Technical Services Monthly Report

Dec. 2004

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

A TechForce meeting in Dec. was devoted to looking at the space on the 8th floor, which has been proposed as a possible future home for Technical Services.

The Cataloging Task Force, including Pete Wilson, Bryan Kurowski, Becky Atack, Alice Cunningham, and Monica Sanchez, submitted their final report to TechForce.

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

Sue Davis completed and submitted the annual ARL Preservation Statistics Questionnaire before the Dec. 31st deadline.

Roberta Winjum met with Dr. Richard Haglund, Physics, and Dr. John Conley, Economics, to discuss plans for their participation in the VU e-Archive, our institutional repository.

Pete Wilson visited the Country Music Hall of Fame library in preparation for an article he is writing for Serials Review.

Tech Services was glad to see Ann Ercelawn return to work half days in December.

Some of us attended the LITS candidate presentations and the Mid Atlantic Bindery presentation. We enjoyed the holiday festivities, particularly the library-wide holiday party. Thanks to Jean Wright and her helpers for making it a success.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

With Ann Ercelawn’s return, the Marcive procedure for series was finalized. Jeff Taylor cataloged a few more electronic theses, bringing our total to 91 ETDs. Ann Barnette and Yuh-Fen Benda finished recataloging Peabody children's books in Spanish. Ann Barnette and Zora Breeding helped Mary Charles Lasater and Denise Chavez clean up records with headings in the form of "Name"--contributions in "topic", which has been discontinued by LC. Mary Charles and Denise began reviewing daily authority record loads. Michael Scott made some progress on cataloging more Mayan titles. Pete Wilson cataloged more Special Collections transfers from Peabody. Mary Charles and Ann B. worked on subject analysis of the latest thesis shipment. Mary Charles continued work on the Peabody theses project and reviewed the records that Baker staff are inputting for the Masters theses from shelf list cards. We were surprised at the large number of Rush requests that came through during the holidays.

Statistics:

TS totals: 2086 new titles cataloged.

CAT totals: 1256 new titles cataloged, 226 of which were original contributions or national level enhancements to the OCLC database and 759 were modified locally.

We recataloged an additional 222 titles and reconned 39 titles.

Marcive delivered around 5055 new or modified authority records. The team reports making changes to 679 name, 680 subject and 32 series headings on Acorn bibliographic records (not part of new cataloging activity). We deleted 88 authority records.

ORDER SERVICES:

At long last, around the middle of December we received the Ebsco 2005 renewal invoice. Processing of this large invoice (or group of invoices) was completed quickly and paid on January 7th. After some discussion and negotiation, it was decided that we would also renew our Wiley e-journal titles through Ebsco, slightly decreasing our overall Ebsco service charge. An invoice for these titles (in the $300K neighborhood) should be received shortly.

Special Projects: OS continues to process Wachs materials, Peabody theses, and other more routine materials.

Visitors: Bob Schatz, formerly of Franklin Book, visited us in December, this time wearing his Coutts hat. Coutts offered to handle standing orders recently transferred to Franklin at the same discount. Since Franklin abruptly and unexpectedly closed their doors, we decided to accept Coutts offer.

Statistics:

3102 serials and periodicals processed. Periodicals are being received within about a day of their receipt at Baker.

838 new orders were placed, and 818 titles were Speed Cataloged within OS.

Receiving and ordering remains current - all materials and orders are up to date. We will not report the numbers for specific types of materials received, since a slight glitch in some of the statistical data calls into doubt the accuracy of this month's numbers.

PRESERVATION:

December statistics reflect only part of the tremendous effort team members put into the bindery transition and Wachs Collection boxing project. Trent Hanner served as "floater" and assisted anywhere and everywhere as needed. By doing so, he helped keep the backlogs at bay while the team dealt with software and logistics snags.

So far the bindery transition has gone more smoothly than we had even hoped for. Mid Atlantic Bookbindery has invested considerable time and energy into making the transition work, including critical work with the LINCPlus software. Dale Poulter has also been instrumental in getting LINCPlus off the ground, so hats off to him, too. LINCPlus is still not where we want it to be, but Karen Pillow and Machelle Keen both report that using it will definitely help streamline binding processing. Special credit goes to both of them for all their hard work on the vendor change and simultaneous software switch.

Mid Atlantic Bindery visited Vanderbilt twice in December. One visit involved setting up and training in LINCPlus software (as well as training Law Library staff in ABLE, another bindery software). The second visit was a presentation for library staff that work with binding. The presentation included a virtual tour of MAB. If other library staff are interested in taking a virtual tour of the bindery, contact a team member to borrow the tour CD. MAB plans one more visit in early February to follow up on any contractual and/or profile and/or processing issues that remain unresolved.

We sent only one bindery shipment in December. Two week turnaround resumes with January 2005. Please remember that shipping/pickup dates now occur on Tuesdays. For the 2005 bindery schedule, go to: http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/rs/techserv/Preservation/Public/MAB2005schedule.htm

With the new bindery also come new prices. For the most part the charges are actually lower than those of Heckman Bindery, a welcome bit of news in tight budget times. To see the price list, go to: http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/RS/restricted/MAB0506Prices.htm

Binding:

541 monographs

76 rebinds

419 periodicals

23 serials

1059 volumes total

814 new paperbacks sorted and 385 selected for immediate binding (47%).

58 monographs rebarcoded in preparation for binding

337 Acorn records edited as a result of binding

Marking:

2610 volumes

174 RUSH items

103 Priority Level 2 (mostly Reference)

111 additional items not caught by the automated report

Due to the holidays the marking shelves backed up slightly to a two week wait. That will soon be remedied.

Repair:

543 volumes were treated with 627 treatments.

Impressive statistics for the month show the effects of a major boxing project for the Wachs Collection. That total also includes some other boxes for Central items and plenty of spine repairs.