Technical Services Monthly Report

Dec. 2005

 

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

 

TechForce (Zora Breeding, Sue Davis, Mary Ellen Wilson and Roberta Winjum) held a day long retreat to discuss TS strategies for changing workloads, workflows, and projects, given the new strategic initiatives.

 

The Cataloging Documentation and Training Task Force (Don Jones, Becky Atack, Pete Wilson, Denise Chavez and Alice Cunningham) continued work on a web-based Cataloging Manual.

 

Zora Breeding, Ann Ercelawn, Molly Dahl, Mary Charles Lasater, and Roberta Winjum were among those who attended a meeting with Charly Bauer about OCLC's Content Cooperative pilot project.

 

On Dec. 16, Sue Davis and Roberta Winjum received word that ARL was extending the annual statistics deadlines to January 31, a mixed blessing, as more time allows more procrastination.

 

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

 

Chris Waldrop, JoNell Owens, Debbie Williams and others participated in EbscoNet training by Margaret Willingham and Will Fuqua from Ebsco.

 

Jing Liu returned early in the month only a couple of days after Preservation had said its fond goodbyes to Carlos Escarfuller.  Carlos returned to New Orleans in time to spend the holidays with his family; he will return to Tulane University Library in Jan.  Meanwhile we are very glad to have Jing back.

 

Paul Van Cotthem's last day in Order Services was December 30th. The retirement party for both him and Leonor is planned for Jan. 4.

 

Various staff attended the following meetings and events:

"         Coffee and Donuts meeting with Paul German

"         Martha Young's retirement party

"         RS Reunion holiday party

"         Last Science candidate presentation

 

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

 

The LA3 and LA4 copy cataloging remains current as do the Series Standing Orders.  There were many opportunities to make merry, but we also found time to work on the following sorts of things:

 

Jeff Taylor processed the many new electronic theses.  Ann Barnette worked on subject analysis of new theses.

 

Gina Berry, Jeff Taylor, Ann Ercelawn and Mary Charles Lasater continued to search and catalog more UN documents brought over by Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, who claims that the end is near!

 

Susan Bell dealt with a special set of titles on all fifty states for Peabody.

 

Yuh Fen Benda finished the last of the Japanese anime videos before going home for the holidays to Taiwan.

 

Ann Ercelawn worked to resolve SFX/Acorn problems in the JSTOR collection identified by Kitty Porter.

 

Linda Davis continued working on the withdrawal projects for Peabody and Management and the bound-with project for Central

 

Don Jones continued to review and train Molly Dahl.  In mid December he transferred this task to Pete Wilson and Zora Breeding in order to take some time to catch up with his own material.  Molly claims that things are becoming clearer and she is beginning to understand authority records better (that is progress!)

 

Nancy Boggess-Korekach changed the locations of the materials brought down to Government Information from the 4th floor Media Center and Zora Breeding made the corresponding changes to the online nonbook tables.  We are grateful to Nancy B-K for saving us from having to try to make these changes manually.  Thank you Nancy and LITS!

 

Nancy B-K also created a list, at Zora's request, to identify the material in Acorn with a home location of In-process that was not charged and was older than 2003.  Zora, Ann Barnette and Jeff Taylor went through the list and resolved the problems. We may have to create another list for material added since 2003.

 

Mary Charles Lasater experimented with the Java client but found it slow and frustrating and rather inefficient for cataloging and authorities functionality.

 

Statistics:

TS totals: 2299 new titles cataloged.

CAT totals: 1515 new titles cataloged, 216 of which were original contributions or national level enhancements to the OCLC database and 939 were modified locally.

We recataloged 117 titles and reconned 18 titles.

Linda Davis withdrew 413 items.

 

Marcive delivered 5494 new or modified authority records.  The team reports making changes to 623 name, 100 subject and 19 series headings on Acorn bibliographic records (not part of new cataloging activity).  We deleted 39 authority records.

 

ORDER SERVICES:

 

Statistics:

In December of 2005, the Order Services team received and processed:

Serials/Periodicals: 2828

Approvals: 1049

 

Added to Acorn:

SSO's:97 (by Gina Berry in Cataloging)

Gifts: 28

 

We placed 892 new orders, Speed Cataloged 678 titles, and received 784 new requests for orders.

 

On 12/28, Ebsco finally released the invoice for our 2006 renewals; the invoice is being loaded into Acorn in early January. Harrassowitz invoices have also just been loaded, and the Swets invoice has just been paid (a check was written to Swets for approximately $470,000).

 

We are continuing in our search for our LAIII position, our primary candidate having rejected our offer. 

 

Chris Waldrop, JoNell Owens, Debbie Williams, Angel Bruner, Yan-Xia Zhong and Monica Sanchez continue to spend some time working in the new Java client prior to the larger migration.

 

PRESERVATION:

 

The end of semester crunch usually hits the repair and binding units harder than marking, but shelves everywhere are filling up. The best work-related Christmas present the team received was the news that LINCPlus was truly working once again after a 6-month hiatus.  LINCPLus allows staff to process binding records much more quickly than does LARS. 

 

Sue Davis continued to meet with Bill Hook about the library's disaster response plan. They finalized a DRAT (first responders to an emergency--disaster response action team) list.

 

Binding:

145 monographs

355 periodicals

135 serials

635 volumes total

 

889 new paperbacks sorted and 381 selected for immediate binding (43%).

Looking back over the last 12 months, the average monthly binding selection rate was 45%. 

 

128 monographs rebarcoded in preparation for binding

184 Acorn holdings records updated as a result of binding.

 

Mid Atlantic Bookbindery scheduled only one delivery and pick up during December.  Two-week turnaround begins again in Jan.  The 2006 delivery and pickup schedule is posted at:

<http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/rs/techserv/Preservation/Public/MAB2006schedule.htm>

Dates highlighted in gray are the dates the MAB truck picks up and drops off our shipment.  Items should be sent to the TS binding unit at least one week prior to the expected shipping out date.

 

Marking:

3393 volumes including

209 RUSH items

reels of microfilm labeled

 

Marking statistics were exactly the same as those of November--what are the statistical chances of that happening? Of that total 209 were RUSH.  Because of the holiday break, items are now taking a bit longer than the typical week turnaround to label books.

 

Repair:

351 volumes were repaired with 478 treatments that ranged from the simplest to the most complex. 

The unit served every library but Eskind Biomedical.  The biggest news is the growing backlog resulting from the end of semester returns and Divinity Library's Annex project.

 

Charlotte Lew reports that the wrapper box she received from a test with Heckman Bindery was well designed, but the sample took over two months to arrive.