Appendix to Minutes of Meeting:
Round Robin of Issues of Importance (major events/developments/concerns) to Local Institutions These reports were distributed over the Big Heads electronic discussion list in the weeks prior to the San Diego Midwinter Meeting in January 2004.
For the minutes of the Big Heads meeting at San Diego, click on http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~ulcjh/bhmin012004.html NOT YET AVAILABLE.
This compilation was prepared by Judith Hopkins, University at Buffalo
SOME OF THE FOLLOWING LIBRARIES DID *NOT* ISSUE A ROUND ROBIN REPORT.
Columbia University
Cornell University
Duke University
Harvard University
Indiana University
Library of Congress
National Agricultural Library
National Library of Medicine
New York Public Library
New York University
Ohio State University
Pennsylvania State University
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of California at Berkeley
University of California at Los Angeles
University of Chicago
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
University of Pennsylvania
University of Texas at Austin
University of Virginia
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Yale University
Budget.
During fiscal year 2003-2004, the library was asked to give back
2.4 million dollars in permanent funds to the campus (approximately 35
positions including 8 from Technical Services). Those savings were
achieved by a hiring freeze and voluntary resignations. We are also
expecting a mid-year budget cut during the current fiscal year. In
addition, the Library has been asked to give back an additional 2.2 million
dollars (approximately 30 more positions including a 25% reduction in
student employment) in the coming fiscal year, 2004-2005.
Electronic resources workflow.
Carole McEwan, our electronic resources
cataloger, has been working with the many library staff who select,
acquire, pay for and catalog electronic resources to regularize and
streamline our processes.
Approval plans.
With the demise of the Academic Book Center, which
supplied our domestic science books, we have consolidated our domestic
approval plans with Yankee Book Peddler, the vendor that also supplies our
domestic arts, humanities and social sciences materials.
Germanic brief cataloging.
We have been experimenting with brief
cataloging for our current Germanic materials. The Germanic cataloger and
the Germanic book selector have worked together to prioritize our Germanic
backlog into 1). high priority books that need full cataloging, and 2).
lower priority materials that can receive brief cataloging, at least in the
short term. The brief records were cataloged on OCLC, following a
University of California standard, with nearly full description, an LC call
number (but no subject headings), and a code that allows us to later
retrieve those records. After about 7 months, we are researching over
3,000 of the brief records on OCLC to determine if other libraries have
added subject headings to our records. We will then add those subject
headings to the brief records in our local catalog and export them again as
full records to RLIN and MELVYL, the University of California union
catalog. Because the books have been classified, they are already on the
shelf and will not have to be rehandled. A public services/technical
services committee is currently discussing extending this experiment in
some form to other materials in Western European foreign languages, Slavic
languages, and Arabic.
UCLA report for ALA Heads of Technical Services
Midwinter
Report
Cindy Shelton
The Library has focused the last 6 months on implementing budget cutting plans
and planning for data migration and implementation of a new LIS
system.
New University
Librarian
Gary E. Strong, formerly Director of the Queens Borough Public
Library, took over the helm at UCLA on September 2. He has immersed himself
in budget planning, capital program planning and fund raising, and outreach
to the deans and provosts.
Budget Cuts
2003-04
The UCLA Library eliminated 25.5 staff positions (around 8 percent)
in order to meet a 7 percent budget cut. We did this through
attrition and avoided layoffs. We planned for these cuts by centralizing and
consolidating services in the various libraries. These consolidations included
centralizing cataloging into a single department serving all libraries, and
merging seven separate acquisitions units into five. Implementation of these
consolidations has involved vast workflow and space planning. We started
implementation of these changes on July 15.
The Library is planning for a minimum 5 percent cut for 2004/05.
Voyager: UCLA's
new system.
UCLA is happily and busily immersed in planning for migration to
Endeavor's Voyager. We will implement the new system in summer 2004.
Shared
Collections and Acquisitions:
UC launced a pilot to test some of the policies and goals for
building a shared print collection. The pilot is using around 1000 journal
titles from Elsevier and AMC. UCLA is
handling the acquisition of the materials that are being processed and housed
in one of UC’s two shared storage facilities. An assessment report of the pilot
to determine the cost effectiveness, feasibility, and scalability is due in March.
After
more than twenty years of successfully guiding the programs and activities of
the Libraries at the
At the present rate of collection growth all of the shelving
in Library buildings on campus (including the storage
facility) will be filled by the end of 2007 and we will be “functionally full”
well before that date. So far the
burgeoning of online information has not slowed appreciably the growth of our
print holdings—in the past five years the collections have grown by an average
of 146,000 volumes per year, some 115,000 annually in Regenstein. The
The
Library has taken several steps in planning to accommodate future growth,
including: a capital budget request for a cost & feasibility study for
on-site and off-site shelving (request approved, and study underway) and the
appointment of an ad hoc faculty advisory committee on shelving options. The
Committee’s recommendations will be critical in the continuing process of
deliberation and decision-making.
