Technical Services Monthly Report
July 2005
DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:
As Order
Services gets back to receiving materials from year end orders and materials
that were set aside while focusing on year-end orders, CAT has already begun to
see the effects of increased receipts. Although Marking
was slow at the beginning of the month, during the last week or so of the month
their receipts also began to increase.
The Cataloging Documentation and Training Task Force (Don Jones,
Becky Atack, Pete Wilson, Denise Chavez and Alice
Cunningham) met and continued with their charge.
Several staff had their computers ghosted for upgrading to the
next level of Windows, and although LITS staff were
helpful & responsive, some people experienced various resulting glitches.
Roberta Winjum and Catherine Gick met with Andrea Hewitt, Program Coordinator, Faculty
Senate, and taught her how to add Faculty Senate documents to the VU e-Archive.
PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:
Two candidates were interviewed for the open Spanish Cataloger
position. Thanks to all staff who met, toured, dined and otherwise helped the
candidates to feel welcome.
Technical Services conducted tours and training as we welcomed Hieke Schniedermeyer, librarian
on exchange from the
Sue Davis attended the July 17-22 workshop: Digital Preservation
Management: Implementing Short-term Strategies for Long-term Problems at
CAAG met to assess the recent change in the way uniform titles are
indexed. The group decided to make a
further change and all records with uniform titles were re-indexed in order to
implement the adjustment.
Heike Schniedermeyer held a brown bag on
“
Ann Ercelawn taught a two day Basic
Serials workshop for Solinet in
Several TS staff attended the brown bag on "Wikis, Blogs, RSS, Etc.: New
Tools for the New Library".
CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:
Many items arrived for fall reserves and we noticed an increase in
patron requested material. Pete Wilson and Ann Barnette
continued to split up the majority of the materials for the open cataloger position,
keeping them current. Additionally:
Jeff Taylor processed a large new shipment of VU
dissertations. He also reports that July
was the busiest month yet for electronic dissertations. He received 30 in the last two weeks. Ann Barnette and
Mary Charles Lasater finished the subject analysis on
the previous batch of theses to make room for the new arrivals.
Don Jones met with French Professors Pat Ward and Mary Beth Raycraft concerning a manuscript by the French poet Pierre Louys, which he cataloged for the Pia
Collection. Don also created original
records for some Canadian videos, which he describes as "rather difficult
and bizarre."
Gina Berry brought over more books from the Russian inventory
until the new material picked back up.
She kept the new LC books current and processed SSOs
and some Russian approvals and firm orders.
Zora Breeding, with some help from Mary Charles Lasater, cataloged the new titles added to the Past Masters
database.
Ann Ercelawn continued working on SFX
problems and Acorn problems related to SFX, and contacted the
Linda Davis completed analytics for the
Mary Charles worked on the Ed.D. thesis project. She
also reports that progress is being made on the
Zora Breeding and Yuh-Fen Benda cataloged lots of videos for fall reserves. Yuh-Fen started
working on assigning numbers to the anime videos that are being moved from the
reserve room back to the
Yuh-Fen Benda created
some macros to help with Binding and Marking processes.
Don Jones assisted Mandy Henk, Access
Services Librarian in the Law Library, in translating some French websites and
helping her to communicate in French to acquire a French periodical.
Statistics:
TS totals: 2426 new titles cataloged.
CAT totals: 1275 new titles cataloged, 214 of which were original
contributions or national level enhancements to the OCLC database and 671 were
modified locally.
We recataloged 162 titles and reconned 7 titles.
Linda Davis withdrew 146 items.
No copy cataloging material is backlogged.
Marcive delivered 5712 new or modified authority
records. The team reports making changes
to 637 name, 315 subject and 101 series headings on Acorn bibliographic records
(not part of new cataloging activity).
We deleted 77 authority records.
Mary Charles Lasater reports that the
Program for Cooperative Cataloging has finally updated their web pages,
providing more current statistics of activity. In the first six months of FY05,
we contributed 1126 new name authority records and modified 155. We contributed
154 new series authority records and modified 54. We proposed 14 new subject
headings and one classification number. We are very proud of the activity of
all the Vanderbilt catalogers. The
Tennessee Funnel project was finally listed. They have contributed 94 new name
authority records and modified 14. That is a very respectable showing for their
first 6 months.
ORDER
SERVICES:
OS started
off the new fiscal year by placing 471 new orders, and Speed Cataloging 1151
titles. We also received a heavy number of Level 1 requests to order (including
Reserve items).
All
non-serials OS staff are working primarily on
receiving. Shipments from Blackwells in particular
have been heavier than usual, and so everyone is currently working on receiving
those materials in order to bring them up to date. The receiving of YBP orders
has also been brought up to date. We are also processing all Level 1 and 2
materials as soon as they are received. Serials receivers are keeping all
serial and periodical materials current.
In an
effort to streamline the receiving process and to avoid claiming materials that
are awaiting processing in the mailroom, invoices from the Blackwell shipments are
being pulled and paid prior to the materials being received in Acorn. At the point of payment, the order records
are also being given a status of "received" to prevent claims.
We have
also received some much appreciated assistance in receiving Russian firm orders
and approvals (as well as the 76 SSO's, above) from
This
month also saw the first of the Music approvals on the new Blackwell profile.
Other
projects include Beta testing the Java client, fiscal year end activities
(including gathering statistics for the past fiscal year and running year-end
reports), and enjoying the near-completion of the renovation project.
Statistics:
3006
Serials/Periodicals & 835 Approvals received and processed
Added to
Acorn:
SSO's:76
Gifts:90
PRESERVATION:
Software problems impacted the work of the whole team during
July. Most of the problems were
unintentional side effects of upgrades to Windows XP and Microsoft Office
2003. In addition Sue Davis's computer died
during an attempted installation of an external card reader. The month's production totals reflect the
struggle to bring our software and hardware back online. While not all of the problems are yet
resolved, work is generally flowing again using alternative software or
workarounds. Since one of the largest problems occurred while Sue was away to a
workshop, Roberta Winjum stepped in and worked with
LITS on behalf of the team.
Binding statistics dropped through the floor because of a major
failure of LINCPlus, the binding software. As of today (August 2), Dale Poulter reports no resolution in sight. Fortunately, LARS was still hanging around on
the network, and the team decided to use it for the next shipment to prevent a
large binding backlog from growing. Machelle Keen and
Karen Pillow both dredged deep into their memories to remember how to use LARS
again. It's more labor intensive than a
working LINCPlus, so fewer materials may be processed
than if LINCPlus were in the driver's seat. The goal is get out as many materials as
possible before the fall semester.
Near the end of the month Charlotte Lew,
Jing Liu, and Sue Davis were kept busy with frequent
roof leaks on the 8th floor. Rain caused
some of the leaks, but the main cause was roof repairmen hosing down the roof.
Over the course of a week, lab staff dried 57 library books plus some personal
materials belonging to a graduate student whose carrel got flooded from one of
the roof "tests."
Binding:
434 monographs
51 rebinds
264 periodicals
749 volumes total
761 new paperbacks sorted and 333 selected for immediate
binding (44%).
Sheranda Lee and Linda Davis updated 382 Acorn
holdings records between them as a result of binding.
Marking:
3750 volumes including 203 RUSH items
Items are still being labeled within a week's time.
Repair:
155 volumes were treated with 290 treatments.
The volume count number is a bit skewed because the book drying
projects were recorded in the book repair database in batches rather than
one-by-one. While Jing
Liu focused on repairing torn spines and loose hinges, Charlotte Lew focused on making enclosures of all kinds, including
two buckram-covered clamshell boxes for special Baudelaire materials.