Technical Services Monthly Report
Apr. 2004
DIVISION-WIDE AND INTER-TEAM ACTIVITIES:
The Rush Task Force moved into the last phase of their charge,
submitting procedural documentation to be reviewed by the TechForce and then
sent to staff for review and comment before recommended changes are
implemented.
The Marking and Binding Workflow Task Force (Michael Scott, chair,
Linda Davis, Machelle Keen, Karen Pillow and Debbie Williams) held its first
meetings. The members of this group also met with Tech Force to address any
concerns they had and clarify their charge
A
combined meeting of the SFX and Serials Solutions groups was held to discuss
changing our vendor for e-journal Marc records from Serials Solutions to
ExLibris Marc-it records.
Roberta Winjum worked with Nancy Boggess-Korekach to retrieve and
load bibliographic records for over 38,000 items in the Evans Digital Editions.
We also loaded 542 records for the Knovel Online Handbooks. Several thousand
more NetLibrary bib records have been added this month as well.
Becky Atack continues to work with Gina Berry and Alice Cunningham
to review their copy cataloging. They
are doing well and Becky expects to “cut them loose” in May.
Because of a rising number of requested fragile Annex items ending
up in the repair lab, Peg Earheart and Sue Davis, in consultation with others,
put together a short document describing and defining different aspects of the
complicated issue. The related problems range from who makes treatment
decisions to Acorn maintenance to labeling.
Sue and Peg would like to see a long-term preservation policy developed
for these print materials.
The month ended on a soggy note with a call to Preservation from
Divinity. Due to a malfunction of the
sprinkler system, water spilled into storage areas and part of the Level 1
stacks area. Fortunately, the problem,
while messy to clean up, didn't involve the collection except for an item or
two.
PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:
The Order Services Team bid farewell to our friend and co-worker, Rita Breen, who is returning to Ireland. She will be missed.
The Preservation Team continues to be short-handed, but is trying
to cope as best it can with the greatly appreciated continuing assistance of
Debbie Williams. Thanks also to Sherry Huffer for her past help. She was
"recalled" to Order Services because of Rita Breen’s departure as
well as increased fiscal year end activity.
Mary Ellen Wilson and Mary Charles Lasater attended the Sirsi
Superconference.
Gina Berry attended the NALA workshop on the MARC record
Ann Ercelawn was interviewed by Regina Reynolds, head of the US
ISSN Center, as part of a survey that they are conducting on a possible
reformulation of the ISSN.
The Preservation Team belatedly thanked their volunteer Jing for
her several months of dedicated help with a lunch and certificate.
Some staff attended the Staff Event. Staff working with the special Wachs
Collection were invited to the very nice reception in the Bandy Center. Many attended Susan Barge’s brown bag
presentation on "Residential Colleges" at Vanderbilt. A few staff
helped with the Central book sale.
CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:
In addition to the regular cataloging activities, here are some
highlights and projects:
Kudos to Susan Bell for completing the backlog of Tennessee
Textbook gifts that have been taking up space in the TSGLB workroom! New TN textbook gifts continue to be
received and processed at Peabody by Susan and Suzanne Bell.
Ann Ercelawn authenticated our first CONSER record.
Don Jones and Jeff Taylor worked heavily on the Wachs
Collection. There are 347 titles
cataloged to date (up 107 titles from this time last month).
Mary Charles Lasater, Yuh-Fen Benda and Jeff Taylor began work on
the Peabody Ed.D. theses cataloging project.
Linda Davis completed the lists of Peabody withdrawals and all but
some problem titles from the Observatory cleanup project.
Mary Charles Lasater and Jeff Taylor worked on adding links and
bringing in records for newly added titles to the Oxford Reference Online resource.
Mary Charles Lasater evaluated the load of Evans Digital Editions
records and concluded that it would not be a good use of staff time to check
each of the unauthorized headings, many of which were for names found on
broadsides.
Jean Wright has devoted a large amount of her time to “bound
together” pamphlet volumes. If at least
one of the items is in scope for our library, she is converting the full
volume. If none are deemed appropriate
for us, she is reclassifying them into SuDocs so they can be offered to other
libraries.
Jeff Taylor worked through the “flex keys with o” and the
“duplicate flex key” error reports.
Bryan Kurowski researched some interesting authority headings for
authors who needed to be established or had too many headings in use for the
same person.
Ann Barnette cataloged more new theses, including another
electronic thesis.
Statistics:
1483 new titles cataloged including
324 original contributions or national level enhancements to the
OCLC database and
838 modified locally
291 recataloged
35 reconned
542 titles plus 965 item records withdrawn
Around 8665 new or modified authority records delivered from
Marcive
303 series authority records brought into Acorn manually (we
expect the Marcive service to provide these for us in the near future!).
Copy Cataloging:
The green "Start Here" flag sits near materials received
in this room on 4/2.
ORDER
SERVICES:
Statistics:
For April, 2004, Order Services received and processed:
Serials/Periodicals: 3453
Approvals: 974
We also added to Acorn:
SSO's: 161
Gifts: 365
OS placed 1536 new orders,
and Speed Cataloged 1072 titles.
Invoices and receiving of firm orders and approvals are all
current. Serial receivers are working hard to keep up with the steady receipt
of serials and periodicals, with the assistance of other receivers in OS.
Receiver/verifiers are keeping up with the incoming orders as we
approach the end of the fiscal year. With Rita Breen's resignation, her duties
have been distributed among OS team members for the foreseeable future. These rearrangements have made it necessary
for us to curtail some of OS' activities outside of OS. Bibliographers are encouraged to send their
purchase requests to Orders, OS/Baker.
E-mailed purchase requests should still be sent to the RSORDERS
mailbox.
PRESERVATION:
We are still wrestling with binding problems resulting from
continued reorganization at Heckman Bindery.
These ongoing problems prompted us to send a small (20 monographs) test
shipment to a competitor, Mid-Atlantic Bindery. The team was quite pleased with the results of that test. The next step is a larger test to meet our
required two week turnaround time. With
Roberta Winjum's participation, we will meet with representatives from both
Mid-Atlantic Bindery and Heckman Bindery in May.
Binding:
1,818
volumes sent including
853 monographs
66 rebinds
785 periodicals
114 serials
1020 new Central paperbacks sorted and 441 selected for
immediate binding (43%).
106 monographs rebarcoded
in preparation for binding
255 Acorn records as a result of binding.
Marking:
3125 volumes
232 unbound serials
191 RUSH items
60 reels of microfilm
labeled
The oldest item has been on the marking shelves for less than a
week, so the team (mostly Ann Mallette) is keeping up nicely. Sheranda Lee gets
the credit for staying on top of the RUSH items.
Repair:
428 volumes were repaired with 600 treatments.
This is not a typo. It was record month in the repair lab. A large majority of the repairs needed hinge
and/or spine repairs and wrapper boxes.
Charlotte Lew built from scratch two beautiful clamshell boxes for two
new French Center special purchases.
PLEASE NOTE: Charlotte Lew is planning a trip home to Taiwan from
May 19
through June 10. While she
is gone there will be reduced repair activity.
Please plan accordingly.