RISG meeting minutes, 8/22/01

Absent: Nancy Boggess-Korekach

Agenda items (in bold; all other, add-ons):

Roberta announced that Zora Breeding, Sue Davis, Mary Ellen Wilson, and she would be conducting an all-day RS team leaders’ retreat Monday, 8/27 at the Sarratt Student Ctr., Rm 341. Roberta has prepared an agenda, with various topics to be discussed.

Roberta received a message from Elaine Goleski that the 2001/2002 editions of the "Vanderbilt University Guide to Libraries have recently arrived and are available, as needed.

Roberta received only one copy of the latest OCLC-generated "Searching WorldCat" guide; we had thought we were ordering enough for each of the cataloging team members plus several others to be distributed to other staff also searching and/or cataloging in OCLC; Peg and Mary Ellen also were interested in having at least one copy for their staff members. Zora was given the one, "hard-copy" Roberta received and will follow through with the members of the cataloging team about how many more are needed & how to go about getting them, i.e. there was some thought these might be available to be printed via the web.

Mary Ellen received word from John Haar to cancel the standing order for "Advances in Librarianship" recently. Roberta polled the group as to whether RS wanted begin receiving this. The decision by the group was not to begin our own subscription.

Peg gave the group some background, plus her proposed solution, to a recently generated report that Nancy had run against the databank on Education materials classified in Dewey at the Annex. Records for these had been put in the system by Education library staff using the reserve format, i.e. VERY brief records. All this materials were moved from the Education library to the Annex in 1999, when Education needed their space. Mary Charles, through authority work, alerted Peg to the possible numbers involved, which was confirmed when the numbers came back from the report, 544 volumes. Maintance staff pulled a few from the shelves and all had decent copy on OCLC so Peg’s offered to have all of this materials, at app. 10 per week, pulled and searched against OCLC, with the current, reserve-format records being deleted from the database and new records bought in instead; it is assumed material that has no OCLC record would go through an original cataloger. This would make this material searchable via browse, which it isn’t, due to the reserve format status currently, a good thing but not so good as well, because the new records the Maintance staff will bring in will put this very old, never circulated to the top of the indexes, at least until the next time the database undergoes re-indexing but this was determined to be the lesser of the two "evils".

Zora visited recently with Barbara Clarke, the librarian who is doing the cataloging for the Women’s Center materials and touched base with her on some issues. Barbara has been asked to start changing the "date cataloged" to "Today" for materials she catalogs in the future plus Nancy was able to change all the records for materials Barbara had already cataloged to "Today" so authority work can take place. A question related to Women’s Center cataloging came from OST staff who had encountered records that Barbara had bought in as to whether OST should use Barbara’s record instead of creating new ones. The answer to this question is yes, use the existing "Women’s Centers" records but process as usually, i.e. speed catalog if possible (updating OCLC too) or otherwise send through cataloging. It was suggested, in order to get "credit" for RS cataloging, RS staff change the date of cataloging on Women Centers’ records they use to "Today" & add your initials, etc. The question of withdrawals came up in relation to the Women’s center’s materials. Zora will check with them & then get back to the group.

Round-robin Updates:

Susan reports that work on the State of Tennessee textbooks from Education come to arrive in a steady but not yet overwhelming rate. Much of this material is "hot off the presses", i.e. requires original cataloging (good for SB’s stats!). The question came up as to whether all the Cox Curr. Lab. Materials have at last arrived but Mary Ellen saddened this minute-taker with the news that app. 20 titles have still not been received so those orders rolled over into this fiscal year. (Maybe some day!)

Mary Ellen reported that OST continues to "plug along" and that they had received a very large shipment of duplicated Loeb Classical Library materials purchased with VLEF funding. There has also been a good amount of IMF new titles received (see Zora’s update for other "shoe"). And last, but probably not the whole story of corporate acquisitions from the library world, Mary Ellen learned that Swets, which 1^st "ate" Blackwell has now "eaten" Nijhoffs recently too. Changes, surely, to follow.

Peg wanted everyone to be aware that, once Sue has provided training, Leonor van Cotthem will take over the stamping of microfiche from the Preservation team. Mary Ellen and Zora will be given notice, when Leonor is ready to begin this task, as their staff will then send this material directly to Leonor at the Annex, by-passing Preservation.

Professor Poggenburg’s collection of American literature has arrived at the Annex, being stored there awaiting Collection Development’s attention. See Annex’s July RS highlights for details of other collections received & being stored at the Annex.

Zora reports that the above-mentioned IMF materials have arrived in Cataloging & are making their way through. There are several CAT members out on vacation currently. We are happy to report that Ann Barnette became a second-time grandmother Saturday; mother and son all reported to be doing well. Melinda Brown told Zora that she intends to ask RS staff if anyone would like to again volunteer to help out with new student orientation, which starts 8/27.

Sue Davis reports that her Preservation team is still "drowning" in materials but that there is a possibility to hire at least one student assistant soon, which should help. Auto discharging started on 8/14, which generated a new "wrinkle" in things. Seems that the change in the pseudo patrons "somehow" causes the circulation flag to flip to "no-circ." BUT when the material is eventually discharged by the home library the proper circulation flag is "restored" to the way it was prior to being auto discharged (go figure; ‘tis a SIRSI thing), just as SIRSI says it always has. (This group has its doubters & is continuing to investigate, with follow-up promised.

Next meeting was set for 9/5/01 at the Baker building and the meeting adjourned.

Minutes submitted by Susan Bell.