Technical Services Monthly Report

Jan.  2006

 

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

 

The Preservation Team was very surprised to hear of the merger of ICI Binderies (a group of binderies across the US of which our own Mid-Atlantic is one) and Heckman Bindery (our former bindery for many years and the largest single bindery plant in the US).  A follow up conference call with ICI officials answered our immediate questions.  The new group is named HF Group with the initials coming from the names of the two families, Heckman and Fairfield, who own the two merging companies.  Further details were provided at an ALA reception, which Sue Davis and Roberta Winjum both attended.

 

A major reason behind this merger is that libraries are binding fewer volumes than in the past, especially periodicals. Plus, the cost of supplies and transportation has increased dramatically.  The industry is looking at consolidating and diversifying with new services such as digitizing and conservation. Based upon our early conversations with the bindery officials, we feel confident that our voice and concerns will be heard.  Our contract will protect our prices for another two years. Information about the new organization can be found at: http://www.thehfgroup.com/ 

 

The Cataloging Documentation and Training Task Force frenetically worked toward their February 3rd deadline. TF members Don Jones, Becky Atack and Pete Wilson met once with Zora Breeding and the CAT team devoted portions of two team meetings to discussing the manual and identifying gaps in the documentation. Pete Wilson worked to convert updated and new documents to the web and add them to the manual.  Molly Dahl began assisting the TF by redesigning the page to make it more attractive, accessible and user-friendly.

 

Roberta Winjum completed a display in the GLB 2nd Floor cases of “The Top 100 English Language Novels Published Since 1923” from a Time Magazine list. This will probably be the final display to be housed in the cases before the Divinity renovation this summer.

 

Mary Ellen Wilson and Monica Sanchez met with Flo Wilson and Catherine Gick to discuss the workflow and procedures for ordering Music materials through Order Services.

 

Sue Davis provided a brief training on mold and related health/safety issues to Catherine Gick and Celia Walker who may be traveling soon to view a collection in Florida.

 

Sue Davis and Roberta Winjum completed the ARL Preservation Statistics and the stats for collections, staff, and expenditures by ARL’s Jan. 31 deadline.

 

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

 

Order Services was fortunate to hire John Mangrum to fill our vacant verifier position. John comes to us from the University of Memphis, and started working in OS January 30th.

 

Don Jones agreed to be a member of the newly formed Reserves Standardization Project Team, which is being chaired by Mandy Henk, Access Services Librarian at the Law Library.  The team is charged with developing uniform standards across the system for cataloging reserve items.  We are very glad to have an opportunity to help with this effort.

 

Susan Bell, Zora Breeding, Molly Dahl, Sue Davis, Ann Ercelawn, Mary Charles Lasater, Pete Wilson and Roberta Winjum traveled to San Antonio to attend ALA midwinter conference.  We heard more about how librarianship is changing and speculation on what our future might look like. 

 

Molly Dahl had lunch with Sarah Buetter, Amia Baker and a VU Provost's son to discuss his interest in going into librarianship.  Molly thinks she may have influenced him to consider a career in cataloging!

 

Some attended the Bandy Center sponsored lecture "Modern Arts of the Book" given by Mr. Ed Colker and also a later informal seminar given by Mr. Colker in the Bandy Center.

 

Many of us attended Leonor and Paul Van Cotthem's retirement party, hosted by Order Services and the Annex.

 

The Preservation Team ended the month on a high note with a special birthday celebration for Karen Pillow. 

 

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

 

Information from ALA specific to cataloging: Work on RDA (Resource Description and Access, formerly known as AACR3) is progressing.  RDA is planned to provide principles for both MARC and other forms of Metadata creation.  Speculation on the future work of catalogers involves the transition from description of materials common to many institutions to work on describing materials and collections unique to the individual institution, especially digital collections, and finding ways to share the description of those materials. Our unique materials should be made useful to others looking for similar types of material.  For example, our images of the buildings of Vanderbilt may be useful to others interested in campus architecture and should be easily accessible by a simple web search of the topic.

