA, Roberta Winjum met with representatives of
Swets-Blackwell to go over our proposed subscription contract agreement.
Swets-Blackwell will make the agreed-upon modifications and send a redline
version for our review. In a phone call to Ebsco, Roberta and Ree Sherer
discussed Ebsco’s proposed modifications to our draft contract agreement.
Roberta will make the modifications and return a redline version to Ebsco for
review.
This month IEEE Xplore records and more netLibrary e-books
were loaded.
The Cataloging Workflows Task Force completed a survey on
cataloging workflows and organization and sent it to 15 or so cataloging heads
at libraries around the country. At the
request of the Task Force, the CAT team has agreed to a six-month moratorium on
sending material to the Inventory, at which time we will evaluate whether this
can be extended.
Anecdote #1 of the month, from our Authorities section: They
corrected a mistake made to a Vanderbilt Ph.D. thesis writer's name over 30
years ago. This visiting alum left
happy after being shocked by such a mistake. His name now appears correctly.
Since it is our business to get names, etc. right, it is always nice to see
that this does matter to people.
Anecdote #2, from Preservation: On June 30 ILL staff brought
a dissertation from another university to the repair lab because of its pungent
odor. Preservation staff bagged up the book to prevent any spread of the
unknown odiferous substance. The
unpleasant smell was so strong that it permeated thru 5 plastic bags and a
box. At Sue Davis's request VU
Environmental Health and Safety came to inspect the book and diagnosed the
problem as pesticide contamination. The
book was declared a total loss and discarded.
PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:
On June 12, Chris Waldrop, Mary Ellen Wilson, and Roberta
Winjum took a "road trip" to Birmingham to meet with several Ebsco
representatives (Katy Ginanni says "HI" to everyone...) to discuss,
among other issues, our subscription vendor contract in development with them.
We also toured their park-like campus.
Both Roberta Winjum and Mary Ellen Wilson relocated their
offices - Mary Ellen has relocated to Roberta's former office, and Roberta
relocated just slightly westward. (Phone numbers remain the same).
Charlotte Lew will make a trip home to Taiwan from July 17
through August 7. While she is gone
there will be essentially no book repair taking place. However, Sue will deal with minor repairs,
any emergencies, such as wet books, and other consultations as needed.
Zora Breeding, Susan Bell, Sue Davis, Ann Ercelawn, Don
Jones, Michael Scott, and Roberta Winjum traveled to Toronto for the ALA Annual
Conference.
At the Program for Cooperative Cataloging meeting at ALA,
Ann Ercelawn was presented with a certificate of appreciation for her work with
the Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program. Congratulations, Ann, you deserve the recognition!
Ann also attended the NASIG annual conference in Portland,
OR.
Susan Bell and Mary Ellen Wilson began their membership on
the SQIT (Service Quality Improvement Team).
Don Jones completed another year’s duty as a library
representative to the Vanderbilt
Faculty Staff Campaign.
Susan Bell joined a group of Peabody faculty and library
staff on a tour of the curriculum lab at the Trevecca library.
Many team members enjoyed the Spring Staff Event at Edwin
Warner Park.
Finally, we are sorry to report that Susan Timmons left
Order Services at the end of the month, but we are very pleased for Government
Documents and for Susan that she will be joining them. OS bid Susan farewell
over ice cream and cookies, and we wish her the best in her new job.
CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:
The flow of new books began to pick up later in the month
due to the heavy year-end ordering.
Zora took over cataloging responsibility for 5600 Philosophy fund. Regular project work continued.
Ann Barnette finished subject analysis on the thesis
shipment from May just as Jeff Taylor received and began processing a new
shipment in June. Susan Bell completed
cataloging more of the TN textbooks.
Yuh-Fen Benda finished analyzing the last of the large Japanese book
sets ordered by Prof. Igarashi. She
also cataloged about 60 audio books for the Leisure Reading Collection. Bryan Kurowski and Jeff continued to catalog
RIP titles from the Annex. Since
beginning the RIP project in October, they have cataloged approximately 1767
titles from the inventory. Mary Charles
Lasater continues to work on the Peabody theses projects. Linda Davis worked on intra-campus
transfers, bound-withs for microfilm titles, the holdings clean-up project, the
Peabody project to amend retention notes for Ready Reference, and numerous
withdrawals for Central, Management, and Science. Denise Chavez prepared another file of deleted authority records
to be sent to Marcive. Ann Ercelawn
continued to make corrections to CONSER records to improve our future Serials
Solutions records. Ann also cataloged more
travel guides and was able to devote some time to the Pia serials. Jeff cataloged and transferred about 100
SPEC kits from the OUL office to Central Stacks. Jean Wright continues to work on retrospective conversion for
Department of State publications.
