Technical Services Monthly Report

Sept. 2006

DIVISION-WIDE ACTIVITIES:

Mary Ellen Wilson worked with Larry Romans and Mary Beth Blalock in setting up a new Leisure Reading Collection profile with McNaughton/Brodart. The profile includes materials that will arrive pre-processed with bib records. A new holding code was created for these books to include an Item Cat 2 of LEISURE so that these materials can be retrieved at the end of their lease period. (This Item Cat 2 will not be used for any other LRC books.)

The staff with the slowest computers got new faster computers in September, making it possible for everyone in TS to use the Java Workflows client, however some difficulties and anxieties with the client remain. One new computer recipient says that using the Java client “inevitably left me filled with angst and despair, even if it is very pretty.” Pete Wilson began posting CAT’s most pressing Java needs to the Sirsi forums in hopes that someone at Sirsi will take heed.

PERSONNEL ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS:

Sue Davis's second humorous article was published in the September issue of American Libraries. This time the topic was improving staff morale. Sue welcomes ideas for future articles if someone has an inspiration.

Janice Adlington’s review of "The Atlas of North American English", book, CD, and online appeared in the October issue of Choice magazine. She has donated the atlas to the library, and we have subscribed to the online version.

Don Jones began serving on the search committee for the Music Cataloger position.

Zora Breeding attended search committee meetings for the Central Bibliographer position.

Mary Charles Lasater participated in her first virtual meeting of the PCC group: Authentication codes and encoding levels for serials and integrating resources.

Janice Adlington, Zora Breeding, and Roberta Winjum attended the Tenn-Share conference at the downtown public library.

Susan Bell, Molly Dahl, Yuh-Fen Benda, Sue Davis, and Charlotte Lew attended the Publishers' Showcase at Ingram Book Company in Lavergne. Some were able to take tours of Ingram’s huge warehouse and their Lightning Source facility in addition to seeing the publishers' forthcoming "wares" and bringing some free copies home.

Several personnel changes took place in Preservation: Machelle Keen left the team on Sept. 7 for greener pastures in the Science Library. Sheranda Lee accepted the position that Machelle vacated. Ann Carey accepted the position vacated by Jing Liu in late August. Both Ann and Sheranda began their new jobs on Sept. 11 and are learning their new responsibilities quickly. The position vacated by Sheranda is still in the accepting-applications stage.

Roberta Winjum joined several other librarians in a meeting with Y.S. Chi, Vice Chairman of Elsevier, who was visiting Vanderbilt for a football weekend.

Mary Ellen Wilson and Roberta Winjum accompanied Monica Sanchez to the University Awards Ceremony, where Monica celebrated 20 years of service to the University.

Most team members enjoyed activities connected to the VU Employee Celebration Month, including some clever caricatures. We also checked out our benefits options at various information sessions.

Some staff attended the GIS candidate presentations and some were able to attend Dr. Barsky's brown bag presentation on Ameriquest.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES:

Susan Bell took her usual weekly cataloging trips to Peabody.

Jeff Taylor received and processed new bound, electronic and Peabody theses, as usual.

Yuh-Fen Benda continued learning her new duties and, using her exceptional negotiating skills, saved the library another $1000 dollars on a couple of large Chinese language sets.

Pete Wilson completed metadata for a few additional podcasts in the VU e-archive.

Gina Berry took a needed break from the videotape project and used her time learning to deal with all the different types of labeling problems.

Linda Davis took over dealing with the flex-keys-with-o report that Jeff Taylor used to handle, freeing up more of his time for series work.

Denise Chavez volunteered to handle supply ordering for the team and spent some time organizing and cleaning up the supply room. The change is remarkable.

Mary Charles Lasater worked with Chris Benda to show him how to complete the work on the Peabody theses records that he had been creating and submitting to Mary Charles for review.

Metadata journal club

CATs read and discussed the following articles:

“VRA Core Categories, Version 3.0, a project of the Visual Resources Association Data Standards Committee”, http://www.vraweb.org/vracore3.htm, and

“Application profiles: mixing and matching metadata schemas”, <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue25/app-profiles/>

Statistics:

2517 new titles cataloged by TS

1456 new titles cataloged by CAT

190 of which were original contributions or national level enhancements

100 titles recataloged

8 titles reconned

46 items withdrawn.

5423 new or modified authority records delivered by Marcive

524 local changes made to names on bib records outside of normal cataloging

121 local changes made to subjects on bib records outside of normal cataloging

141 local changes made to series on bib records outside of normal cataloging

180 authority records deleted

6254 volumes in the TS inventory at the Annex on Oct. 1, 2006

18528 volumes in the TS inventory at its peak in February 1998

E-RESOURCES:

Janice Adlington, Chris Waldrop, Mary Ellen Wilson, and Roberta Winjum participated in ERMS demonstrations for Ex Libris’s Verde and Innovative Interfaces ERM systems.