Also,
a committee was charged with proposing the design for a weeding project in the
Regenstein stacks, focusing on duplicate monographic and journal holdings that
can be de-accessioned. The Committee completed its work and the project is now
being tested in pilot mode. The Report can be found at http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/staffweb/groups/weeding/
Budget
and staffing
Preliminary
data predict a tight budget for the next fiscal year—0% increase for operating,
2% increase for compensation, and 6% increase for acquisitions. A decrease of
4% in endowment payout coupled with the falling value of the $ add to the
gloomy picture. In light of this year’s and of next year’s budget, all
vacancies are under scrutiny and only selective vacancies are to be filled.
Strategic
planning process continues
Current
Situation Analysis: Summary of Findings is a product of ten weeks of
thoughtful study, discussion, and research on the part of the Strategic
Planning Group into the internal environment of the
During
December 2003 the planning engaged in a brainstorming technique known as SWOT
Analysis. SWOT identifies the Strengths and Weaknesses of the organization and
articulates the Opportunities enjoyed by and the Threats faced by the
organization. The SWOT brings the discovery stage of the SPG's
work to a close and provides a foundation for the next stage - the articulation
of mission, vision, values and strategic goals. Completion date for the next
stage is May 1.
Budget.
This year, we had an 8% increase in the materials budget, but a
2% reduction in the operating budget. (The impact was slightly reduced
because we were allowed to carry three positions in Cataloging and
Systems on a temporary basis through FY05.) We are anticipating a 2%
increase in operating budget for next year (effectively, a slight
decrease, since we will have to cover salary increases) and another 8%
increase for materials.
Voyager Implementation.
We 'completed' Voyager implementation in July
(in the sense that all modules are up and running) just 1 month before
the August blackout wiped out access to all of our NOTIS data! Now,
we're gradually refining procedures, developing new reports, and
restoring various batch processes and uploads. We expect to resume
uploading to RLIN and OCLC very soon.
Embedded Order Data, Shelf-Ready Books.
With Voyager out of the way (so
to speak) we have begun to load records with embedded order data from
Blackwell's Collection Manager, and will institute a shelf-ready books
pilot for firm orders in the spring. We hope to quickly expand the pilot
to include approvals and books from other vendors.
E-Journals.
We have begun canceling print subscriptions for many
journals in the sciences and social sciences, and will rely on e-only
access for most titles in certain large packages. We have also expanded
our profile with SerialsSolutions to include records from sources other
than CONSER, in order to provide more comprehensive access through the
online catalog and web listings.
Union Theological Seminary.
As mentioned in the summer report, we are
preparing for the integration of the UTS library into the Columbia
University Libraries system in July 2004. Records from the UTS catalog
will be migrated into the Libraries' Voyager catalog, and technical
services operations will be assumed by the Libraries' central technical
services units. Collections and public services will remain in their
current location at UTS.
Spaces.
We continue to move about 50,000 volumes per month to the
shared offsite storage facility at RECAP. At present, most of these are
coming from our two near-campus storage sites; one of these was emptied
in September, and the other is to be vacated by July. With the
termination of Columbia's management contract for the Biosphere2 Center,
the library in Arizona closed and collections have been moved back to
campus. At almost the same time, we opened our newest satellite library,
at the Dakhla archaeological dig in Egypt. We have also begun to
prepare for the opening of a new Social Work library in August 2004.
Bob Wolven
Director of Bibliographic Control and Systems
Columbia University
Cornell University
Library
January 2004
ALA Midwinter
Round Robin
ITSO CUL (the integrated tool for selection and
ordering at CUL)
Early in 2003, the library’s decision to move away from the LC Alerts service created an opportunity to reengineer firm ordering. Designed and implemented by technical services librarians, with support from students in a graduate computer science class and strong cooperative relationships with collection development and library IT, “ITSO CUL” was born.
ITSO CUL serves review records to selectors in a web-based interface. As selectors make their choices, the tool captures MARC cataloging and other data for the library’s ILS. With ITSO CUL, a large percentage of monographic firm orders can be ordered with minimal human intervention.