 

Back to the present and closer to home, the CAT team was inundated with material for the new semester, much of which were Rush items for reserve.  Many new videos were requested by professors.  Handling of Central videos for their new location had a few snags, but we think we are getting all the kinks worked out.

 

Government Information brought over another range of UN documents that need cataloging, just when the shelves were showing significant progress from the last batch.

 

Jeff Taylor processed a small shipment of new Peabody theses and a few new ETDs .

 

Ann Ercelawn continued to work on the SFX Knowledgebase and to resolve problems with records received through the MarcIt service, especially JSTOR titles. She also fielded a call from Harvard concerning problems with the MarcIt service.

 

Mary Charles Lasater continued working through the 1100 authority records loaded as a result of the last EEBO load.

 

Susan Bell cataloged more TN textbooks at the Peabody library.

 

Yuh-Fen Benda worked on problems found by Central Library related to the shifting of materials to the Annex from the 2nd Floor.

 

Jeff cleaned up records for 18th century British plays that had appeared on the "in-process but not charged" error list.

 

Molly Dahl continued training with Don Jones, Zora Breeding and Pete Wilson.

 

The team upgraded to Connexion client 1.5 with help from Dennis Boswell.  Pete Wilson identified a problem with the diacritics tables in the new version and Zora Breeding worked with OCLC support staff to find a resolution.  They were not much help, but Dennis was able to figure out a solution that fixed the problem.  Thanks, Dennis!

 

Statistics:

TS totals: 2106 new titles cataloged.

CAT totals: 1386 new titles cataloged, 175 of which were original contributions or national level enhancements to the OCLC database and 806 were modified locally.

We recataloged 206 titles and reconned 24 titles.

527 items withdrawn

 

Marcive delivered 5938 new or modified authority records.  The team reports making changes to 662 name, 120 subject and 88 series headings on Acorn bibliographic records (not part of new cataloging activity).  We deleted 107 authority records.

 

ORDER SERVICES:

 

The 2006 subscription renewal invoices for Swets and Ebsco have been paid (with the exception of some supplementary invoices). 

 

Monica Sanchez has been working with John Mangrum, training him in the intricacies of receiving.

 

Several members of Order Services (Chris Waldrop, Monica Sanchez, JoNell Owens, Debbie Williams, Yan-Xia Zhong Angel Bruner and Mary Ellen Wilson) continue to spend at least part of their day working in the Java client, and have recently begun to evaluate the relative virtues of "Classic" vs "Themes". 

 

Statistics:

In January, Order Services received and processed: 

  Serials/Periodicals:   2969

  Approvals:  879

OS placed 1080 new orders, and Speed Cataloged 719 titles, and added 113 gifts to Acorn. 

 

PRESERVATION:

 

Binding:

837 monographs

164 rebinds

641 periodicals

181 serials

1823 volumes total

 

632 new paperbacks sorted and 271 selected for immediate binding (43%). 

363 Acorn records updated as a result of binding.

 

With LINCPlus working well for the most part (Machelle Keen discovered a glitch that LITS is working on), binding staff were able to process more volumes faster.   While we aren't completely caught up, the backlog of items waiting for binding has decreased considerably.

 

Marking:

5074 volumes, including

339 RUSH items

 

The marking shelves, which had been getting a bit crowded, are starting to have breathing room again.  Although we aren't quite back within our preferred 1-week turnaround time, we are keeping a good pace.

 

Repair:

319 volumes were repaired with 522 treatments. 

 

The treatments ranged from simple hinge repairs to complex portfolio construction.  Staff worked on materials from almost every library in the system.  The two most unusual projects came from the Bandy Center.  One was a tiny miniature book which required a single stitch to reattach its pages.  The other was a large folio volume, Histoire d'O, which contained some very interesting color plates that needed additional protection of acid-free tissue inserts.

 

Repair staff are very pleased with the outcome of a board shear (the big green cutter) service call.  There are very few people in the US qualified to work on these cutters, so the service call can be pricey.  Fortunately, one of those experts was in the neighborhood (i.e., Asheville, North Carolina) and we benefited from a side trip.  This was the very first service call on this piece of equipment in anyone's memory.