TechForce Meeting Summary, Wed., Feb. 5, 2003

Performance Reviews:

Roberta will send out a message with the schedule for this year’s reviews. Teams may use either the old self-evaluation form or the supervisor’s form modified for self-evaluation. However, the members of any given team should all use the same form.

Service Quality Update:

Three LMC members, Sherre Harrington, Sharon Weiner, and Dennis Clark, are investigating methods to improve library service quality. Sharon and Dennis will hold a Service Quality Workshop for library staff. Several Tech Services staff have signed up to attend.

Priority Flags:

This pertains to the necessity of priority flags inserted in serial volumes going to Binding/Marking. This item is deferred to the next meeting. Mary Ellen will investigate current procedures.

Date Due Slips in Annex Books:

This was considered as a possible time/cost saving measure. Due to various considerations, the procedure will remain unchanged for now.

Cornell University Handout from ALA:

Dale Poulter had provided Roberta with a handout from a presentation by Cornell Tech Services staff at ALA. They reorganized their staff and now have a metadata unit that works with a Digital Collections central group. We thought this model might be considered for the future for Vanderbilt. Roberta will discuss it with Flo Wilson.

Another interesting item from Cornell concerned their program of minimal level cataloging which seemed on the surface to be similar to our INVD program. However, they are using records without LC classification numbers, and then having Catalogers assign them before the item can be sent to the shelves. This seems more time consuming than our method. However, one idea of theirs did stand out: They have these brief-cataloged records searched through RLIN at regular intervals for one year, and any good copy found in the intervening period is used to replace the brief record. If we had a similar procedure set up with OCLC, it might encourage us to do more INVD cataloging. Roberta will investigate the possibilities with Dale and try to determine costs for OCLC to search these materials.

Review of Telecommuting Policy:

This was deferred for the next meeting. Beforehand, Roberta will talk with Jody Combs about any possible changes to the technical requirements, such as necessity of setting up a fixed IP address through one’s Internet service provider.

Trip to the Annex:

The TechForce has been invited to visit the Annex to learn firsthand about current shelving schemes, procedures, etc. Roberta will contact Peg about possible times.

SSO’s:

This was deferred until the next meeting.

Harrassowitz Approval Records:

We considered the possibility of getting Harrassowitz’s bib records for approvals they send. This would get information into Acorn faster, so that patrons would know the books are available. Currently, books are aged for a set length of time while waiting for better cataloging copy to become available. Using these records puts something in Acorn for these books while they are being aged. They would be overwritten with better cataloging later. We decided to try this new procedure.

Budget Update:

The current information is that we will not know anything definite before the end of March.

Connexion Update:

Zora had some information from ALA about plans for Connexion. CatMe will continue to be available for at least 2 years. The Connexion windows client is due in May or June, but it will not have NACO capabilities. The NACO feature will be in a release in Sept. Roberta will ask Jody about the timing of an installation of Connexion in Oct. or Nov.—will this provide enough time to get up and running before Passport is phased out? Should we consider an interim migration to CatMe first?

Other ALA info:

Mary Charles learned at ALA that OCLC has not been adding tapeloads of original cataloging from many of the larger libraries for 3-4 years. This impacts all users of the shared OCLC bibliographic database. Roberta will discuss this with Flo. (Follow up: Paul Gherman will ask about this at OCLC Members Council when he attends next week)