RSIG minutes 10/17/2001

Present: Roberta Winjum, Susan Bell, Nancy Boggess-Korekach, Zora Breeding, Peg Earheart, Sue Davis, Mary Ellen Wilson. Rich Murray attended as a guest.

Inventory project. We began with Rich Murray reporting on his study on the reduction of the cataloging inventory. His project report can be read at http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/rs/inventoryproject.htm

Rich summarzied his report for the group. The conclusion was that all of the work could not be done in-house with existing staffing. Roberta pointed out that this project will have to be done this year or the money will not be there for it in the foreseeable future. Rich talked to OCLC and got some information about what kinds of services they could provide. One concern was that we do not know what kind of matching algorithms OCLC uses to match on records. The catalogers have several other reservations about working with OCLC. These include the fact that the authority work on name, subject and series headings would be lost on records that OCLC overlays and the quality of OCLC's work in the past has not been up to the catalogers' standards.

It was proposed that a task force be set up to look at Rich's report and decide where to go from here. Rich will chair the task force. Other members will include Susan Bell, Nancy Boggess-Korekach, and Zora Breeding. Sue Davis and Peg Earheart asked to attend when the task force discussed issues relevant to their areas of expertise.

Zora asked if the project is supposed to have the purpose of completely clearing out the inventory or just reducing it to a more managable size. Roberta responded that she was under the impression that the purpose is not to clear out the entire backlog, but work it down in a methodical way in project mode and then the catalogers can always work on what is left during times when receipt of materials is slow in Order Services.

The group thanked Rich for his hard work on the project report and he was excused from attending the rest of the meeting.

Announcements from Roberta:

--Netlibrary update: The company is going through some major financial problems. In addition to the records that we already have access to, there are another 2000 or so records that we now have access to, but for which there are no Acorn records. We don't know at this time if those records will become available. Solinet has the archive of titles. One of the problems with the records that we already have is that the URL's may change with the company's new owners, so that all of the records would have to be edited. It is questionable whether or not they could be edited globally. Another problem is the Public Domain titles that we were going to purchase records for, but have so far only received a testfile of a few of them. When Roberta questioned the bibliographers about whether or not they wanted these records under the present circumstances, she got conflicting answers. So, for now, nothing has been decided on this.

--Tech Services-wide meeting scheduled for Oct. 18^th was discussed. Roberta wanted to emphasize that this would be a mandatory staff meeting and it would count as work time. It will not be conducted as a meeting, but she would like for everyone to be there at 10:30 for announcements and introductions of staff. She will send out an email message to all RS staff explaining this.

--Workflow Task Force update: the task force has created flow charts to track the work through technical processing and will start analyzing this at the next meeting. Peg asked to be allowed to attend the Task Force meetings since her staff are involved in certain phases of the procedures.

--Central binding: Sue and Roberta met with Mary Beth Blalock and John Haar to discuss the binding-on-one-checkout rule. Mary Beth and John asked for some numbers from Binding and then they will discuss the issue further. There seem to be two strong points of view on this and so the task will be to find some middle ground between the two. The next meeting will be on Oct. 25^th.

Leisure book processing update (Sue, Mary Ellen and Roberta): we have 150 titles that have been received. Circulation will be doing the physical processing and discharging of these and future purchases. Order Services staff and RS Cataloging staff will send the books to Yolanda. Books that Ingram cannot supply will still go to Yolanda as well. There was a question about the security strips getting put into the books. Roberta will check on that. Order Services and RS Cataloging procedures are posted on the staff web under Order Services/Leisure Reading Collection.

Adding older serial issues(Sue): this concerns gifts that are being processed by Ann Ercelawn. They are cataloged for the Annex and placed on a truck for binding without any protective boxes. Preservation, labeling and cataloging are not always compatible on the processing of these pieces. There was much discussion on this issue and it was decided that there should be a coordinated and consistent procedure put into place. For now, the items will not be boxed or wrapped until Peg determines that they have enough issues to be boxed together. The procedure will apply to all older serial single issue gifts that are going to the Annex as the permanent location. There will be no change to the processing of new serial single issues.

Security stripping of periodicals update(Sue): starting with the next shipment (Oct. 18^th), periodicals will be sent to Heckman for security stripping.

Copy numbers on replacements(Zora): patrons were wanting to know where the other copy was for titles that had copy 2's with no copy 1's. This occurs in Unicorn for various reasons. LITS has reported that it would be possible to prevent the display of the copy numbers in WebCat. CAAG will be recommending to ISAG that this be done. Roberta will contact Sherre Harrington about it as well.

No more pink cards(Mary Ellen): previously pink cards were inserted into items that were unbound, barcoded serial issues when they left Order Services to go to Marking for labeling and stripping and stamping. The pink cards are no longer needed since exceptions to the labeling/stripping/stamping procedure never go to Marking anyway.

Updates from RSIG members: Peg reported that Leonor has started on the microfiche from Binding/Marking and Cataloging and Order Services can now start sending them to her as well.

Sue reported that Marking has been receiving books with stamps already in them and wanted to know where these are getting stamped. Mary Ellen will check to see if OS staff may be doing this to the SSO's when they receive them. Sue thanked Order Services staff including Monica, Ibtisam, Debbie, Angel and Kathyma for helping to clear out the backlog in Binding/Marking.

Zora reported that Jean Wright has completed the examination of the Dewey government documents at the Annex. She reconned some to be left at the Annex and others were offered to various regional depositories. Her next project will be the cataloging of the pre-1976 State Department publications.

Mary Ellen reported that processing is about the same, with incoming orders still fairly slow. Some staff helped in the mailroom and did a very good job. Roberta, Dale and Mary Ellen met with Biomedical staff to talk about the Swets/Blackwell invoice loading. They are interested in doing the same process that Dale has set up for Order Services.

Meeting adjourned at, oh, let's say, 3:45? And the next meeting is scheduled for Nov. 7^th if it is felt that a meeting is needed then.

Minutes submitted by Nancy Boggess(better later than never)-Korekach.