Technical Services Monthly Report

Jan. 2005

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

TechForce is re-examining the Rush routine for in-process materials, documenting how the process works, and making plans to recommend some time-saving improvements. Order Services met to discuss how to fine-tune the processing of Rush requests. As a first step, they will expedite more IN PROCESS materials that are requested for rush processing straight to Circulation uncataloged for faster delivery to the patrons.

Early in the month CAT began to notice a problem with fund information disappearing from item records and alerted Order Services. Mary Ellen Wilson was able to trace the disappearance of the information to a script Dale Poulter had written to populate the circflag extended info field in an attempt to solve another problem. Dale was able to stop the fund information from disappearing, but is still working on getting the circflag situation worked out. The same script is also suspected in a labeling problem that has cropped up.

Zora Breeding is learning how to request batchloads of records, usually supplied for our large e-book collections, and she will take over this responsibility from Roberta Winjum. She successfully initiated loads of some Netlibrary IV and History E-Books. We also loaded some new Knovel records.

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

Bryan Kurowski was selected for the Collection Development Library Associate position and has resigned his position with CAT. We are sorry to lose him, but are very proud and wish him the very best in his new position. Bryan will work with us through the second week in February.

Pete Wilson wrote an article about the Country Music Hall of Fame library for the Serials Review "SR Visits" column, edited by former Vanderbilt employee Katy Ginanni.

Zora Breeding and Mary Charles Lasater attended the ALA midwinter meeting in Boston.

Several staff attended the lively brown bag on Information Literacy and the ARL/ESRI GIS Webcast, "Libraries and Digital Mapping in the 21st Century."

Ann Ercelawn started back to work full time in January. Becky Atack began working reduced hours in order to help her husband after surgery.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

Yuh-Fen Benda cataloged 45 of the Japanese anime videos donated by the Anime Club. The CAT team cataloged an additional 45 videos during the month, 29 of which were on the recently created Film fund. We hope this increasing emphasis on video purchasing has to do with the beginning of the semester.

Yuh-Fen, Jeff Taylor and Mary Charles Lasater found some time to work on the Peabody Ed.D. theses project. Mary Charles checked more of the Peabody masters theses that Chris Benda is working on and also checked more records input by OS staff from Peabody thesis shelf list cards.

Susan Bell continued to work on cataloging Education textbooks at Peabody and reports that the procedure is working smoothly and good progress is being made. Don Jones reviewed more Wachs books at Baker and answered related questions. Michael Scott finished the last of the Mayan books. Pete Wilson worked out a new approach to classifying audiocassettes for Management.

Mary Charles and Denise Chavez reviewed the daily authority record loads. Ann Ercelawn, Ann Barnette and Yuh-Fen reviewed the series authority reports.

Statistics:

TS totals: 2236 new titles cataloged.

CAT totals: 1347 new titles cataloged, 232 of which were original contributions or national level enhancements to the OCLC database and 1056 were modified locally.

We recataloged an additional 160 titles and reconned 7 titles.

Marcive delivered 12317 new or modified authority records. The large number is due in part to the large record sets that were loaded this month: Netlibrary, Law records, Knovel records, History E-Book records.

679 name, 380 subject and 90 series headings changed on Acorn bibliographic records (not part of new cataloging activity). 75 authority records deleted.

ORDER SERVICES:

Invoices: Having paid the 2005 Ebsco renewal invoice in the beginning of January, we are now awaiting the renewal invoice for the Wiley titles that have been transferred to Ebsco. All of the necessary information has been conveyed to Ebsco and we will pay this invoice upon receipt of the invoice and electronic file. It is expected to be approximately $332K, including the Biomedical titles, and will save nearly $4000 in service charge reduction.

Receiving: All items (serials, periodicals, monographs) are being processed within 24-48 hours of receipt in the Baker mailroom.

Toward the end of the month, we received word from Yankee that hackers had compromised GOBI - we were unable to order online for several days, and the EOCR's (provisional order records supplied from YBP) for orders previously created were not being sent to us. They briefly changed their IP address to allow us into GOBI for ordering, and GOBI now appears to be back up and running.

Statistics:

In January, OS received and processed:

Serials/Periodicals: 3222

Approvals: 749

and added to Acorn:

SSO's: 137

Gifts: 186

OS also created 808 new orders and Speed Cataloged 882 titles.

PRESERVATION:

We continue to fine-tune our relationship with MAB. Another vendor visit is scheduled for early February to deal with any remaining questions. We certainly can't complain that MAB is not providing great customer service. We've had a few product problems, but resolution is quicker and easier.

A few additional transactions with Heckman Bindery were necessary this month, however we believe that we have now resolved the last remaining invoice questions, and our relationship with Heckman Bindery is officially closed.

Charlotte Lew and Sue Davis sent measurements for five books to MAB to test the bindery's boxmaking program. The returned boxes were quite disappointing, but Charlotte believes she's figured out the main reason for the problems. We will continue to work with the bindery to see if their product will improve enough for us to consider switching from our current vendor.

Sue Davis sent the eight seriously moldy Voltaire volumes (1785 edition 70 volume set donated by Harold Stirling Vanderbilt) to the Etherington Conservation Center in North Carolina for a restoration estimate. The Center returned an estimate that was quite high; Sue is working with Yvonne Boyer to investigate our options. It was Janet Thomason who discovered the mold problem in this set when she was pulling items for Annex transfer. Approximately 20 less moldy volumes were treated in-house before shipping out to the Annex.

Binding:

1,248 volumes, including

640 monographs

6 rebinds

561 periodicals

41 serials

914 new monograph paperbacks sorted; 458 (50%) selected for immediate binding.

205 Acorn records updated as a result of binding

95 volumes rebarcoded in preparation for binding

The backlog in the binding area is as low as it has been for many months.

Marking:

4,752 volumes including

241 Level 1 (i.e. Rush) items

Ann Mallette reports that we are generally labeling the regular (Level 3) volumes within a week of receipt. Level 2 items are labeled daily. Level 1 items are now labeled 3 times daily. To study recent changes in the RUSH processing, we are temporarily keep manual statistics on the total of Level 1 (see above) and Level 2 items, which will be reported next month.

Repair:

295 volumes were repaired with 399 treatments.

That total reflects the large next to the last batch of box enclosures for the Wachs Special Collection. Charlotte predicts that we will finish the Wachs boxing project in February.