Technical Services Monthly Report

March 2004

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

The TechForce has established a new task force, the Binding and Marking Workflow Task Force, to review current procedures and look for ways of streamlining this area of Preservation. The task force consists of Michael Scott, chair, Linda Davis, Machelle Keen, Karen Pillow, and Debbie Williams.

Suzanne Bell has completed her portion of the work on the Roller collection, a special collection of the Peabody Library. Susan Bell returned from medical leave in mid-month and began cataloging the books that Suzanne had prepared. Together they cataloged about 100 Roller titles in March.

Becky Atack continued to work with Gina Berry and Alice Cunningham as they learn to do “Speed CIP Cataloging.” Alice and Gina are doing great and were able to process 49 of these as received in OS for the month of March.

Three members of the Order Services team, Sherry Huffer, Dennis Sauls, and Debbie Williams, assist for several hours each week in Binding and Marking.

Roberta Winjum finalized the specifications for loading the 36,307 Evans Digital Edition records into Acorn. LITS loaded the records and sent them through Marcive for processing. Mary Charles Lasater is reviewing unauthorized headings lists generated from these records.

Roberta Winjum met with the Cataloging and Authorities Team and the Preservation Team to brainstorm ideas for the strategic planning initiative.

Completion of the annual evaluation process was a major effort of everyone for the month.

Interesting tidbit of the month:

We received and cataloged two Chinese movies. One of these was a VCD (Video CD) format, which looks like a DVD, but is of a lesser quality. VCD’s are popular in the Asian market. The other movie came as a DVD, with the format for all regions, coded MPEG2. This plays well on a computer with a DVD drive, but won't play on the DVD players in GLB or the Media center. The campus LRC was able to make a copy that can be played in regular DVD players. Many thanks to Yuh Fen Benda for her clever detective work to understand these two items.

Interesting tidbit of the month II:

Charlotte Lew got a call from the Central Circulation Desk stating that a music video producer was looking for someone who could translate kryptonite (remember Superman?) into Chinese. After a few false starts and a follow up conversation, she was able to compose a phrase that suited the producer's purpose. When this project is completed (either April or November), the video is supposed to appear on MTV. We'll let you know.

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

Mary Charles Lasater spoke at the Tennessee Library Association meeting in Knoxville. Her topic. “What’s in a name,” was selected by the Technical Services Roundtable and was about creating authority records.

Ann Ercelawn attended CONSER's invitational summit to brainstorm about strategic directions for CONSER in understanding data needs in managing serials in the digital environment.

Jeff Taylor conducted the Theses Processing Workshop that had been promised at the Cataloging Open House.

Don Jones attended the Kickoff event for the 2004 Faculty Staff Campaign.

Preservation Team volunteer, Jing Liu, left near the end of the month to start another volunteer job in a Medical Center research lab.

Rose Mary Dorris, Central's intern, learned a little about Preservation by helping measure items for a wrapper box order as well as observing Charlotte Lew repairing books.

Becky Atack and Sue Davis, USAC representatives, attended a training session for the upcoming VU Community survey.

Mary Charles Lasater held a celebration for the completion of the Ed.S. Project. Mary Charles, Jeff Taylor and Yuh-Fen Benda cataloged 922 Peabody Ed.S. theses over the last two years. In order not to lose momentum, Mary Charles has already initiated work on the project to catalog the Peabody Ed.D.s.

Most staff members were able to attend the Technical Services meeting at which Lisa Shipman gave a presentation on FMLA.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

As usual, most people devoted the majority of their time to cataloging material in their areas of responsibility. The two exceptions were Susan Bell, who was on medical leave for half the month and Zora Breeding, who spent considerable time writing evaluations and meeting with staff.

In addition to the routine work:

Work on the Wachs Collection project continued. Don Jones, Jeff Taylor, Ann Ercelawn, Ann Barnette and Becky Atack have completed 243 titles to date.

Yuh-Fen Benda cataloged about 20 books on tape, some Japanese materials with no copy and the aforementioned Chinese videos.

Michael Scott finished cataloging most of the books from Paula Covington's Guatemala buying trip.

Jeff Taylor received and processed another shipment of VU theses.

Mary Charles Lasater and Denise Chavez finished the authorities project to review unauthorized topical subject headings, which they began in April 2003.

Linda Davis worked on withdrawing the Peabody books that were water damaged.

