Technical Services Monthly Report
July 2006
DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:
Tech
Services staff began attending the Workflows Java training classes. Machelle Keen spent
a large portion of her month managing all the reservations for these training
classes. Chris Waldrop coordinated the
training sessions, taught several classes, made sure that the classroom was
open every morning, and made the "java" to go with the Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Angel Craddock and Mary Ellen Wilson shared
the Acquisitions portion of the Cross Training session. Molly Dahl and Mary
Charles Lasater worked on documentation for their
portion of the training. Molly also taught a portion of the Basic Cataloging
training. Training sessions attended in
July included General Training, Cross Training, Basic Cataloging, Basic
Collection Development and Basic Circulation. Now staff are
busy trying out the new wizards, setting up local toolbars, and generally
trying to learn how to use the new themes design. Once the Library-wide
training began, OS began to hold its own, more procedure-specific training and
Q&A sessions; Chris Waldrop, Monica Sanchez, Angel Craddock and Mary Ellen Wilson
have all been working on presentations, documentation, and helping individuals
with their questions as the need arises.
Problems with response time in the Java Client brought to light
the need for computer upgrades of many staff in Tech Services. We learned that Sirsi’s new requirement for running the Java Client is at
least 512 MB of RAM, and almost half of the workstations in TS do not meet this
requirement.
TechForce held a lunch meeting to welcome Janice Adlington to the group. Janice’s reports will be a new
addition to the TS Monthly Report, under E-Resources.
Mary Charles Lasater continued as chair
of the Primo project’s Task Group on 'Normalization'. The group submitted the draft MARC21 mapping
to the Digital Library Steering Committee.
Ann Ercelawn attended one of their meetings
about FRBR to determine the impact of Primo on serials.
Don Jones, Becky Atack, Pete Wilson and
Molly Dahl continued the work of the Cataloging Documentation and Training
Task Force.
Roberta Winjum conducted a retirement learning
session on gardening. Ann Ercelawn and Sue Davis
both helped with the retirement learning classes.
Janice and Roberta also attended a meeting of the Library Directors
Council to discuss e-resource management and with Roberta Bell regarding a
faculty publication search
Tech Services will miss Jing Liu, who is
leaving to return to teaching in
Many staff attended the Q&A session
with Paul Gherman. Some enjoyed the Bastille Day
celebration in the
Sue Davis attended a reception held in
honor of USAC representatives.
CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:
We reshuffled some LAIII duties among the copy catalogers in order
to free up more of Yuh-Fen Benda’s
time to work on the East Asian Studies material. Marking problems will now be handled by Gina
Berry. Series related work will be
handled by Jeff Taylor. Routing problems
will be directed to the LA IVs. Jeff
Taylor took over the project to reclass Peabody Youth
Collection books from Dewey to LC.
Mary Charles Lasater and Denise Chavez
began using a new Sirsi report that will check the
daily loads for bibliographic changes.
Denise is thrilled that this has freed up a significant portion of her
time to work on other authorities issues.
Pete Wilson worked with Jodie Gambill to
add the first two items to the VU e-Archive Vanderbilt News Service Podcasts collection.
Gina Berry finished the project to add URL’s to print records for
Lecture Notes titles, ending with material printed in 1991. She also added URL’s to print records for the
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
She estimates that she updated about 300-400 records over the course of
a few weeks.
Gina began working on overlaying full OCLC records for the DVD
collection that had only minimal records supplied by David Anderson, formerly
of the
Jeff dealt with the now usual mass of new ETDs.
Outreach:
Yuh-Fen Benda gave the
Asian studies professors a refresher course in using the SKQS software loaded
in Central Reference. She also showed
them how to search Worldcat in Chinese.
Metadata Journal Club:
Mary Charles Lasater reported on the
ALCTS/LC sponsored Metadata Applications and Standards Workshop she attended in
Statistics:
2383 new titles cataloged by TS
1558 new titles cataloged by CAT, 156 of which were original
contributions or national level enhancements
151 titles recataloged
3 titles reconned
503 items withdrawn
5079 new or modified authority records delivered by Marcive
730 local changes made to names on bib records outside of normal
cataloging
128 local changes made to subjects on bib records outside of
normal cataloging
106 local changes made to series on bib records outside of normal
cataloging
201 authority records deleted
E-RESOURCES
Meetings to date:
Dale Poulter (re: SFX)
Ann Ercelawn, Kitty Porter, Rick Stringer-Hye
(SFX)
John Haar
Mary Beth Blalock
Martin Cerjan and Mary Miles Prince
In July, 2006, Order Services received and processed:
Serials/Periodicals:2362
Approvals: 544
Added to Acorn:
SSO's:59 (by Gina Berry in Cataloging)
Gifts:489
OS placed 235 new orders, and Speed Cataloged 816 titles.
Invoices:
OS prepaid both Swets and Ebsco for our 2007 renewal invoices. This is the first time we have prepaid
subscription renewals since the 2003/2004 fiscal year, as the interest rates
have been too low to translate into a beneficial reduction in service charge. The
prepayment will not affect our ability to cancel subscriptions, but as always,
we do need to get 2007 cancellations to them in early September. (Libraries
should note that, since this prepayment was made against "borrowed"
University funds and itemized invoices have not yet been received and loaded
into Acorn, the prepayment does not yet show in Acorn against their book funds;
once itemized invoices ARE received and loaded, the amounts will show in Acorn
as "invoiced" until the amount prepaid is fully billed - please
contact Mary Ellen if you have any questions.)
Receiving:
Verifier/receivers mainly concentrated on receiving firm orders
and processing materials from the gift backlog in OS; only "Level 1 and
2" new orders were placed. Serial
receivers continue to keep serials and periodicals current.
Special Projects:
The fiscal year end rollover was fairly uneventful, and was not
done until after the PaymentNet closing on July 5th
so that June-end purchases that came through in the first few days of July
would be included.
Also in July, the Peabody and Science approval plans were resumed
with Blackwells Book Services.
PRESERVATION:
Lesson Relearned:
Mold (both active and dormant) can seriously affect sensitive
people or those with compromised immune systems. Please isolate any suspect
volumes in plastic bags and ask Pres staff to inspect them. Mold can infest other parts of the collection
as well as sicken people. Safety should
come first even if you personally don't experience problems.
Amy Stewart-Mailhiot asked about
microfiche storage options, so Sue was able to provide a lengthy discourse on
the history of the collection. Sue also
consulted with John Haar.
Binding:
558 monographs
130 rebinds
297 periodicals
59 serials
1044 volumes total
1132 new paperbacks sorted and 611 selected for immediate
binding (54%).
The higher binding rate is due to the fact that many gift items
are currently being processed in Technical Services and quite a few are brittle
or in bad shape. The brittle items are
forwarded to the repair lab for boxes.
260 Acorn records updated as a result of binding.
Marking:
3321 volumes
159 RUSH items
Repair:
152 volumes were treated with 316 treatments.
The bulk of the work was typical--hinge tightening, super repair,
and spine repair.