Technical Services Monthly Report
Mar. 2006
DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:
Discussions have begun in earnest about migration to the Java
client for cataloging. Zora Breeding, Roberta Winjum,
Julie Loder and Nancy Boggess-Korekach
met to clarify training issues. Mary
Charles Lasater has been actively testing the newest
version, especially since some modifications were put in place to improve the
response time. Mary Charles and Julie Loder met to try out a new report that may help authority
work. Julie came to observe Mary Charles work on the Java client in order to
more fully understand some workflow problems she was experiencing so that Julie
could request resolution from Sirsi.
Zora Breeding, Ann Ercelawn, Mary
Charles Lasater, Roberta Winjum,
and Nancy Boggess-Korekach met to discuss loading the
127,000+ Eighteenth Century Collections Online records. After deciding optimal record load size and
spacing between loads to allow for authority work, the group realized that
loading should start immediately in order to have the full set loaded before
the planned Memorial Day reindexing.
The Electronic Resource Librarian Search Committee (Mary
Beth Blalock, Julie Loder, Lisa Shipman, Rick
Stringer-Hye, Mary Ellen
Wilson, and Roberta Winjum, chair) began meeting and
reviewing candidates.
All team members submitted self evaluations to their supervisors,
who worked on their reviews.
PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:
Molly Dahl was asked to serve on the Test Bed project group, which
will develop a website that will enable the library to present and gain
feedback on proposed new services and products.
Mary Charles Lasater conducted the two
day Basic Subject Training using LCSH workshop for the
Sue Davis attended “Beyond the Numbers: Specifying and Achieving an Efficient
Preservation Environment” at the National Archives in
<http://www.archives.gov/preservation/conferences/2006/presentations.html>.
Roberta Winjum attended the Executive
Track of the SirsiDynix Superconference.
Roberta also attended an Electronic Resources in Libraries Conference at Georgia
Tech and the Taiga Conference in
Jean Wright broke her knee returning to the GLB from
Many staff attended the Staff Forum Strategic Plan Update as well
as the demonstration of Ex Libris's Primo product.
Several staff attended Marshall Breeding's brown bag
on library databases and the Java client webex
session.
CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:
Jeff Taylor reports that electronic dissertations are once more
arriving regularly, with 20 having been processed in March.
Gina Berry, Ann Barnette, Jeff Taylor
and Mary Charles Lasater continue to work on the UN
documents. We were down to a mere two
shelves when they brought over another full range of them. Amy Stewart-Mailhiot
claims that there are only have a couple of shelves' worth left to bring
over.
Linda Davis completed the project to reclassify Government
Information CDRom’s.
She also continued work on the bound-with project for Central and
reports that the end is in sight, at least with a good telescope.
Yuh-Fen Benda began
inventorying and processing a shipment of 47 boxes of Japanese journals that we
received due to the merger of a couple of Japanese libraries.
Susan Bell began working with Heidi Welch in the History
department to add their Honor baccalaureate theses to the VU e-Archive. Heidi submits these in electronic form and
Susan edits the metadata and makes them available via the VU e-Archive.
Yuh Fen Benda attended a
meeting with Peter Brush and Dr. Heijdra who was
visiting from
Susan Bell met with Lara Beth Lehman and Lee Ann Lannom to discuss plans for them to add notes to Acorn
records for winners of the Caldecott, Newbery and other selected awards.
The team began discussion about how to handle the cataloging of
titles available only in electronic format in several monographic series for
the Science Library.
Molly Dahl worked on Ecclesiastical Sources for Slave Societies
(ESSS) project, adding metadata to the records, working with the images to
create thumbnails, and making sure they weren't upside down on the
webpage.
Mary Charles Lasater lobbied the team to
help review the weekly unauthorized heading lists for big record loads. Each team member agreed to review one page
per week of unauthorized name headings.
We have gained a greater appreciation for the hard work that Mary
Charles and Denise Chavez do on a daily basis.
Journal club: The team read
and discussed the article "Understanding Metadata" published by NISO
Press.
Statistics:
2604 new titles cataloged by TS
1296 new titles cataloged by CAT, 177 of which were original
contributions or national level enhancements
197 titles recataloged
2 titles reconned
383 items withdrawn.
14810 new or modified authority records delivered by Marcive
837 local changes made to names on bib records outside of normal
cataloging
144 local changes made to subjects on bib records outside of
normal cataloging
92 local changes made to series on bib records outside of normal
cataloging
8 authority records deleted
6592 volumes remain in the TS inventory at the Annex as of March
1, 2006, compared to 18528 volumes in the TS inventory at its peak in February
1998
ORDER SERVICES:
Statistics:
Received and processed:
Serials/Periodicals: 3152
Approvals: 1270
Added to Acorn:
SSO's: 88
Gifts: 191
Order Services placed 1614 new orders, Speed Cataloged 979 titles,
and received 1279 new purchase requests.
Monica Sanchez continues to work with John Mangrum
in his training. He is learning quickly,
and has helped to make a sizable dent in the Spanish language approvals.
The overall number of purchase requests, as well as the number of
firm orders being received has picked up, as is typical for this month of the
year.
We received a visit from Will Fuqua and Margaret Willingham of Ebsco to discuss this year's renewal process. We also met with Tina Feick
and Jim Huenniger from Swets.
In response to requests from Central library, we have updated and
fine tuned our documentation for the subject assignment/funding of approval
materials that are shipped on the History and Communications studies profiles.
<http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/rs/techserv/OrderServices/Receiving/AppExcp.html>
PRESERVATION:
We had our first bindery vendor visit since the Heckman Bindery
and ICI Binderies merger, so two salesmen came, one from each former company.
It appeared from our meeting that the merger is going well; most importantly,
our product and customer service has not suffered.
There is a growing backlog in the repair lab as demand continues
to grow for enclosures and repairs, but there are hardly any backlogs in
binding or marking.
Binding:
385 monographs
69 rebinds
483 periodicals
88 serials
1025 volumes total
1116 new paperbacks sorted and 474 selected for immediate
binding (42%).
93 monographs rebarcoded in preparation for binding
420 Acorn records updated as a result of binding periodicals and
serials.
Marking:
3594 volumes
247 RUSH items
The flow of materials coming to marking has slowed down recently,
so regular items are usually labeled well within a week.
Repair:
285 volumes were repaired
with 410 treatments
A large majority of
the work in the lab centered upon measuring for wrapper boxes, sending off the
order to the vendor, and processing the boxes upon their return.
Charlotte Lew also spent considerable time on a Divinity book with 18
colored plates stuck to the original tissue interleaving. She unstuck and cleaned the plates and
replaced the tissue with acid-free tissue paper. She estimates that it took roughly 45 minutes
per plate to carefully clean each.