Ann Ercelawn, Mary Charles Lasater, Yuh-fen Benda, and Becky Atack met to work out an initial plan to receive and manage series authority records from Marcive. Using Marcive will save many hours every month that Yuh-Fen, Becky and Ann Barnette spend in manually bringing in new and updated series authority records.

Ann Ercelawn has been working with the SFX implementation group and has loaded many titles into SFX. Ann also continues to work on SerialsSolutions problems.

Statistics:

1698 new titles cataloged, including 331 original contributions or national level enhancements to the OCLC database and 870 modified locally

294 titles recataloged

72 titles reconned

470 titles and 789 item records withdrawn

Appx. 7000 new or modified authority records delivered by Marcive

683 name, 451 subject and 18 series headings changed on Acorn bibliographic records (not part of new cataloging activity)

321 series authority records brought into Acorn manually

106 authority records deleted

Copy Cataloging: The Start Here flag sits on the shelf of materials received March 2nd.

ORDER SERVICES:

Order Services received a number of visitors in March. Julie Deavers from Ingram, and Kathy Brannon from Swets met with Roberta Winjum and several OS staff. John Laraway from Blackwells arrived late in the month, and in addition to meeting with TS staff, also met with Mary Beth Blalock and Dennis Clark.

Mid-March, we shifted the responsibilities of several of the receiver/verifiers (Suzanne Bell, Yan-Xia Zhong, and Gina Berry), so that they could assist with Serial Receiving.

Ibtisam Latif, Keith Curd, Linda Hand, and Gina Berry volunteered to assist with the "PUBID" project, which involved adding the publisher's name to the PUBID field of the order record. This project will allow both Order Services and Collection Development to identify journals as being part of publisher's pricing packages, which will be particularly useful information as Central identifies subscriptions for possible cancellation.

Kathy Ma, Ibtisam Latif, and Keith Curd began adding some of the Wachs materials to Acorn, and these are currently being held in Baker before sending to cataloging.

Receiving, approvals, and invoices remain current.

Statistics:

Received and processed:

4073 serials/periodicals

1010 approvals

Added to Acorn:

133 serial standing orders

446 gifts

1094 orders placed

1043 titles speed cataloged

PRESERVATION:

The new Class I biosafety hood arrived and was installed/inspected in mid-month. It is brighter and quieter than the old. It provides a better margin of safety as well.

Sue Davis met with a new sales representative from Heckman Bindery and a sales representative from Preservation Technologies, a mass deacidfication company located near Pittsburgh, PA.

It was a month of persistent communication problems with the bindery. Several items were returned back to us unresolved because of internal bindery changes. It took several phone calls and emails to learn that new coding and new procedures had been established. Most, but not all, outstanding problems are on their way to being resolved.

Machelle Keen selected twenty monographs to send to the Mid-Atlantic Bindery for a free test of their binding services. Upon their return we will scrutinize the books and report our findings. Declining quality of Heckman’s service and product and the need for an update on the current market are the impetus behind this test. For information about Mid-Atlantic, go to: http://icibinding.com/.

Binding:

709 new monographs

26 rebinds

584 periodicals

116 serials

53 items rebarcoded in preparation for binding

1,120 new paperback monographs sorted; 447 (40%) selected for immediate binding.

740 Acorn holdings records updated as a result of binding activity.

There is practically no backlog of binding materials. Kudos to the team (and OS staff!) for doing so well.

Marking:

3,729 volumes

170 unbound serials

187 RUSH items

30 reels of microfilm labeled

As of April 1, we are labeling items that arrived in marking less than a week ago. Kudos to the team (and OS staff!) again for keeping the marking materials moving so well.

Repair:

197 volumes were repaired with 280 treatments

The vast majority of the treatments were standard spine repairs, but other projects illustrate the range of sizes the lab treats. The smallest item was a miniature Les Fleurs de Mal measuring 30 mm high. The largest was a 3' x 5' WWII poster. The lab treated items from Baudelaire, Central, Divinity, Management, Science, and Special Collections.

Machelle Keen helped the repair lab measure for another large wrapper box order. Due to a large demand this year for wrapper boxes, the budget is rapidly running out of funds. Based upon the number of items already in the queue for boxes, it appears that the budget is close to empty. We have limited space for additional items, but those that do come to the lab for boxes will need to wait until the new fiscal year.