RSIG Minutes, 3/7/2001, 1:30 Baker Conference room

Present: Roberta Winjum, Sue Davis, Peggy Earheart, Nancy Boggess-Korekach, Mary Ellen Wilson, and Zora Breeding

Announcements:

Sue: Sue will participate in developing a questionnaire for a Staff Satisfaction Survey; she has also been interviewing for a temporary position in Binding/Marking.

Peggy: Peg reported that there were HVAC problems at the Annex that were being worked on.

Nancy: reported that there was some difficulty in locating all of the NetLibrary records, and that it wold be the following week before they would be loaded into Acorn. She is also in communication with Sirsi regarding the 880 field in the Pinyan records - specifically, how the Chinese characters would display in Acorn. She is waiting to hear from them.

Mary Ellen: reported that the vendor cleanup in Acorn (for the migration to PeopleSoft payment) was going slowly; vendor records are being edited as receivers process invoices for the vendors.

Zora: reported that this was a very busy time for Cataloging

Roberta: reported on the BFAS project. She is optimistic that we will meet the May 1 startup date on schedule. Roberta also announced that Dennis Clark visited Baker to meet Order Services staff earlier in the week.

Other agenda items:

1. Withdrawn/shadowed/duplicate processing and locations: Roberta had received a message from Janet regarding a piece that had been withdrawn and the record had been shadowed, but the Location was still STACKS. This led to a discussion of how/whether these records display to the public. While the location of the above title should have been changed to WITHDRAWN or other appropriate location, the fact that it was shadowed would have prevented it from displaying in the WebCat. Since some felt there have been instances when the libraries have noted that shadowed items COULD be seen in WebCat, it was requested that we watch for specific examples so that we can determine whether these are actually a problem. Cataloging will also begin a new process of returning duplicate/problem materials to Order Services. In the future, the items will be fully discharged (including from the holding library), then charged and shipped to Order Services. (The number to be used for this charge should be 373643).
2. Datalogger: Sue demonstrated one of the two Datalogger devices that she would be testing. The device was designed by the Rochester Institute of Technology, and records temperature and humidity. The data can then be downloaded to compile information and create reports. We will be testing the Datalogger over the next year, testing the instrument and the software. One Datalogger will be installed in the Annex, and the other in Special Collections. Vanderbilt University is one of 38 ARL libraries involved in the testing.
3. Material flow through Resource Services: Sue observed that materials processed in all areas of RS ultimately converge on Binding/Marking with little or no advance warning. She asked that we remember to notify them in advance of large projects that we may be working on that will be sent to B/M for processing. We also discussed the unpredictability of materials coming through Order Services, and how it ultimately effects later processing points. While Order Services has little control over the timing/amount of materials being received, we agreed that we would all be aware of how these situations impact processing points along the way. During this discussion, Zora brought up a question about sso's that are sent from Order Services to Cataloging. Catalogers had noticed that they were receiving several volumes within the same series at a time, leading them to question whether Order Services might be holding volumes to send them over in batches. Mary Ellen reported that this was, in fact, the way that the materials are received - publishers frequently ship several volumes of a series at a time. (Mary Ellen has also subsequently checked and confirmed that the sso's are processed routinely, along with other serial receipts, and routed every few days to cataloging.)
4. BHB PromptCat Study: The results of the study indicate that we are indeed receiving the cataloging records from PromptCat that we need, and that the current routing of these materials (UKM as MC), need not be changed. Sincere thanks were issued all around for all everyone who helped to participate in the study.
5. Other PromptCat record problems: Other problems had been discovered with the PromptCat records, leading us to ultimately discover (after the RSIG meeting) that the abundance of materials being sent to Cataloging as MC that had the following as cataloging source - 040:UkOxBHB|cUkOxBHB - was due to the fact that we have no PromptCat profile set up yet for materials ordered on Collection Manager that are UK imprints, and shipped from the Oxford Office of Blackwells. (Mary Ellen has since contacted Blackwells to rectify this situation as soon as possible.)