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Technical Services Monthly Report February 2008

TS Statistics

Cataloging

2490 new titles cataloged by TS
1496 new titles cataloged by CAT
254 of which were original contributions or national level enhancement
119 titles recataloged
32 titles reconned
224 items withdrawn
20092 new or modified authority records delivered by Marcive
319 local changes made to names on bib records outside of normal cataloging
315 local changes made to subjects on bib records outside of normal cataloging
101 local changes made to series on bib records outside of normal cataloging
39 authority records deleted

Order Services

No data available

Preservation

Binding:
1,060 new monographs
64 rebinds
344 periodicals
39 serials
1,507 total binding
Marking:
4,394 items labeled
467 items of that total were RUSH
Repair:
246 volumes treatments
387 treatments

Division-Wide Activities

The month started with a not-quite-expected Mulberry group mail box migration to Outlook public folders. The group mailbox migration went smoothly once staff learned where to find folders and how to reply to requests.  Sue created a Getting Started document for TSGLB staff. 

February ended on a high note with celebrating Jean Wright's birthday.  Since her retirement she is heading toward a 15-year service pin.  The curious reader will need to ask her personally what that means in birthday years.  The party caught Jean by surprise, which added to the fun.  

Cataloging and Authorities

Yuh-Fen Benda solicited help from Laura Tuck, a cataloger at the University of Washington in Seattle, to transliterate the needed information on the Peter Drucker book in Thai.  Yuh-Fen and Pete Wilson were then able to create an original record for this last book in the Drucker project.

Pete Wilson cataloged a large amount of material for Special Collections, including new acquisitions for the Southern Civ collection, some Helguera and Robert Davis gifts, some miscellaneous gifts and transfers, and a rather large number of periodicals about the Civil War that were given to Special Collections by Pete Riley.

Molly Dahl has reached independent status for cataloging of Spanish and Portuguese literature.  She will begin reviewing and learning the idiosyncrasies of Latin American Studies materials with Pete Wilson in preparation for taking on some responsibility for that material.

Jean Wright continued recon and input of records for Tennessee Valley Authority publications.  She has been finding an alarming number of records for this material that were loaded into Acorn but do not match any physical material.  She has withdrawn over 200 records.

Gina Berry and Linda Davis worked more on the never-ending holdings project.

Linda Davis began a new project to edit volume holding records for CDROM ProQuest titles to add ending dates to those that don’t have this information.  Laura Norris is sending over 20 titles weekly that need the ending dates added.

Mary Charles loaded the 2008 MeSH update, reviewed the load and sent a report of the work to Deborah Broadwater and Roberta Winjum. This was the second time she loaded and reviewed the medical subject headings update and the process went smoothly.

Mary Charles Lasater began reviewing the Gale Making of the Modern World electronic records that are being loaded and found a very high percentage of authority records are available. The unauthorized headings lists showed some old practice and typos.  She and Denise Chavez will use reports to work on the cleanup beginning in March.

Mary Charles reports that due to the OCLC project to improve geographic authority records, the monthly list of authority file changed records was 3 times normal size. 

Zora Breeding worked on changing some of the film subject headings to genre headings.

E Resources

Ann Ercelawn requested a report from Chris Waldrop on SFX ejournals with open orders in order to do some deduping of the files.  She also responded to a number of SFX problem inquiries from patrons.

The Podcast Metadata Task Force (Zora Breeding, Pete Wilson, Molly Dahl, Ann Ercelawn, Jeff Taylor and Yan-Xia Zhong) met with Juanita Murray, Jodie Gambil and Roberta Winjum to officially launch the group and to sit in on training that Jodie will be offering to Yan-Xia on loading the podcasts into the VU e-Archive.  Zora, Pete, Molly and Jeff had a follow up meeting to make some decisions about how to approach the metadata.  Pete reviewed the podcast metadata he had previously created and we made some new decisions, for instance: the person giving the lecture or making the speech will be treated as an author and we will try to follow the FAST approach for subject creation.  Pete and Molly created a web page to bring together some information: http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/RS/Techserv/CAT/podcast.htm

Nancy Boggess-Korekach began loading the nearly 60,000 Gale Making of the Modern World (MOMW) records. She is dividing the loads into groups of 5,000 and by the end of February 20,000 had been loaded and sent off to Marcive. 

Zora Breeding, Roberta Winjum and Nancy Boggess-Korekach reviewed records for the Duke e-book pilot project and made decisions on how these records will be delivered. Zora attended the Ebrary training which was given to the Duke e-book pilot participants.

Molly Dahl, in consultation with Zora, created her first original record for an electronic resource, a Catalan dictionary. 

