RSIG MINUTES 12/1/99

PRESENT: Susan Bell, Nancy Boggess-Korekach, Zora Breeding, Sue Davis, Peg Earheart, Sylvia Martin, Monica Sanchez, Mary Ellen Wilson

APPROVAL COMPARATIVE STUDY: Sylvia presented additional figures in the comparative chart, and noted that she is ready to begin to write an accompanying report for the chart. Mary Ellen would like to recommend in the report that all approvals (other than those coming as shelf-ready) be processed in the manner that we are now handling Group 2 (approvals being processed in much the same way as PromptCat). This change would mean that approvals would not go up for review, but rather would be processed immediately upon receipt. It would also mean that books would be sent to shelves without binding. Sue expressed concern about doing away with "up front" binding. Others agreed. The binding issue needs to be discussed with collection development staff.

OFFLINE RETURN: Sylvia reported results of the offline return of holdings (batchload) by OCLC of 286 records of inventory material where our holdings symbol was added to the record. 271 records were successfully updated, with only 15 records unresolved. Of the 15, 13 records, according to OCLC, contained errors and 2 had no match. Zora noted that she looked at these 15 records, and did not understand OCLC's interpretation as errors for some of them. ACTION: Sylvia will ask OCLC for an explanation of what they consider an error.

Peg suggested that another batch of 11,000 records be sent to OCLC. This is the total currently charged to a single pseudo-patron number. ACTION: Sylvia will check with Solinet to see if OCLC can handle this large a load. [OCLC can handle a max of 60,000 records. Sylvia has asked Nancy to get with Peg to arrange for the next transfer of records for batchload.]

There was some discussion about how to proceed with offline return of currently received material. It was decided that a transfer of records, based upon date cataloged, would be sent to OCLC once a month. Peg and Annex staff will manually update any records for material that comes to the Annex after all Annex material has been updated by batchload. A new charge no. will also be assigned. [Flo has raised 2 issues here: 1.) Could another area rather that date cataloged be used for extracting records so that all records would be included and Annex staff would not have to manually update? She suggested item creation date. 2.) What about records that have been updated by PromptCat? We need to discuss these issues at the next meeting.]

Sylvia commented upon the proactive notice that Peg had sent to ILL staff, informing them that they would be seeing records with our holdings symbol even tho the book was not cataloged. Sylvia asked who else should be informed of this new procedure. It was decided that collection development staff should know. ACTION: Sylvia will send out notice to appropriate staff with copy to RSIG members.

Peg noted that a 24 hour turn-around time has been guaranteed to IRIS libraries. However, if a book, requested from the Annex, must be cataloged before lending, this turn-around time will not be possible. ACTION: Sylvia will talk with John Haar about this situation.

951 TAG: Nancy and Zora raised the issue as to how dates for recataloging should be formatted in the 951 field. Nancy needs to change the scripts that look for this date for catstats reports. Are there other areas where the date is important for extracting information? ACTION: Appropriate staff will be informed to enter date as 1/1/2000.

980 TAG: Mary Ellen asked if the 980 tag was formatted. Noone seemed to know if there were subfields for this tag. ACTION: Sylvia will check with OCLC.

REINDEX: Nancy reported that a message will be sent out after 12/7 to confirm whether or not reindexing will take place on 12/18 as currently planned.

HELGUERA GIFTS: Peg asked if cataloging has a plan for processing the 108 boxes of Helguera gifts when they are returned to the Annex. Peg is planning staging for shipping this material to cataloging from the Annex where it will be returned. ACTION: Zora will check with Rich and Norma, but estimates that 2 boxes/week can be sent to cataloging.

RUSH: Mary Ellen noted that Julie Loder will talk with bibliographers to see if books are being requested as RUSH so that circulation staff will know that a patron is waiting for the book. (This could account for the unusually large no. of recent RUSH requests.) Is there a better way to identify a requestor? The requestor/user ID field could be used, but this could be a violation of privacy since it is not removable. ACTION: A separate flag will be inserted to indicate that there is a requestor waiting for the book.

NEXT MEETING: 12/15, 2:00, Baker