Resource Services
Monthly Highlights

September 2001

Technical Services Monthly Report
Library Information Technology Services Monthly Report

Technical Services
Sept. 2001

DIVISION WIDE ACTIVITIES:

We all watched and/or listened, along with the rest of the country and world, with disbelief and horror as the sad events of September 11 unfolded. Anything that we may have to report for this month seems rather trivial compared to the events of that day.

At least one of our vendors, Swets Blackwell, had an office a mere 4 blocks away from the World Trade Center. All of their employees, including a few who were visiting from the Netherlands, were able to escape from harm, and have since been relocated to the company's offices in New Jersey. We have all been touched by the outpouring of sympathy, condolences, and outrage expressed by our many vendors and friends worldwide.

We held the first two meetings of the newly formed Technical Services Workflow Task Force (TSWFTF). Team Leaders have begun the process of mapping out the workflow within their teams.

The first pre-processed Leisure Reading Collection volume was received from Ingram. The mylar cover, property stamp, barcodes, and label were affixed quite acceptably. We have determined our procedures for delivery to Circulation, and are now putting the program in place for future Leisure Book orders.

In response to a request for help in Binding and Marking, Debbie Williams, Angel Bruner, and Monica Sanchez volunteered to venture from Baker to the GLB to help out with various tasks. Many thanks go to Monica, Debbie, and Angel for their help.

The Preservation Team has asked Heckman Bindery to insert security strips in periodicals and serials (except those belonging to the Management Library). Mary Ellen Wilson and Roberta Winjum determined a way to process binding invoices to track the expenditures separately. The charges will be paid along budget lines already established and no changes need occur elsewhere. Heckman Bindery will begin inserting security strips with the Oct. 18 shipment.

We participated in another Cost Study Week, Sept. 17-21.

PERSONNEL:

Norma Riddick and Daphne Walker returned following their summer leaves and we happily welcome them back.

Many of us attended the library staff awards where we honored our own Ibtisam Latif and Debbie Williams for 10 years of service, Ann Ercelawn, Laurie Power, and Monica Sanchez for 15 years, Karen Pillow and Norma Riddick for 25 years, and the amazing Peggy Earheart for 30 years. Machelle Keen and Denise Chavez received porcelain Acorn awards. Congratulations to all!

Ann Ercelawn serves on a new subcommittee of the Web Task Force devoted to improving the New Titles List. She also serves on the newly formed ad hoc committee for the Staff Lounge.

Several staff attended the presentation by the Reference/Bibliographer candidate Susan Widmer.

Several staff attended Sheranda Lee's surprise bridal shower on Sept. 11 and her beautiful wedding on Sept. 29. We all wish her many happy years of marriage.

A new student assistant, Grace Choi, was hired in Preservation. One new student assistant, Stan King, was hired for the Annex. The Annex is still working out details for additional student assistants.

ANNEX:

Peg Earheart worked with Dennis Clark to identify items to return to Music permanently versus those that could remain at the Annex. 424 linear inches of Music volumes were returned to the Music Library

After careful consideration by Yvonne Boyer and John Haar, a decision was made to permanently store the Sigaux Rare books in the Annex. They join the Sigaux circulating copies stored there, as well as all of the boxes of the Sigaux dossiers and the rare Pascal Pia materials.

An over 900 volume uncataloged set of Chinese dynastic histories stored in the Annex is being offered to the University of Florida, as we have another edition of this set in our VUL collection.

Peg Earheart met with Al Stewart of Central Business Group to plan and design a 7 carriage, 121" high electronic compact shelving unit. These compact carriages will be the tallest mobile carriages used in our Library Annex.

1180's were mailed to the Annex’s 40 University tenants for the 1st quarter 2001/2001 leasing arrangements. Storage increased during September for the Office of the Graduate School and Law faculty.

Peg Earheart continued to interact with various University staff and SmartForce personnel regarding the evaluation of the SmartForce web based tutorials. Clint Grantham continued the Education Reserve record project. Linda Davis continued the Management/Central collection development/Annex transfer project; and assisted Gretchen Dodge with some Government Information queries. Leonor Van Cotthem continued the Astronomy project.

Items Retrieved:
424 items circulated
188 patrons requested Annex materials via the Web
382 pages photocopied from 41 Annex books for ILL
13 unfilled requests from Vanderbilt users
50 unfilled requests from ILL users

Transfers:
59 net linear feet of materials transferred from Central, French Center, Law, Management, and Science. We also received new Vcolls and Pcolls from Special Collections.

RS Maintenance:
2,990 records edited
331withdrawals
6 reinstatements

Visitors:
42 scholars, tenants, vendors, and visitors were on site from: Arts and Science, Baudelaire Center, Central Business Group, Collection Development, Helguera Project, I.T.S., HRS, LITS, Management Information Systems, Music Library, Office of the University Librarian, Office of Student Accounts, Resource Services, Special Collections, and the VU Theatre department.

Buildings and Equipment:
Elevator service repairs, autumn maintenance of our HVAC
system, and a call to Metro water services to restore service
rounded out the month. The September workstation-client upgrade
required a new workstation for Leonor Van Cotthem.

CATALOGING AND AUTHORITIES TEAM:

The flow of new material remained heavy during September. The team was busy with several additional projects and activities. Mary Charles Lasater began NACO training (how to create and add authority records for names and corporations to the national authority file) for MAT Trotter and Yuh-Fen Benda. Becky Atack also sat in on training sessions to refresh her memory. They have completed 3 of the 6 sessions planned. Their training is progressing very well and they are already adding authority records for names.