Susan Bell edited metadata on a Capstone project submission to the VU e-Archive.

Pete Wilson continued to do some preliminary work for the metadata on the Robert Penn Warren tapes.

Order Services

No report available.

Preservation

February was a short, but highly productive month for the Pres Team.  All three units within the team handled so many materials that the staff ran out of book trucks and had to hunt down trucks which had wandered away.  Order Services' recent emphasis on processing gift books created more "job security" for team members as they sorted, inspected, sent to the bindery, and cleaned many items in poor and/or moldy condition.  

BINDING:  Binding staff worked on sending and receiving materials, mostly monographs, to the bindery.  Music scores continue to be the most challenging format the team sends to the bindery.  Special instructions come with each item and must be accurately translated into "binderyspeak".  The staff worked to resolve a long delay in some custom clamshells for Music.  

MARKING:  Marking workflow ebbed and flowed during the month, but mostly flowed (or even overflowed).  Sue pitched in a few times to help as the shelves filled up faster than staff could label.   The increasing number of RUSH requests affect the rate of other marking since the same staff label both.  In fiscal year 06/07 the average monthly rush request total = 276.  So far this fiscal year (07/08) the average monthly rush request total = 364.  It's good that patrons value this service so highly. 

REPAIR:  Charlotte reports that February was Moldy Month.  She inspected over 100 moldy and/or questionable items and cleaned many of them.  This dramatic increase in mold patrol came as a result of gift book processing in addition to the Divinity Library Annex transfer project.   The biosafety hood certainly worked overtime and we are very glad we have it in the lab.

TS Meetings, Training, and Presentations

Mary Charles Lasater conducted a week of NACO training for eleven participants at the University of Missouri at Columbia. She also conducted two days of NACO training locally for about nine Tennessee Funnel participants.  Denise Chavez sat in on the corporate heading session.
The Test Pilot group’s article was printed in “Computer in Libraries” in February.  Molly Dahl was a member of the group and was mentioned in the article.
Mary Charles attended, via Interwise, an ExLibris update session on changes in the next version of Primo.
Yuh-Fen Benda attended her first meeting of the Central Collection Development group.  She found it very interesting and will be attending all future meetings in her role as the bibliographer for Chinese and Japanese language materials.
Zora Breeding gave Teri Bante in Government Information some basic training on using OCLC Connexion.
Zora Breeding attended a meeting with other VU staff and staff from Austin Peay State University to talk about the Sirsi product (APSU is considering their options to replace Dynix).
Mary Charles Lasater, Zora Breeding and Pete Wilson attended two Metadata Committee meetings
TechForce met three times in February.
Molly Dahl met with the Web Management Group.
Ann Ercelawn attended a meeting of the SFX group.
Don Jones attended a meeting of the University Athletics Committee.
Becky Atack and Sue Davis attended the USAC monthly meeting and a USAC Membership Committee meeting along with representatives of all 3 library groups to discuss reapportionment issues for the upcoming elections.
Becky also reviewed several Hardship Fund applications by email.
Several TS staff attended the various DiscoverLibrary related meetings, including the open house sessions. Mary Charles assisted with a couple of the workshop sessions.
Several TS staff attended Marshall Breeding’s brown bag on next generation ILS’s and the training workshop.
Sue offered an Introduction to Preservation Concepts workshop on Feb. 7th with Charlotte providing a follow up tour of the repair lab and explaining its range of services. Attendance was over 20 staff since many OS staff attended.
Sue attended Collections Committee and T & TSC meetings.  She also attended a disaster response planning meeting. 
Sue participated in a Women's Center focus group as part of the Women's Center's self-assessment.
Sue was consulted by MTSU about microfilm vendor options.
Laura Matthews trained Brian Boling on how to clean CDs/DVDs. Laura had previous experience in this area and was glad to offer her knowledge to our Media Center.
Laura and Alla Foliyev attended Janet Thomason's fire safety workshop and learned about GLB evacuation routes and other fire safety tips.
Roberta Winjum met with Rosie Moody of Leadership, Policy and Organizations on the Peabody Campus to train her to add their students’ Capstone Essays to the VU e-Archive. They added one essay on the spot.
Roberta and Julie Loder met with Deborah Broadwater at Eskind Biomedical Library to discuss Biomedical’s participation in the implementation and use of an ERMS.
Roberta met with Mona Frederick, Sarah Nobles, Jody Combs, Jodie Gambill, Tao You, and Suellen Stringer-Hye at the Robert Penn Warren Center to discuss plans for the “Who Speaks for the Negro” database to be released in conjunction with the “We Speak for Ourselves” Conference on Apr. 4-5.