Technical Services Monthly Report
June 2006
DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:
Chris
Waldrop, Machelle Keen, and Molly Dahl have been very busy members of the Java
Client Training Project Team charged with organizing the training sessions for
library staff. Chris serves as the project
team leader. Order Services team members who tested the Java WF client helped Chris
prepare some of the documentation. Mary Ellen
Wilson and Angel Bruner will conduct acquisitions training. Molly Dahl will be
doing basic cataloging training. Chris will do serials, and Mary Charles Lasater will do authorities training. We thank our Tech Services trainers for their
cooperation and hard work in this important training effort.
Don Jones and Roberta Winjum met with Dr. John Ayers of the Dept. of Earth and
Environmental Sciences to discuss adding some of their material to the VU e-Archive
and Don began adding metadata to these submissions. Roberta also met with Pete
Wilson and Jodie Gambill of Special Collections, who began
working on adding content and creating metadata for Vanderbilt News Service podcasts being added to the VU e-Archive.
The ETD task force
recommendations to the Metadata Committee were accepted and several new
procedures were put in place. Jeff
Taylor has begun making the archival CD-Rom copies of electronic dissertations.
Mary Charles Lasater is chairing the Primo project’s Task Group on 'Normalization',
which is determining how to map information into Primo.
She and Roberta Winjum were among the attendees at two days of meetings with
ExLibris staff to discuss the project. Roberta is
exploring options for record enhancement, including tables of contents, thumbnails,
summaries, and book reviews.
The construction noise for the
Divinity Library has been somewhat disruptive in CAT, Binding, and Marking this
month. The
Binding/Marking staff area was affected when some recabling
work left their work areas in a messy state.
But a quick response to their problem report fixed everything. We look forward to the completion of Divinity’s beautiful
renovation.
PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:
Zora Breeding, Molly Dahl, Sue Davis, Don Jones, Mary Charles Lasater and Pete Wilson attended the ALA Annual Conference
in
Several staff members attended
the presentations of the candidates for the English bibliographer position.
Some attended the brown bag
held by the Test Pilot Site Team and the Web Update Team.
Many also attended receptions
for Dale Manning, Chris Benda and Leslie Foutch.
Many staff attended the Spring
Staff Event. Ann Ercelawn assisted by baking
brownies, soliciting and picking up giveaways from area merchants, and serving
on the cleanup crew.
Charlotte Lew
returned from her trip to
Jean
Wright continues to be on medical leave due to her knee injury.
CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:
Mary Charles Lasater and Ann Barnette worked
on the subject analysis of the new theses that arrived in May.
Gina Berry processed many SSOs and Russian approvals. She also continued adding URL’s
to print records for Lecture Notes
titles. Working from latest to earliest,
Gina has reached titles published in 1996.
Ann Ercelawn
cataloged the Landmarks of Science
journal titles on microfilm.
Pete Wilson found yet more Helguera gifts to catalog for Special Collections.
Yuh-Fen Benda, Becky Atack
and Pete Wilson cataloged large numbers of Rush DVDs. Yuh
Fen also worked on several last minute year-end orders of East Asian materials.
Statistics:
2141 new titles cataloged by
TS
1196 new titles cataloged by
CAT,
132 of which were original
contributions or national level enhancements
104 titles recataloged
0 titles reconned
450 items withdrawn
6966 new or modified authority
records delivered by Marcive
616 local changes made to names
on bib records outside of normal cataloging
68 local changes made to
subjects on bib records outside of normal cataloging
39 local changes made to series
on bib records outside of normal cataloging
62 authority records
deleted
FY 2005/2006 totals:
29426 new titles cataloged by
TS
18009 new titles cataloged by CAT
96077 new or modified authority
records delivered by Marcive
ORDER
SERVICES:
Statistics:
In June,
Order Services received and processed:
3016 Serials/Periodicals
861 Approvals
1837 new
orders placed
945
titles speed cataloged
Added to
Acorn:
SSO's: 189
Gifts: 100
For the
2005/06 year:
15,218 new orders created
35,044 serial and periodical issues received
10,905 titles speed cataloged
Receiving
slowed during June as verifiers worked to finish up orders for the fiscal year,
and had all orders placed and funds encumbered by the end of June.
The
serial receivers reinstated Science standing orders that had been canceled
earlier in the year, and worked with the verifiers to place orders for the
volumes that had been missed.
Mary
Ellen Wilson ran cleanup reports in preparation for rollovers at fiscal year
end and tested rollover reports in Java WF (test) which worked perfectly.
PRESERVATION:
Sue Davis accompanied Juanita Murray and Celia Walker to the Annex
parking lot to inspect one of the most bug infested gift book donations she had
ever seen. Hundreds of bugs of various
species were trapped inside the shrink wrapped load on a pallet. Many were
literally taped down under the packing tape.
Still more were inside the boxes themselves. Some were dead, but many were alive. Because of the obvious infestation, the items
never actually were delivered inside the Annex and were left outside in the
parking area. Belfor,
a disaster response company, was contacted to pick up the boxes for vacuum
freeze drying to kill the insects. The
library van had to be fumigated as well.
The good news is that the items have already been returned to the
library in good condition and bug-free.
With the final 2005/2006 numbers now available, Sue Davis began to
analyze 10+ years of historical data for binding, marking, and repair
processing. The general trends show
binding totals are dropping, marking totals are holding steady, and repair
totals are climbing. Summary charts are
available to any interested staff.
Binding:
298 monographs
693 periodicals
112 serials
1103 volumes total
For the fiscal year the team has processed 13,141 volumes for the
bindery, a decrease of about 2,000 from last year.
739 new Central paperbacks sorted and 301 selected for
immediate binding.
Machelle Keen reports that for
the fiscal year, she sorted through 11,033 volumes and sent 4,624 to the
bindery (42%).
Sheranda Lee and Linda Davis updated 666 Acorn
records between them as a result of periodical and serial binding. Once again we want to thank Linda Davis,
honorary Preservation team member, for rebarcoding
many books prior to rebinding and for updating Acorn records.
Marking:
4162 volumes
282 RUSH items
The
current backlog is well under control, a good thing since the tidal wave of
year end orders and gift book processing is expected to hit soon.
For the past fiscal year the team labeled 3,113 RUSH items, roughly 6% of our
total labeling output of 50,781 items. The
general marking total is about 1,100 volumes higher than last year.
Repair:
382 volumes repaired with 499 treatments.
For the fiscal year the team repaired 4,256 items, an increase of
more than 100 from last year.