Ann Ercelawn worked on new e-journal titles in HeinOnline, SpringerLink and Project Muse. Norma Riddick rush cataloged a small Special Collections gift collection whose donor was anxious to see his titles in Acorn. Pete Wilson, Ann Barnette and Laurie Power worked on cataloging the IMF working papers (they have completed about 130 of the 400 or so titles received). Mary Charles is working on cataloging titles identified by Clint Grantham as he works on the Education Reserve record project. Susan Bell and Becky Atack continue to process gift Tennessee textbooks for the Curriculum Lab. Jeff Taylor is working on cataloging the remaining maps from the large collection we received some months ago. These were maps that had no copy during the first cataloging run-through. Jeff also cataloged a large number of Rush Music CDs during the early part of the month.

Jean Wright reports that the project to provide SuDoc numbers for Dewey classified government documents is nearing completion. She is currently helping to prepare materials to be offered to other depository libraries.

The Music outsourcing project is nearing completion. Jeff Taylor processed the first batch of material that has returned from Flourish. Mary Charles Lasater has continued to consult with Fern Hieb about her processing questions.

Larry Romans spoke to Zora Breeding about a cooperative cataloging project that he would like VU to be involved in. This project is in association with the other Information Alliance institutions and would involve our cataloging some pre-1976 State Department materials. Zora called a meeting with Jean Wright (who attended the last Info Alliance meeting where this project was discussed), Susan Bell, Ann Ercelawn and Roberta Winjum. At the meeting, Jean kindly offered to spearhead this new project and agreed to attend the Information Alliance meeting on Sept. 28th.

Ann Ercelawn and Janice Adlington interviewed a couple of students in connection with the Heard Homepage usability testing.

Rich Murray completed a report concerning a possible Inventory Reduction project and submitted it to Roberta Winjum.

September cataloging statistics:
2169 titles cataloged by CAT team.

ORDER SERVICES:

This month Order Services began a more focused schedule for our team meetings; beginning with the Sept 6th meeting, we began a schedule of meeting with the verifiers/receivers on the first Thursday of the month, the serials receivers on the second Thursday, and the entire team on the third. Having once made the comment that the fourth should be reserved for having a party, we gathered together on the 27th for a most enjoyable luncheon.

Order requests from the libraries have been light, and so the verifiers continue to draw from the backlog of gift books. We have had an ongoing problem with the PromptCat records for the Blackwell shipment of Sept 5, so that week's approvals are still being held waiting for a corrected file of records. Serials remain up to date firm orders are still heavy from fiscal year end; we are currently working on materials received in mid-August.

September OS statistics:
790 approvals processed
815 titles speed cataloged
1406 new orders created
3481 serial/periodical issues received

PRESERVATION:

September was another very busy month in Preservation. Materials are still pouring in to binding and marking. Items to repair have slowed down to a more manageable flow.

Charlotte, Daphne, and Sue, along with Special Collections staff, continue to sort, surface clean, and box the University of Nashville collection in the Education Library basement. We estimate 3 more sessions will be necessary to complete this preliminary step. The packed collection will be temporarily housed on Level 1 in the GLB until additional monies are found for complete preservation and processing.

Sue met with a representative of a disaster response vendor, Munter's, that is opening a Nashville office. She also consulted with Special Collections regarding the Louisa May Alcott collection and with an Owen School professor about a personal item.

The team continued to track the amount of time spent searching for overdues, RUSH requests, and recalls. During September the combined efforts of the whole team, including repair, resulted in staff spending 11 hours and 3 minutes searching for 128 books, or an average of just over 5 minutes per book.

Machelle, Karen, and Sue met with Dennis Clark and Rodger Coleman in the Music Library to review the entire binding and marking policy of Music materials. As a result of this productive meeting, Music library materials will be both more mainstreamed whenever possible, and also more specialized when the unique nature of the material requires it.

Binding:
The binding flow continues to be heavy. Most of the titles sent for binding belonged to the Central and Science libraries. Periodical titles will likely slow down now that the summer season is over, but monographs are still abundant. There remains a backlog of HPBs (economy line) and custom monographs.

Preservation team members worked closely with Heckman Bindery to establish new profiles and to set up special LARS database procedures for Music materials. All the changes are now in place and take effect Oct. 1. There should be little to no change elsewhere in Tech Services, but if there are unforeseen consequences, please contact Sue, Machelle, or Karen to iron out the kinks.

September binding statistics:
1,689 volumes sent to bindery (300 higher than last year's monthly average) including:
905 new monographs,
60 monographs needing rebinding,
678 periodicals, and
46 serials

Of the 1,246 paperback monographs Machelle sorted for Central, she selected 868 (68%) for binding. Among them were a large number of older gifts and skinny IMF papers, both of which need immediate binding or other preservation attention.

Machelle updated 264 Acorn records as a result of binding.

Marking:

We are currently labeling items that came to the unit on Sept. 20. A backlog of marking material exists.

September marking statistics:
3,264 books
281 RUSH books
240 unbound serials
168 microfilm reels.

Repair:
September repair statistics:
258 volumes were treated with 343 repairs.

The largest amount of repair work was done for Special Collections, Central, and the Baudelaire Collection.