Technical Services Monthly Report
Nov. 2005
DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:
The Preservation Team has received several "thank you"
notes from patrons for our quick response to their Rush In-Process requests. Those notes make the extra effort worthwhile. Karen Pillow received some strange RUSH
requests due to erroneous data from old Acorn records that was misleading
patrons. Zora Breeding has since begun the process of
improving Acorn info by cleaning up as many as possible of these records,
numbering in the hundreds.
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.
Ann Ercelawn and Roberta Winjum met with Dr. Robert Barsky
to discuss mounting articles from his journal Social discourse in the VU e-Archive. Thanks to Julie Loder for her help in troubleshooting a problem with
diacritics and other display for the articles.
Roberta also met with Roberta Bell, director of the Vanderbilt
Institutional Research Group, to discuss possible collaboration and use of the
VU e-Archive.
Pete Wilson, Paula Covington and Zora Breeding corresponded on the problem of the 245 title
subfield c, statement of responsibility not being searchable due to an
unexpected result of a change made by CAAG, and tried to find the appropriate
channel for such problems. This was later addressed by the Metadata Committee.
The CAT team is now empowered, following consultation with affected parties, to
make decisions about policy changes or enhancements to Acorn bibliographic
record indexing or display.
PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:
Mary Charles Lasater gave a workshop on
LC Basic Subject training for Molly Dahl, Yuh-Fen Benda and Chris Benda.
Mary Charles also conducted two days of NACO training for Molly
Dahl and four other librarians, two from Nashville Public Library, one from
Austin Peay and one from Lambuth.
They are joining the Tennessee Funnel.
Don Jones was interviewed by Angela Wibking
who will be writing an article for Vanderbilt Magazine on Clarise
DeQuasie's Pavarotti collection in Special
Collections.
Sue Davis and Bill Hook continue to meet to discuss updating the
library's disaster response plan.
Roberta Winjum attended the Charleston
Conference on Book and Serial Acquisitisions from
Nov. 1-5.
Monica Sanchez, Chris Waldrop, and Mary
Ellen Wilson reviewed applications for Order Services’ LAIII
(Verifier/Receiver) position, and began interviewing.
We are looking forward to Jing Liu's
return soon from her semester of teaching in Xian,
Carlos Escarfuller will wrap up his work
in Preservation on Dec. 2 and return to
Daphne Walker was out most of the month while recuperating from
finger surgery.
Various staff attended the following meetings:
Presentations by the Science and Engineering library director
candidates
Sirsi Java Client demonstration
Self-care brown bag
Webcast: Visual Literacy in Higher Education
GIS, Vanderbilt, and You brown bag
CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:
Jeff Taylor processed a large shipment of new VU theses and a few
more electronic ones. Mary Charles Lasater and Ann Barnette worked
on subject analysis of the new theses.
Mary Charles worked on more of the 'T' masters theses sent over by
Chris Benda. She also reviewed the
Ann Ercelawn worked on more SFX problems
with Kitty Porter.
Yuh-Fen Benda analyzed a
24 volume architecture set in Chinese at a professor's request. She also made significant progress with
reassigning and recataloging the anime films. She is down to the last couple of problem
titles.
Gina Berry, Jeff Taylor, Ann Ercelawn
and Mary Charles Lasater worked on searching and
cataloging the seemingly endless supply of UN documents brought over by Amy
Stewart-Mailhiot.
Denise Chavez worked on daily load reports, unauthorized headings
lists and bibliographic corrections and did a little NACO work.
Linda Davis continued working on the bound-with project for
Central titles. She also edited holdings
for serial titles going to the bindery and continued to work on
Jean Wright worked to check the TVA material in the SuDocs classification to straighten out our holdings and
the Marcive profile for these materials.
Molly Dahl continues her cataloging training. This month she worked mainly on Spanish and
Portuguese language material. Don Jones continues
her training.
Statistics:
TS totals: 2499 new titles cataloged.
CAT totals: 1533 new titles cataloged, 220 of which were original
contributions or national level enhancements to the OCLC database and 875 were
modified locally.
We recataloged 195 titles and reconned 1 title.
Linda Davis withdrew 369 items.
Copy cataloging is current.
Marcive delivered 4296 new or modified authority
records.
The statistics were lower this month due to LC upgrading to
Unicode and some OCLC problems. The team
reports making changes to 441 name, 92 subject and 51 series headings on Acorn
bibliographic records (not part of new cataloging activity). We deleted 23 authority records.
ORDER
SERVICES:
Statistics:
Received and processed:
Serials/Periodicals:3147
Approvals:893
Added to Acorn:
SSO's:75 (primarily by Gina Berry in
Cataloging)
Gifts:89
OS received 646 new requests, placed 1155
new orders, and Speed Cataloged 878 titles.
Following up on the demonstration by LITS
of the Sirsi Java Client, more staff from OS will
begin testing Java work flow and procedures over the coming weeks.
Receiving:
In addition to incoming firm orders,
serials, and approvals, OS has been processing some of the gift materials that
have been sent to us by the libraries.
As the numbers above indicate, this has been slow going so far.
Visitors:
John Laraway from
Blackwells visited, meeting with representatives from
the Central,
PRESERVATION:
Binding:
480 monographs
301 periodicals
97 serials
887 volumes total
994 new paperback monographs sorted and 404 selected for immediate
binding.
137 Acorn holdings records updated as a result of periodical and
serials binding.
Binding continued to have software problems with LincPlus.
NOTE: There will be only
one December binding shipment pickup and delivery on Dec. 13. The first shipment of 2006 is scheduled for
Jan. 3.
Marking:
3,393 volumes Including 220 RUSH items
Marking shelves are quite full, but the team is labeling items about
a week old.
Repair:
91 volumes were treated with 170 treatments.
Along with the wrapper shipment preparations, Charlotte Lew spent much time doing triage work of incoming
materials. Divinity sent three trucks of
items from their Annex transfer process.
With the end of semester returns, more circulating items are finding
their way to the lab from the libraries and the Annex.