Personnel Matters: All technical services staff warmly welcomed Roberta Winjum as she began work on Monday, August 28 as Coordinator of Technical Services. We're looking forward to her energy, enthusiasm, and leadership. A new Network Technician, Charles Owen, was hired and will begin work with LTT in September; Judy Carter will begin to do more 'field work', extending her responsibilities beyond the LTT help desk. Yuh-Fen Benda accepted the copy cataloging position on the Cataloging and Authorities Team, leaving another LA III vacancy in Order Services. Students and student temporary employees continued to come and go while providing needed shifting assistance at the Annex, help in the Baker Mailroom, and book repair services.

Training, Development and Service: Dale Poulter attended SIRSI API training in Huntsville. Don Jones was glad to be able to successfully complete his work on the Ref/Bib. Search committee. Ann Barnette and Laurie Power attended a SOLINET workshop entitled Cataloging Electronic Resources. Sue Davis, Charlotte Lew, Susan Bell, Zora Breeding, Ann Ercelawn, Don Jones, Mary Charles Lasater, and Rich Murray all enjoyed the opportunity to meet new students, assisting with Central's open house on August 28.

Some 215 problems were resolved this month. Some of the major projects and issues addressed by the Library Technology Team during August included:

__Implementation of EZProxy for off-campus access to restricted resources on Heard Public Web and for managing access to resources restricted for use by OGSM students and faculty.
__Implementation of the new Heard publicweb site, and of the new webserver, currently serving AcqWeb site.
__Implementation of the new ERL server for SilverPlatter databases.
__Completion of testing and implementation of automated transfer of fine information to Student Accounts.
__Managed the effects of a catastrophic campus-backbone failure, temporarily relocating two files servers.
__Replaced Public Workstations in Science and Engineering Library.
__Installed networked color laser printer in Science and Engineering Library.
__Completed design and implemented Walker Library web pages.
__Delivered Technology Training portion of the Staff Development report to LMC.
__Provided a training class for web editors concerning the new public web environment and use of EZProxy.
__Finalized changes to new Athena and IRIS sites.
__Replaced failed hard-drive in Walker Library cdrom server, reloaded associated databases.
__Installed 13 new cdrom-based database products, and upgraded 18 existing cdrom-based products.
__Prepared "index image" for Central library public workstations (for use in cloning).
__Met with ACIS staff to describe implementation of EZProxy and help develop procedures/policies for using RADIUS authentication on campus.
__Implemented a host of bibliographic and Acorn policy changes
__Added 506 fields to records without them to flag them for restricted electronic access for use with EZProxy.
__Beta testing of new Acquisitions Wizards.
__Began work to allow sending of records to Marcive for Table of Contents enhancement.

The more detailed report for LTT is available on their staffweb site.

Electronic upgrades were installed in a number of the ranges of compact shelving; we continue to wait for the roof replacement work to begin at the Annex.

Circulation: 424 items circulated (68 more than this time last year). 119 of our patrons used Web forms to request their Annex materials. Additionally, 27 ILL patrons needed 241 pages photocopied.

Storage: 339 linear feet of library materials were received as transfers from: the Baudelaire Center's PIA collection, Central Arts folios, Central stacks, Divinity, Law, Management, Science/Engineering, and Special Collections' PCOLL. We transferred back to campus, 14.5 linear feet of Government Documents. Miscellaneous individual gift volumes were sent for storage. We've noticed an increased in 2 gift collections this month--Waldinger gifts, and a surge in Helguera gift titles. The Music Library sent us additional Birdwell Collection materials to store in boxes. The new boxes of Leaky materials for the Baudelaire Center were shipped directly to the Annex. University Archives acquired 9 filing cabinets of Physics donations, and another 40 archive boxes were received for the Archives

University Tenants: Peg worked with 3 separate moving companies with respect to increased University tenant storage needs--Alumni & Development; Professor Thomas; and for two law professors. Each year the Graduate School stores boxes of their applications; this year we only received 37 large boxes. (Electronic applications are indeed making an impact!)

29 visitors were on site during August.

RS Maintenance: Staff edited 7,294 Acorn records. 551 (nearly 200 more than this time last year) withdrawals were processed; 8 volumes re-instated; one title was recataloged; 10 were reclassified; ands only 1 title was transferred internally.

Verification:

During the last two months of the fiscal year the verifiers worked primarily on requests, making sure that they were all processed so that library funds could be fully encumbered. Since that time, verifiers have been working extremely hard on bringing approvals and gifts up to date, as well as maintaining rush and priority requests. Most of the requests in OS currently awaiting processing were received within the last 3-4 weeks, though there are a few orders up to 6 weeks old. Since one of the verifiers has been out unexpectedly on leave, the other verifiers have picked up additional subject areas until his return, hopefully around the end of September or beginning of October.