Chris Waldrop reported that The Oxford Science and Medicine Archives, originally ordered at the end of the 2006 fiscal year, are now available.

LITS provided a new database for reporting and tracking SFX problems. Janice Adlington and others on the SFX team respond to these reported problems. The types of problems they respond to can be viewed at <http://forms.library.vanderbilt.edu/sfxreport/view.phtml?keyword=&

selectsearch=All&cmd=Search>

Janice answers patrons directly via Questionpoint (AskUs) when there are questions about access to e-resources.

During the month, Janice met with Sharon Weiner, Leslie Foutch, Lee Ann Lannom, and Eli Moody to discuss Peabody eresource issues, with Deborah Broadwater to discuss the relation between Eskind and University eresources, and separately with Mary Beth Blalock, Jim Toplon, and Bryan Kurowski.

Sharon Weiner has asked for a list of all Peabody subscriptions showing current and previous year's prices, and status (print, online, both). In an attempt to provide this info, Janice has talked with Julie Loder about how she produced subscription lists for Central and Science, and learned that getting pricing information alone was a lot of work. She did not capture formats.

ORDER SERVICES:

Statistics:

2637 serials and periodicals received and processed

860 approvals processed

96 gifts processed

868 new orders placed

1050 titles Speed Cataloged

990 requests received

131 SSO's added to Acorn

Through August, OS verifiers spent their time focusing on receiving firm orders; during the Java WorkFlows training and learning, we accumulated a bit of a backfile of these materials, particularly Blackwells receipts. In September, team members returned to work on other, more routine materials in addition to these receipts.

Keith Curd began working on Harrassowitz approvals and firm orders, processing Rush orders in his subject areas, and consulting with others on the team with Java WorkFlows questions.

As part of her Communications Committee responsibilities, Angel Craddock checks the RSS feed for spelling errors before messages are uploaded, and she is also testing Exodus, an instant messenger product. Angel also continued to work on Thesis cards for Peabody/Special Collections, and keeping the OS web page up to date.

Yan-Xia Zhong continued to work on the Peabody Thesis cards. She processed 203 in July, 128 in August, and 125 in September.

Ibtisam Latif, upon learning that we will begin collecting Arabic materials, agreed to assist in any capacity in their ordering and processing.

Linda Hand prepaid the invoices for Blackwells firm orders to assist in the receiving of these materials (she pays the invoices as the materials are received, so that the receivers don't have to).

JoNell Owens worked on a number of vendor related problems, and mainly did serials, periodicals, newspapers, and non-book materials.

Swets informed us that they would begin shipping journals from the publisher Prints India by air mail. While this will speed up delivery of these journals it also meant an increase in cost for each journal. As a result, the decision was made to cancel seven of the fifteen Prints India journals we receive.

Order Services submitted all subscription changes and cancellations for 2007 to our three major vendors, Ebsco, Swets, and Harrassowitz, and we have received confirmations from these vendors that they will begin processing our renewals.

PRESERVATION:

With changes in staff, the book repair unit suffered a production decrease while Charlotte Lew spent a good chunk of her time sorting new paperbacks for binding and working on special projects. Sue Davis also spent considerable time supporting the marking workflow.

Early in the month Sue, Machelle, and Karen met with the new Music Library director, Holling Smith-Borne, to develop temporary processing procedures for Music materials (in conjunction with the rest of Technical Services) while the library searches for a new Music cataloger.

Binding:

502 monographs

59 rebinds

427 periodicals

89 serials

1077 volumes total

1157 new Central paperbacks sorted and 607 selected for immediate binding (52%).

129 Acorn records updated as a result of binding

Eric Fairfield, a vice president of the HFGroup binderies, visited at the end of the month. He updated us on bindery plant realignments and developments resulting from the January merger of Heckman and ICI.

Marking:

3553 volumes

265 RUSH items

Ann Mallette took over all of the RUSH marking as well as her usual Level II and regular marking responsibilities after Sheranda moved to Machelle's position. Because of the temporary shifting of these tasks, please consult with Karen Pillow about any special marking projects coming thru the pipeline. Depending on the size and nature of the project, other staff may need to be called in to help to prevent Ann from drowning under a book tsunami.

Repair:

90 volumes were repaired with 174 treatments

This work included a couple of special projects. One was to construct an additional 21 cardboard "lids" for microfiche storage containers in the Media Center. The other was rebuilding a lovely, but tattered gift book to the Divinity. Charlotte Lew reports it was her first recasing with wooden cover boards. The book contained actual samples of flowers from the Holy Land. She tipped in some of the loosening petals and leaves. She also replaced acidic protective tissue with acid-free sheets and reattached the cover. The result of her work was quite remarkable.