TechForce Meeting

Jan. 15, 2003

RIP Task Force:

The Reduction in Inventory Project (RIP) Task Force attended the meeting to go over their recommendations, which can be found in the TechForce documentation under http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/rs/techserv/Administrative/TSWFTFcharge_files/rip_tf_rpt.htm

Over 600 of the DLC books are already finished.

Roberta will send an Inform request asking Nancy to overlay existing records with the 862 LC and PCC records. These will be processed similarly to the DLC records. Roberta will also send an Inform request asking Nancy to investigate ways of storing the member records so that CAT can easily review and overlay existing Acorn records as appropriate. Nancy may be able to select and load only member records with call numbers for this portion of the project.

Nancy will search and document results for a sample of the over 2,000 “no copy found” titles to help determine how to handle these materials.

In some cases, OCLC RetroCon returned incorrect records, and these now show our holdings symbol in OCLC. As we identify these, we will remove our symbol.

Trying not to send materials to the Inventory is a future goal. When the RIP project is completed, we hope to freeze its growth, i.e. a book would be removed for any book added. Gradually, we would stop sending any volumes, and use more INVD cataloging to reduce the Inventory. It is important to process the Inventory, rather than carry this cataloging responsibility indefinitely. The items are to stay part of the libraries’ collections, but since they have not been requested by any patron since they were purchased, we feel that they should be cataloged as effortlessly as possible.

When all DLC, Divinity DLC, LC and PCC records are finished, the RIP Task Force will meet again with the TechForce to determine next steps. We expect this will be in July 2003. Until then the RIP Task Force is on hiatus, except for any involvement needed in the ongoing DLC/LC/PCC cataloging project.

The TechForce thanked the RIP Task Force for their work on this project.

TS-wide message:

Roberta is preparing a message to send to all TS staff. The TechForce recommended some editing.

Budget and what to communicate now within TS:

The official word: "It will probably be the end of March before any budget for the libraries is finalized. Many changes are likely between now and then."