Zora Breeding met with the Item Types Task Force, whose
efforts have been focused on changing the AV and AV- item types. These have been changed for all libraries
but Central. In Central, DVDs and LPs
were converted as test groups. We are
ready to tackle microforms, cassettes, slides and videos next. The ITTF is also beginning to work on
implementation policies for the new Comments fields in U2003. Some of the uses of the comments fields that
we will be working on defining are: spine label, circulation flag, withdrawn
info, Annex shelving key, original location and item type, preservation notes
and other circulation notes. In
addition, Law has plans to define a public note for item specific holdings.
Some correspondence we enjoyed: Ann Ercelawn was successful in petitioning the Webmaster at ALCTS
(Association for Library Collections and Technical Services division of ALA) to
create a stable link to their online newsletter. Bryan Kurowski received a reply to a query he sent to a Russian
publisher about the identity of a contributor to one of their
publications. The response was from the
author himself who was very pleased to know that someone at the Vanderbilt
library was making inquiries into his work.
Some cataloging statistics:
CAT cataloged 1943 of the 3720 new titles processed by TS in June. For the fiscal year 2002/2003, the team
cataloged 21,947 of the 36,385 new titles processed by TS.
Some authorities statistics: In June, 6099 authority records were added to Acorn to match new
headings on records. Another 2581
authority records were replaced. A
total of 54,119 new records added and 31,170 records replaced, or 85,289
authority records added or updated in FY2002/2003.
The total RIP (Reduction in Inventory Project) titles cataloged,
or in the process of being cataloged during 2002-2003 is 1,767. Bryan Kurowski
and Jeff Taylor have handled the vast majority of them.
ORDER SERVICES:
The month of June was, as usual, a busy month for Order
Services. This last month of the fiscal
year proceeded with relative calm - the very last week was spent placing last
minute orders to fully (over) encumber funds and paying invoices. Everyone took special efforts to be sure
that orders were placed on time, and invoices were entered before the clock ran
out on us.
Receivers are currently working on firm orders received
within the last week, and serial materials and invoices are current. In June,
receivers:
Received and processed:
Serials/Periodicals:
3615
Firm Orders: 2595
Approvals: 858
Added to Acorn:
SSO's: 141
Gifts: 86
OS placed 1863 new orders, and Speed Cataloged a record 1574
titles.
Early in the month, Monica Sanchez, Mary Ellen Wilson, and Roberta Winjum attended a presentation by YBP of their GOBI2 product at the Peabody Library; Monica, Gina Berry and Mary Ellen met, along with Bryan Kurowski, Julie Loder, Susan Widmer and Mary Beth Blalock, to discuss our Russian approval plan, and review our vendor options.
PRESERVATION:
Sue Davis met with Lee Ann Lannom to discuss a modified
binding policy for Peabody materials.
That new policy was implemented July 2, 2003. She and Charlotte Lew met with Sharon Weiner about a donor's
collection care questions. Sue prepared
a small packet of information for the donor.
Sue Davis attended a meeting with the committee studying new
photocopier options. She also spent
time working on emergency planning issues for TS and the library as a
whole.
BINDING:
1,058 monographs,
519 periodicals, and
161 serials sent to the bindery
Karen Pillow and Machelle Keen wrapped up the fiscal year's
binding fund encumbering and invoice payments.
336 Acorn holding records were updated during the month as a
result of binding
1,386 new Central paperback volumes sorted; 472 selected for
immediate binding
Over the last fiscal year, 14, 071 volumes were sorted,
about 1,000 fewer than the previous year. A total of 17,729 items were sent to
the bindery during the past fiscal year.
Because of the heavy flow of new materials, no items were
rebarcoded in preparation for binding.
That backlog still remains significant. However, items can still be
recalled (and have been) for patron use.
MARKING:
4,252 items labeled
176 unbound serials
157 Rush items
37 reels of microfilm
With year-end orders already arriving by the bushel, it
looks like the marking shelves will continue to fill up quickly. However, the team is still keeping pace and
labeling items within a week of their arrival on the marking shelves.
During the past year, 45,886 items were labeled.
REPAIR:
With Daphne Walker on summer leave, the repair staff is down
to a single person. Charlotte Lew spent
the month of June working primarily on spine repairs and a large wrapper
order. She worked on materials from the
Central, Divinity, Peabody, Law, and Science libraries as well as Special
Collections.
267 items repaired with 354 treatments
During the past fiscal year, 2521 items were repaired with
3836 treatments.