Technical Services Monthly Report

Oct. 2004

INTERDEPARTMENTAL ACTIVITIES:

Mary Charles Lasater conducted NACO training for six librarians representing 4 institutions (TN State Library and Archives, MTSU, TTU and TSU) in our electronic classroom. These librarians are joining with others to form a Tennessee Funnel for submitting national authority records. Mary Charles and Denise Chavez also hosted an afternoon break for the trainees to meet the CATs.

Linda Davis held a training session with Rachel Gray on editing item records of titles in preparation for periodical binding. This new procedure resulted from a recommendation of the Binding and Marking Task Force, that all libraries bar code their periodicals and serials before sending to the bindery. Science Library has also begun barcoding its periodicals prior to sending them to the bindery. Barcoding periodicals will dramatically speed up binding processing once LINCPlus is functioning.

Roberta Winjum and Catherine Gick met with Jonathan Bremer, A&S Dean’s Office to plan for use of the VU e-Archive to contain A&S Faculty Senate and Faculty Council documents. Roberta and Catherine also met with Mona Frederick and Lacey Galbraith of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, who plan to use the e-Archive as well.

Susan Bell, Zora Breeding and Roberta Winjum met with Sharon Weiner to discuss how Peabody staff might help with the preparation and cataloging of their materials, in particular the TN textbooks for the Curriculum Lab. The TN textbook project was delayed over the summer due to staffing issues and the Peabody renovation. We are working out the processing priorities and a streamlined approach to getting this material to the shelves faster.

Roberta Winjum and Zora Breeding worked with Solinet to contract a trainer for Connexion. The training session will be on March 29, 2005 in the Electronic Classroom. The end of Passport is May 1, 2005.

Installation of the new alarm system in Baker was completed.

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

Zora Breeding and Pete Wilson were given a tour of the Special Collections photo archive and digitization project.

Zora Breeding, Sue Davis, Mary Ellen Wilson, Monica Sanchez, and Chris Waldrop conducted tours of their areas for new Peabody library staff, Lara Beth Lehman and Eli Moody. Zora and Mary Ellen also gave tours to Donna Cook of Tulane the afternoon before the ASERL meeting.

Jean Wright met with Celia Walker and John Haar to assist with an update to the library's history.

Preservation has hired Trent Hanner to a temporary position to assist in both the repair lab and binding/marking. He is already making a big difference. Welcome, Trent!

Sue Davis attended the Oct. 29 ARL webcast about usability studies for library web pages.

Roberta Winjum participated in a webcast on Digital Asset Management sponsored by ExLibris.

Many attended the Staff Service Awards. Ann Barnette was recognized for 30 years of service; Suzanne Bell for 20 years, Zora Breeding, Yuh-Fen Benda, and Yan Zia Xhong for 10 years, and Bryan Kurowski, Sheranda Lee, and Daphne Walker for 5 years.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

The flow of new receipts stabilized toward the end of the month, as Blackwell began sending regular approval shipments again. In addition to cataloging new material, we continued to work on various projects: Jeff Taylor, Ann Barnette, and Don Jones searched and sorted another batch of Wachs medium-rare materials. Yuh-Fen Benda and Mary Charles Lasater worked more on the Peabody Ed.D. theses. Mary Charles continued to oversee the Peabody T. theses project that Order Services staff have been working on. Jeff, Ann and Mary Charles processed another new shipment of current VU theses, including several in electronic format.

Mary Charles Lasater and Ann Ercelawn worked with Dale Poulter and Jim Plount of Marcive to review sets of series records that Dale pulled from Acorn. A comprehensive file of our current series authority records was finally sent to Marcive in the last days of October. Marcive has processed this to form our history file and is now sending us series authority records that match headings on new bibliographic records on a daily basis. Becky Atack and Yuh-Fen Benda are working with Mary Charles and Nancy Boggess-Korekach to figure out how we will load and process these. Once the procedures are worked out, we are hopeful that this will save us many hours of importing series records manually every month.

