GENERAL
Construction on campus caused the OCLC cable to be cut and access had to switch to the Internet for OCLC use. Once the diagnosis of the problem was made and people switched to Internet access (requiring intervention by a number of people throughout RS, the rest of the Library, Telecommunications, and OCLC) work continued as usual.

STAFF ACTIVITIES
Sue Davis and Jody Combs participated in the panel for the Staff Forum on May 19. Suellen Stringer-Hye and Anne Laws served on the Forum Committee, Anne as chair. Many in RS attended the event. Marshall Breeding, Suellen Stringer-Hye and Ann Ercelawn continue to participate in the Web Development Task Force. The major activity of the group this month was a presentation of a prototype of the proposed new Web environment to a joint meeting of LMC, CAAG, and ISAG. Don Jones attended the meeting of the search committee for the Central Bibliographer/Reference librarian. Laurie Power served on the Merit Committee. A number of staff attended the OCLC Users Council Virtual meeting.

Don Jones attended "Breakfast with the Chancellor," a reporting session for the 2000 Faculty-Staff Campaign. Some attended the Health Plus Open House. Several staff took vacation time during May.

Mary Charles Lasater, Mary Ellen Wilson, Marshall Breeding, Suellen Stringer-Hye, Nancy Boggess-Korekach, and Dale Poulter attended the Sirsi UUGI conference in Huntsville and Mary Charles and Mary Ellen attended a preconference on Smartport use. Vanderbilt and the other sites that participated in the Beta testing of Unicorn 99.4 were recognized and presented with plaques for their efforts. Marshall and Dale attended a training workshop in Boston, MA for the SFX Beta Test project. Dale attended the SiteSearch users group meeting in Dublin, OH. Marshall attended the National Online/ IOLS conference and delivered the keynote speech for the IOLS conference: "Current State of Library Automation: IOLS Technologies, Marketplace Trends, and Future Expectations." He also presented a workshop on creating Web-enabled databases.

ANNEX
An Annex roof leak, during the May 24-25 storm, damaged 28 Central books (of which 3 needed treatment in the Preservation Lab) and caused 2 service calls to our electronic compact shelving service vendor. Immediate roof repairs were undertaken, pending the major re-roofing project which has been approved and will likely happen this summer.

May saw the last of the Laws SuDocs transfers by courier to the Annex and the last of the daily mass transfers by messenger of Law LC classification materials. We still will be receiving individual Law transfers, but the bulk of the massive book cart transfers has been completed.

The Music Library sent office furniture, filing cabinets, card catalog cabinets, components of library shelving and boxed library materials, via Graebel movers, mostly for storage in the Annex basement until Blair School construction is completed.

576 linear feet of transfers were received from Baudelaire Center, Central, Divinity, Engineering, Government Information, Law, Music, and Science. Shifts were accomplished to integrate all of these materials.

The Library Annex circulated 612 items during May. 114 separate Web requests were received. Additionally 554 pages were photocopied for 53 citations requested by ILL patrons.

For RS Maintenance, staff edited over 3,625 Acorn records. 397 volumes were withdrawn, and 1 volume reinstated. 7 titles were recataloged, and 2 titles were reclassed.

Law faculty members increased their square footage storage space. 37 tenants and visitors were on site. 4th quarter 1180's were mailed to our 44 University tenants. The University Press became our newest Annex tenant.

Appointments were made for interviews, to be conducted in June, for Annex Summer student assistants. (We have now filled our Summer staffing needs.)

Linda Davis completed 20 years of service to the Library.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES
The flow of new materials from Baker slowed in May, as a result of year-end ordering activities, vacancies and absences in Order Services, and full staffing in Cataloging. OS temporarily discontinued speed cataloging and that balanced the flow some.

The CATs took advantage of the decrease in new materials to work on cataloging from the inventory, devoting more time to problematic materials, cataloging materials from the Web, working on the split headings report, and processing more Helguera gift materials (37 of 95 boxes complete). Rich worked with members of the Preservation team to compare Helguera duplicates with existing copies. Zora and Jeff began work on the Women Writers Online titles, adding urls to existing titles or bringing in records for titles new to Acorn, completing about 60 of the approximately 300 titles available through this site. Ann Ercelawn is working on cataloging new titles and deleting dropped titles for several e-journal sets. She also made progress on the Pia serials. Norma reclassed two non-book lecture series for Special Collections and worked with Jeff on the Special Collections Dewey theses project.

Ann E. contributed to the Sirsi cataloging bulletin board discussion and reorganized the RS Documentation page. She also created a document on serials basics. Rich checked the subject guides on the library web page. Shirley Watts met with Zora, Norma, Mary Charles, Jeff and Becky to discuss cataloging of scores and music CDs, as RS will assume some responsiblity for handling these in the interim period between Directors at Music.

