RSIG met at 1:30 in the GLB RS Conference Room. All members were present except Peggy.

1) Roberta announced her desire for a slight change in the format of the meeting - in the future (and beginning with this meeting), each member will update the group with what is taking place in their respective teams. Roberta began by reporting that, as part of her responsibilities, she is looking at overall work flow within RS. Her first task is to identify how we can best eliminate the need for the Book Fund Accounting System (BFAS). BFAS is the database that "feeds" book fund information to Vanderbilt Accounting, allowing them to write checks for library materials. Since all order information (orders, invoices, payments) is being posted on both Acorn and BFAS, the goal is to eliminate the duplication of effort between the two. Roberta is also working with Dale Poulter, OS, and Ebsco to attempt to load the subscription renewal invoice using an ftp file from Ebsco. Dale reports he is very close to being able to do this. Roberta also announced that she plans to attend the Annual Charleston Conference (and Pre-Conference) on Acquisitions that takes place each November in Charleston, SC. She will be away from November 1-4. (for other updates, see below)

History Logscan In the interest of cleaning up disk space, LTT has asked us to consider whether we think that some of the circulation history logs can be deleted. Those present felt that two years might be adequate for RS needs, but Roberta will check with Peggy to inquire whether this would also be adequate for Annex needs. (Other divisions of the library are also being queried, and may be interested in more extensive time periods.)

Current Location and Circ Transactions in Acorn There has been significant discussion over the past couple of weeks regarding Sirsi's announcement that Current Location will, in future upgrades, be editable ONLY by charging the item. Since we manually edit this field for many purposes within RS, this could prove extremely problematic for us (as well as other Sirsi libraries.) Although Sirsi has put this "on the back burner" for now, one of the issues that came up in the discussion was how circulation stats are counted, and whether pseudo patron charges are being counted as actual circ transactions by the libraries. So that we can have a better idea how to manage this change, Roberta will discuss with John Haar how the libraries are capturing these circ statistics, and whether RS needs to modify how the charges are being counted for internal routing.

Evaluation form for BHB PromptCat records Sue and Zora distributed copies of the form that they created to capture statistics on the PromptCat records that we will begin to receive for the Blackwell UK approval books. In order to analyze whether we are receiving the best possible records from PromptCat for these materials, the books will be routed (after initial OS processing) directly to Charlotte Lew in Preservation. Charlotte will speed catalog eligible books, and will re-search OCLC where we have not received LC records from PromptCat. She will also keep stats on this activity so that we may guage the efficacy of this endeavor. There was some discussion on how may books would have to be analyzed but, due to the unpredictability of the frequency and quantity of the shipments, it was decided that we would wait until we started to receive the records before we made that decision. The form passed RSIG inspection.

Speed cataloging documentation and discussion Zora has recently revised both the "How to Determine Coding" and the "Speed Cataloging" documents and placed them on the RS documention page. There was some discussion about the documents, whether the library codes (for member copy) were still valid and useful, and the need for one comprehensive document. Roberta expressed an interest in streamlining the speed cataloging process. She will begin by meeting with Order Services to brainstorm about the front end of the process.

Electronic journals and databases There was some discussion on the indexing of these journals, where it is done (by whom) - and whether the information might first be loaded into Acorn, then "harvested" to load into the web database (under Other Databases), or the other way around. Roberta has discussed this issue with Marshall. He has offered to give a demonstration of the web database, so that we might have a better understanding of what is involved in the process of its creation. Roberta will work with Marshall to set up such a demonstration for interested RS staff.

Music collection Roberta announced that Peggy was unable to attend this RSIG meeting as she was hosting representatives of the Music faculty at the Annex. They were there to do a collection analysis of the Peabody Music collection housed at the Annex.

Other updates from RSIG Order Services: everyone was reminded that Yan-Xia has moved to OS Verification, leaving a vacancy in Serials receiving. Monica has begun training both Yan-Xia and Dan in Verification. This activity has already helped to reduce some of the orders awaiting processing. LTT: Nancy announced that Unicorn 2000 is nearly ready for Beta testing. She has also made modifications to two Docs locations, at Larry's request (see Nancy's message for the exact changes). Cataloging: Susan indicated that Yuh-Fen is receiving training. Preservation: Sue has hired a student to assist in book repair. Sue also reported that she will be attending the Information Alliance meeting at UT, Knoxville.

The next RSIG meeting will be Nov. 8, 1:30 at Baker.

submitted by Mary Ellen Wilson