Zora Breeding held training sessions with Amy Stewart-Mailhiot. Amy will be using Smartport to bring in Government documents classed in Sudocs (mostly gifts and Not on Acorns).

Statistics:

TS totals: 2384 new titles cataloged.

CAT totals: 1414 new titles cataloged, 230 of which were original contributions or national level enhancements to the OCLC database and 865 were modified locally.

213 titles recataloged and 32 titles reconned.

Linda Davis withdrew 304 items, reinstated 4 and transferred 10.

There are now 76 electronic dissertations in Acorn.

ORDER SERVICES:

Statistics:

In the month of October, OS received and processed:

Serials/Periodicals: 3245

Approvals: 1015

SSO's: 124

Gifts: 322

OS placed 953 new orders and Speed Cataloged 769 titles.

The Swets 2005 renewal invoice has been posted in Acorn, and should be paid within the next few days (the total is approximately $500K). The Ebsco invoice is expected shortly.

Receiving remains very current; firm ordered materials, serials and periodicals are being processed within 1 or 2 days of receipt in the mailroom. Approvals remain on schedule. (Receipt of Blackwells materials has picked up to nearly what it was prior to migration to their new system.)

In addition to routine order/receiving tasks, OS continues to process Wachs Collection books, textbooks for the Peabody Curriculum lab, and work continues on the Peabody Theses project. Peabody masters theses are being added by Order Services staff as quickly as Peabody staff get cards to them.

In early October, Roberta Winjum, Chris Waldrop, and Mary Ellen Wilson met with Kathy Brannon from Swets to discuss our 2005 renewals. As mentioned, their invoice is in the final stages of processing in Acorn.

PRESERVATION:

The Preservation Team made history this October. After struggling for two years with declining service, we finally broke the 30+-year tradition of binding with Heckman Bindery. Our new bindery is Mid Atlantic Bookbindery located in Petersburg, VA. The contract with Mid Atlantic was signed the last week of October. The contract with Heckman Bindery will end December 1. It took a lot of hard work and reflection to make the change, but we felt that Vanderbilt libraries deserved the best product at the best price we could find.

We will have a brief hiatus in binding shipments to catch up paying invoices and clearing out any remaining binding problems with Heckman Bindery. Our final binding shipment with Heckman will be returned to us on Nov. 4. Binding shipments with the new binder will begin on Nov. 23 and alternate Tuesdays thereafter (note day of week change) with the usual holiday exceptions. See Machelle Keen for schedule details.

If you want an online look at our new binder, go to: <http://www.icibinding.com/about/mab.htm>

LINCPlus, the new binding software, will not be implemented until late November after the switch from Heckman to Mid Atlantic is made.

Sue Davis initiated a long over due inventory of Preservation Office thermohygrographs and thermohygrometers. The ones that remain in library locations, including the Annex, will be recalibrated to insure continuing temperature and relative humidity accuracy. She also generated a new batch of reports from the latest PEM data for Special Collections.

Binding:

492 monographs

289 periodicals

25 serials

806 volumes total

These were the last shipments to Heckman Bindery.

1,136 new Central paperbacks sorted and 562 selected for immediate binding (49%).

Gift collections are still a large part of our processing.

Marking:

3,333 volumes including 200 RUSH items.

69 items without barcodes were labeled in addition to the above

142 Reference items were Level II labeled as part of the new priority processing procedures.

Marking is looking very good. The items average only a week on our shelves before they get labeled and sent on their way. As of Nov. 1, we are labeling items received Oct. 25.

Repair:

280 volumes were treated with 333 treatments.

Much of the work centered on wrapper boxes and spine repairs. We repaired materials from Central, Divinity, Peabody, and Special Collections.

The biggest achievement in Repair was completing the preservation of the Roller/Sights collection. This special collection has returned to its home at Peabody. Thanks to Charlotte Lew for her efforts.