Authorities saw the impact of OCLC's special project to modify the indicator values on authority records. This project is a result of a change in national practice, but it will not have any effect on the catalog and how users search. Instead of the usual Marcive monthly update of 2,000 updated records, we received 13,000 records which must be verified for impact or lack thereof in the database.

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY
A total of 235 netfix problems were resolved. Some of the major projects and issues addressed by the Library Technology Team this month included

... LTT and other staff continued to test the Unicorn 99.4 release. This effort was coordinated by Anne Laws.
... Acorn was upgraded from Unicorn 99.2.4 to Unicorn 99.4.
... New Dell PowerEdge servers were ordered to replace Library2A, Library7, the public Web Server, the ERL Server, and for a new multimedia server.
... 108 Dell OptiPlex desktop computers have been ordered.
... LTT staff dealt with problems related to the recent bevy of viruses. In cooperation with the Technology Support Coordinators, we have implemented McAfee VirusScan for NT and have phased out Dr. Solomon's Antivirus Toolkit. ... Suellen taught two classes on Macromedia Dreamweaver (intermediate and introductory) for the Faculty Development Workshops.
...Nancy implemented a search button to demonstrate genre searching in AcornTest.
... Nancy ran a report to send authority records that were updated in between the emergency index rebuild and the planned rebuild so that they would affect the appropriate bibliographic records to eliminate some cases where authorized headings were stamped as UNAUTHORIZED.
... Nancy created a new holdings code OBSVV for PromptCat records that will be for the Observatory location.

In the May 15th Staff Newsletter, Paul Gherman announced responsiblity and reporting changes for Marshall Breeding and Jody Combs. In July, Marshall will move to OUL and serve as Technology Officer; Jody will assume the responsibilities of Team Leader for LTT; transition planning is underway. Michael Martin has accepted the Network Technician position that was vacated by Anne Laws as she entered her new role related to Acorn support. Chris Benda has resigned from the Library Technology Team effective July 1st to accept a new position in the Education Library.

The full LTT monthly report is available at http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/libtech/reports/2000may-mr.html

ORDER SERVICES
Orders: The last day for bibliographers to submit routine orders has passed. (May 15). Verifiers have nearly completed work on all orders for all subject areas, and many funds are fully encumbered. Our goal for getting the majority of requests processed is June 16. We expect to have most subject areas completed by then, so that they will be reflected in the BFAS fund accounting dated June 21 - with the possible exceptions of English, Education, Youth, and Music. We will continue to work on those subject areas as needed. The last fund accounting will be June 28th.

At the present time the verifiers are continuing the processing of requests in addition to the approvals that are being received. If necessary, we may temporarily stop the processing of approvals so that orders may be completed on time.

Receiving: Due to increased ordering at this time of year, the receipt of firm orders in the mailroom has been heavy. Receivers are currently working on firm ordered materials received within the last 3 weeks. Serials are being processed within 2 weeks of of their receipt at Baker, Periodicals within 48 hours.

Order Services received Education Library's list of serial cancellations; we continue to work on this project, to have these titles cancelled prior to the 2001 renewals.

Personnel: We are currently interviewing for the two vacant LAIII positions (both in Serials), and the Mailroom position (LAII). Kevin Wagers and Immanuel Harris are assisting in Order Services in the interim.

PRESERVATION
Binding: Our binding statistics continue to drop as fewer new monographs are being sent to the bindery. In May, 616 new monographs were sent compared to 877 in April and 1,424 in March. On the other hand, periodical totals are rising as summer binding begins in earnest. We sent 680 periodicals to Heckman in May compared to 362 in April and 363 in March. 54 monograph rebinds and 72 serials rounded out May's total binding shipments. The number of monograph rebinds are picking up rapidly as libraries begin their summer shelf-reading projects. Heckman Bindery indicated it was raising it's prices for the new fiscal year about an average of 3.5%. Paper copies of the new price list have been distributed to regular binding contacts. The price list has also been posted on the RS Documentation web page at http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/rs/rsdoc.htm

Book Repair: 220 volumes were repaired or boxed in May. This total includes 122 wrapper boxes for Law materials. We otherwise worked primarily on Central and Special Collection items. With many libraries doing summer housecleaning projects, we saw a large increase in the number of items coming to the lab. There is now a substantial backlog. Fortunately, we hired a student, Yong Chen, who has learned quickly. Binding/Marking staff are also helping out as much as they can between binding shipments.

Marking: Marking totals indicate a slow down of books coming through RS processing. We labeled 3,258 volumes in May, down from April's 3,920 and March's 4,397. We also labeled 104 RUSH items, 265 unbound serials, and stamped 339 microfiche envelopes.

Along with the help of Paul Coomer from Central Reference, Sue installed Mcafee anti-virus software on RSGLB computers in mid-month. The software caught a virus trying to sneak into Rich Murray's computer on 5/31, so we know it's working.

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