Firm order receiving:

Receivers are currently processing materials received in the mailroom the first week of August. Rush materials are being processed upon receipt.

Serial receiving:

Serial receivers are currently processing bound materials received within approximately the last week, unbound serials and periodicals within 2-3 days. They have done an extraordinary job of keeping serials moving in spite of staff shortages. Preparations for Vanderbilt's purchase of an institutional package of Annual Reviews titles are almost complete. Chris Waldrop reports that Central Periodicals will now be sending all superseded periodical issues and duplicates to Absolute Backorder Service. This means that Vanderbilt will become an Absolute "member" and all single back issues will only cost $10 each.

August was a very busy month. The flow of books from Order Services was very heavy. As we searched for a replacement for our LC copy cataloger, all team members pitched in with processing the LC copy books. Hundreds of Music CDs began to arrive from OS this month, along with many Spanish and Portuguese videos, microfilm sets, several kits for the Curriculum Lab and several Rush Music videos at the end of the month. Some catalogers worked on cataloging electronic resources, including titles on the Romantic Circles and Women Writers Online web sites.

The Pinyin committee, Pete Wilson, Susan Bell, Mary Charles Lasater and Yuh- Fen Benda, began to study the impact to the libraries of conversion from Wade Giles to Pinyin romanization. Mary Charles, Denise Chavez and Sue Richards worked through all the unauthorized headings lists that had piled up. The Helguera project continues on schedule. Ann Ercelawn continues to make progress on cataloging the Pia serials and Pete continues working on the Vanderbilt periodicals. A new shipment of VU theses arrived this month and Jeff processed the circulating copies in his usual prompt manner. Rich worked with Sue Davis on Staff Council affairs. Zora met with Sue Davis several times to discuss the possibility of training Binding and Marking staff to work on CAT projects. Ann Ercelawn trained Machelle Keen to work on the Holdings clean-up project and reports that Machelle is making great progress. Ann also had Machelle help with creating item records for about 100 issues of an Observatory serial title. Charlotte Lew has volunteered to be trained in searching OCLC for upgraded copy. Karen Coles and Karen Pillow again helped with processing the Helguera duplicates. We appreciate the valuable help we are getting from the Preservation Team.

August was a busy month, but not in a typical way. The team has taken on several new projects, so quite a bit of training is taking place. In addition to the new responsibilities, our marking load has increased noticeably as well.

BINDING: August binding statistics appear high because 3 binding shipments fell within the month. The team sent 492 new monographs, 79 rebinds, 556 periodicals, and 119 serials to Heckman Bindery. Machelle updated 217 Central periodical and 108 Science periodical Acorn records as a result of binding. Beginning in September other team members will be trained to update Acorn records for the rest of the RS libraries. This will free up RS Maintenance for other tasks. Sue, Machelle, and Karen Pillow reviewed the entire Heckman binding profile for RS customer libraries. The profile had fallen out of date over time and no longer accurately reflected current practices. Machelle will contact Heckman Bindery to update the profile. Machelle and Karen have begun encumbering funds and paying binding invoices on Acorn for this fiscal year.

BOOK REPAIR: The bulk of repair work focused on Arts oversize and Science materials. 333 volumes received 484 treatments. The backlog has been reduced with the oldest item dated mid-June. Daphne will return on Sept. 5.

MARKING: Labeling statistics have jumped significantly (by over 1,000), signaling the beginning of the academic year as well as year-end ordering. The team labeled 4,426 items, 163 RUSH items, 275 unbound serials, and 138 microfilm reels, and stamped 1,227 microfiche envelopes. The team tested out a WorkFlows manual marking procedure developed by Anne Laws. The last few kinks are ironing out--hopefully in the nick of time before InfoView goes away.

OTHER: Sue and Charlotte consulted with two professors during August. One had an old newspaper that had lived folded up in an attic for at least 100 years. The other had a large collection of maps he wanted protected during classroom use. Sue also consulted with the Law Library about post-construction cleanup. The stacks were in a very dusty condition, and Sue recommended a commercial vendor who assisted the library with the Helguera collection cleaning. In a mini-project Machelle created item records for a 100 volume Observatory serial title in preparation for wrappers. She also has begun work on the infamous holdings update project. Charlotte has volunteered to learn to search for LC copy and will begin her training in September. Karen Coles and Karen Pillow are both working with Rich on another batch of Helguera duplicates. Sue met with Bill Hook and Bob Howard to begin detail procedural planning of the SOLINET microfilming project. Charlotte assisted a Divinity grad student in planning an exhibit of Judaica materials for the Divinity Library.

9/3/2000