RSIG, 2/27/2002 Minutes of email exchange in lieu of meeting.
The meeting was cancelled due to the very cold weather. In its place, the following e-mail exchanges took place. The agenda items were supplied by Roberta, members comments follow.
1. Music Reference locations
Jeff Taylor sent the following info:
"I was over at the Music library yesterday and they confirmed something I had already suspected: Since their renovation, there is no longer any difference between "reference" and "ready reference", which have been merged into one. The upshot is that the music location READY-REF and its associated oclc code MUS-RREF should no longer be used."
Someone in CAT will see that the web documentation is updated, right, Zora? Any questions about this, anyone, or how it affects your work? Does someone in LITS need to know?
Comments:
Zora: Nancy will have to take care of the holdings codes documentation. I can make changes to the nonbook tables, but did not see any ready ref locations in the tables, so that doc. is ok. Once Nancy updates the holdings codes documentation, I think that will take care of things. I don't think there is any documentation in OS about locations in Music ready ref apart from the holdings doc., right MEW?
Mary Ellen: about MUS-RREF - I ran a report of outstanding orders that have this as the holding code. There are only four, and they are standing orders. I just looked at one - Musical America. International directory of the performing arts and the current issue says Ready Ref. (The rest are at the Annex)
Actually, they all still have current locations of Ready Reference. I hesitate to change these orders if the pieces still say RR...
Does someone need to edit all the volumes? Do they need to be re-marked?
Zora asked Jeff if he could help. Jeff’s response: Everything that was previously MUS-RREF should now be simply MUS-REF. The locations on the bib records will need to be changed at some point, although they didn't seem too concerned about this at Music (is this a job for Maintenance?). They also didn't seem concerned about relabeling anything, so we'll leave that up to them. I have time to change a couple of the locations, so I'll do that now.
2. "Fragile" item type
This has been approved and set up by CAG. It's my understanding that bibliographers decide what's fragile, and in the Annex, Peg is responsible. Most of these are Annex materials, I think, so if we have questions, let's save it for a future RSIG because Peg's not here today.
Comments:
Zora: No questions. Should not affect RS except RS Maintenance.
Sue: Sometimes Pres helps with those decisions, but my understanding about this new category is that it is mostly (if not all) intended for Annex use. It might evolve to other things? Much better to wait until Peggy can be present at discussion.
Peg: Fragile materials only affect the Library Annex operations, but Peg
would like to 'fyi" RSIG members at the next meeting. She will
bring 1 or more examples to the meeting. The policy practices are
actually not new. They are policies that have been operations
since 1989 or 1990. The only thing new is the use of the word
"FRAGILE" and having a separate item type to denote it.
BOOK- has been used for sometime now, to restrict out-of-house
usage for Annex storage items requested by patrons.
3. Early English Books Online records update
Short version: the records aren't ready for us yet.
Long version: ProQuest has sent us a sample file, but it doesn't include the 856 fields, i.e. URL links, except in two of the records as examples. They're going to get the URL's in, and then supply the records, currently planned for April. There are about 67,000 of them. Should be interesting.
Comments:
Zora: So far, the headings and notes in the records look fine. Headings are
using authorized forms. Digitization note is in the 533.
4. Monthly report question
Someone (who shall remain nameless) asked if we could skip the February monthly report, and do a bi-monthly in March. I'm not entirely opposed, since it's busy evaluation time. I don't imagine any of you would object either. Flo sees these notes, so she can
speak up if she wants a Feb. report. BTW, it's not quite consistent with our wish to improve communication. That's my only concern.
Comments:
Zora: Namelessly agree wholeheartedly.
Mary Ellen: Re- monthly report, I don't have any strong opinion on this either way.
Sue: Actually, monthly reports are easier in some ways because that's the way we keep stats. But, I can go either way.
Flo: My thoughts about the monthly report are similar to Roberta's. In particular, it seems we need to be providing a status report on how orders are going, what's happening with the EBSCO invoice, expected time schedule for end of year ordering/purchases. All of that is OST, but it's probably not fair to make them do one and not the rest. Will all of you really have any more time the end of March than now?
Based on Flo’s comments, the final decision from Roberta was that we will do a regular report this month.
5. Announcements from all
Announcements:
Zora: Mary Charles Lasater is approved for telecommuting. She will start when she gets her home office set up. She will be here during normal work hours Mon. mornings, Tues. afternoons, and Friday mornings. She will also be here on weekends. We will send out a more detailed list of her hours once she starts telecommuting.
Susan: continue to plug away, & I mean that, at the state of TN gift textbooks
from Education. FYI: in conversation with Lee Ann Lammon yesterday, learned that I had misunderstood when I thought these gifts would stop coming to Educ. once all Social Studies textbooks had arrived and been processed. Lee Ann is under the impression that Commissioner Streiff intends to continue offering Educ. sample textbooks in other subject areas. If that information IS correct we should discuss, at a future RSIG, whether processing these through "normal" channels, ie. them going 1st to OS, then coming to CAT, etc. would be less costly, and perhaps less time consuming too, than how they are being handled now. (Note: this comes from the person who's currently DOING the bulk of the work!)
Sue: We've hired a new person named Patti Skipper. She starts Mar. 4, next Monday. Hurray!!
Janet and I have finally worked up a procedure for processing Central bibliographer selected items requiring repair/boxing, then relabeling, then transfer to the Annex. I plan to write up the brief procedure (basically Janet offered to do all the database work, INCLUDING rebarcoding the items in boxes.) later today. Our labeling routine for these Central items will be the same as for everything else. Nice, huh? Anybody want to see the procedure itself?