Technical Services Monthly Report

November 2003

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

The TechForce met with Sharon Weiner to discuss new and ongoing projects at Peabody. One project is the Sights/Roller/Alcott collection of children’s literature. Susan Bell proposed that the preliminary searching for this collection could be handled in the same way as the TN textbooks, i.e. Suzanne Bell will search for copy during routine weekly trips to Peabody she and Susan are undertaking to process the Tennessee textbooks. This minimizes the shipping of these fragile materials. Sue Davis wrote procedures for processing the collection in consultation with TechForce, Sharon Weiner, and Susan Bell. The 200-volume collection requires special treatment all along the processing route. When TS has completed its work, the collection will be displayed in its own new exhibit case in the Peabody Library.

Yan-Xia Zhong, Angel Bruner, and Keith Curd are spending a few hours each week in Special Collections adding metadata for various digitized photographs. The photo subjects range from campus buildings to VU Medical School graduates working in Italy during WWII.

Ann Ercelawn met with staff from the Law Library, who have decided to participate in using Serials Solutions records, starting with the HeinOnline set to be included in our Dec. load.

The Rush Task Force turned in its final report to TechForce at the end of the month. Once their recommendations have been reviewed and approved, they will begin working with OS, CAT and Preservation staff to document the new procedures. Members of the Rush Task Force include Mary Ellen Wilson, chair, Susan Bell, Rita Breen, and Sheranda Lee.

The Electronic Resources Task Force continues discussion of what data elements should be included in an Electronic Resource Management System.

Debbie Williams, Ibtisam Latif, and Linda Davis continue to lend a helping hand in Binding and Marking. The Preservation Team is grateful for their support that has made a tremendous difference.

Sue Davis reports that the annual ARL Preservation Statistics Questionnaire was compiled and submitted early for the first time in years.

Sue Davis is meeting frequently with John Haar and Kathy Smith to create fragile book policies for the library. Currently John is soliciting opinions from selected other staff on the document drafts.

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

We participated in the week of the Staff Time Allocation Study.

Near the end of the month, Sherry Huffer, Rita Breen, Linda Hand, Monica Sanchez, Suzanne Bell, Angel Bruner, Ibtisam Latif, Chris Waldrop, and Mary Ellen Wilson attended a demonstration on the use of Group Mailboxes in Mulberry.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

The CAT team continues to make progress on our ongoing projects. Mary Charles Lasater, Jeff Taylor and Yuh-Fen Benda worked on the Peabody thesis project. Bryan Kurowski and Jeff Taylor worked on the Inventory Reduction effort with occasional help from others. Linda Davis worked on editing retention notes for Peabody newsletters.

Mary Charles Lasater completed correcting the IEEE headings list and the Botany and Zoology headings changes. She and Denise Chavez worked on the unauthorized LCSH headings list.

Jeff Taylor, Mary Charles Lasater, and Ann Barnette cataloged the latest shipment of new VU theses. Michael Scott, Pete Wilson, and Ann Barnette made progress on cataloging more Latin American Studies gifts. Pete began cataloging Special Collections manuscript collections, using forms filled out by Juanita Murray, and has completed eight of them to date. Pete also proposed a new way to classify audio books at Management and began recataloging the audio books for which Sylvia Graham had made homemade records. Susan Bell continued to process TN textbooks at Peabody with Suzanne Bell. Yuh-Fen Benda cataloged 36 books on CD. Ann Ercelawn cataloged UN documents titles and a large number of new travel guides. She added publication patterns to OCLC record for numerous travel guides. Don Jones was busy with Baudelaire materials and Pascal Pia Collection materials.

Becky Atack reports that she still receives numerous labeling problems each week. We are hopeful that the proposed change to the display of the circulation status of an item will help reduce the labeling problems by at least half. We hope that LITS can make progress on this display change soon.

Statistics:

1743 new titles cataloged, 358 of which were original contributions or national level enhancements to the OCLC database and 1039 were modified locally

193 titles recataloged

70 holdings and 77 item records edited for materials returned from the bindery.

Marcive delivered around 6500 new or modified authority records.

554 name, 711 subject and 22 series headings changed on Acorn bibliographic records (not part of new cataloging activity).

Approximately 300 series authority records manually brought into Acorn and 30 authority records deleted

Copy Cataloging: The green "Start here" flag sits near materials that arrived in our area on 10/10/03.

ORDER SERVICES:

The number of purchase requests has picked up this month, and so we find ourselves placing more orders. Overall receiving so far remains about the same as the past few months. Verifiers/Receivers continue to focus mainly on approvals and gifts.

Received and processed:

Serials/Periodicals: 3187

Approvals: 1357

Added to Acorn:

SSO's: 139

Gifts: 694

OS placed 1319 new orders and Speed Cataloged 849 titles.

Invoices: All Swets and Harrassowitz renewal invoices that have been received to date have been paid. We expect the Ebsco renewal invoice within the next few days - it has been held up for a number of reasons, not the least of which is our conversion of most of our Ebsco/Elsevier titles from print to online. Ebsco, and Ree Sherer in particular, has been very helpful to us in making these last minute changes.

Chris Waldrop, JoNell Owens and Debbie Williams have begun editing Acorn records to show the changes made to our Elsevier titles.

On November 4th, OS, with significant help from both Blackwell's and from Dale Poulter used Sirsi's "9XX" software for the first time, automatically loading records from Collection Manager into Acorn. While there are a few modifications we'd like to see in the way the software works, the process is working well, and has allowed us to make some relatively minor changes that will ultimately allow for receiving these materials more efficiently. Vanderbilt is the first customer to use this new software.

PRESERVATION:

The team met with Anne Martin to follow up on SIRSI issues and labeling improvement possibilities. More work remains to be done in LITS to fine-tune the labeling program. The goal is to be able to generate labeling statistics via Acorn instead of doing it manually.

Our opinion of our volunteer, Jing Liu, has risen to divine levels as we see the impact she has made on marking.

BINDING:

Since there was only one binding shipment scheduled for November, numbers don't really reflect the level of effort put forth.

524 monographs

47 rebinds

277 periodicals

59 serials

907 total sent to the bindery

Only 25 items rebarcoded, a sign that the new Central binding policy of not binding paperback monographs until needed is taking effect.

1099 new Central paperbacks sorted; 582 selected for immediate binding. The high binding rate is due to the large numbers of gift items in process, many of which need binding or repair.

493 Acorn holdings records updated as a result of binding.

Reminder: The Heckman Bindery will close during Christmas week. The last outgoing binding shipment of 2003 is scheduled for December 18.

MARKING:

3,389 volumes

203 unbound serials,

147 RUSH items

28 reels of microfilm labeled

The team is currently labeling items that arrived in the unit November 24.

REPAIR:

105 volumes were repaired with 172 treatments.

Most of the month's repair work involved routine types of treatments. A large proportion of Charlotte Lew's and Daphne Walker's time was devoted to triage. With the end of the semester approaching, many returned materials are selected for repair. Some libraries forward the items, but for the largest customer, Central Library, Charlotte Lew and Daphne Walker help with the selection process by pulling items from the circulation receiving area.

Charlotte Lew also sorted new paperbacks for Machelle Keen while she was on vacation.