Beginning on January 5, 2004, the library will be serving review records from the weekly output of the Library of Congress (about 3,000 unique titles each week). In early spring, we have agreements to incorporate bibliographic records from our major US and European vendors into ITSO CUL. Most of our major vendors have proprietary web-based selection tools already built. The ITSO CUL takes automated selection and ordering a step further by using a single interface to serve review records to selectors for all of our vendors. We anticipate staff savings in several areas:
Expanded and improved e-journal title list
Cornell University Library has completely redesigned its procedures for alerting users to the library’s e-journal holdings. Beginning late this summer, the OPAC and a separate searchable list of e-journal titles offer comprehensive discovery and connection to the library’s e-journals—over 22,000 titles. In addition, regular maintenance of the e-journal catalog records and title list provide more current and accurate holdings coverage information than has been possible in the past.
The new maintenance routines are the result of recommendations made by the CUL E-Journal Maintenance Task Force earlier this year (http://www.library.cornell.edu/staffweb/EJMTFFinal.doc). These processes include the use of vendor-supplied metadata to generate separate brief MARC records (also called “sleek” records) for some of the titles. The machine-generation and loading of records requires an up-front investment by librarians and programmers, but over time this strategy greatly simplifies and lowers the costs of e-journal access and maintenance.
Sharing of CUL publication patterns
After three years of creating Voyager serial pattern templates from scratch, CUL has publication pattern data covering nearly all of the library’s serial titles. Because having access to this ready set of pattern templates can save significant time and staff resources, other Voyager libraries have requested the use of our pattern templates, which follow the guidelines established by the Library of Congress. To date, six institutions have utilized our templates.
Backlog reduction and class-on-receipt implementation
The library’s decades-long battle with its cataloging backlog is ending. From the beginning of fiscal year 1997/98 to 2003/04, library staff reduced the backlog by 70% (97,025 to 29,034 items). In the same time frame, receipts have continued at a steady rate of about 8,000 titles per month. Shortly after the introduction of classification on receipt a year ago, we stopped adding any new receipts to the backlog, so the rate of backlog reduction has now accelerated. Forecasts suggest the backlog could be gone by the end of December 2004.
Tech services participation in ENCompass implementation
Duke University Library
Round Robin Report, December
2003
At Duke, the
Collections Services Division encompasses “everything from the selection of
materials through their preservation,” or five departments: Collection Development, International and
Area Studies, Acquisitions, Cataloging, and Preservation. This report contains selective highlights
from Collections Services at Duke.
Highlights from Collection
Development
Gift
Processing: The implementation of the Gift eXpress (GX)
processing has made a significant difference in reducing the gift backlog and
in making many more materials accessible to our users. Over 6,000 books have been processed since
April 2003. Collection Development,
Acquisitions, & Cataloging developed a new workflow to facilitate the
cataloging of the current backlog of gifts with imprint dates older than the
previous three years. The processing of
current imprint gifts (materials published the current calendar year and in the
past three years) will continue to be processed through the normal workflow,
but with the added step of having records entered into INNOPAC by Acquisitions
staff. The new workflow will make gifts that
are being added to the collection more accessible to our patrons, will begin to
address the limited space available for unprocessed gifts, and should boost the
morale of all staff involved in the gift process from the time of receipt until
they are accessible. A Collection
Development staff member identifies cataloging records and adds holdings to DRA
(holdings indicated in OCLC). Each title is assigned an accession number with
the first being GX1. Dewey Decimal classifications are not assigned nor are
additional subject headings added to the records. These materials are being housed in the
Booksale: We had a very successful booksale of gifts and duplicates.
Approval
Profile Review: Acquisitions and Collection Development
have coordinated a project to document all of our approval arrangements. We provided a template for appropriate
subject librarians to complete and have almost finished the process of editing
and revising them to cover all pertinent issues before sending them to the
vendors to sign that they are in agreement with the terms outlined. Final
versions of the profiles will be posted on the Collection Development web page
and will be updated as needed. We resolved to undertake this project after
experiencing a fiscal year when many of the plans were over budget. We would also like to reduce returns and
duplication with firm orders.
Budget
Management: Staff in Acquisitions Accounting and
Collection Development are making more efficient use
of R/3, the University's accounting system, in monitoring the collections funds
in conjunction with the budget data from INNOPAC.
Highlights from International and Area
Studies
Gift eXpress has had a huge impact: hundreds of Chinese, Japanese and Cyrillic
books have been processed and are now available to patrons.
Continued progress on recon,
especially Slavic and Chinese and Japanese.
We added holdings records for all CJK journals.
Pinyin conversion done and all records reviewed/cleaned up.
Funding: Worked closely with campus area studies
centers to secure U. S. Department of Education Title VI grants and associated
library funding (
New approval plans for
Highlights from Acquisitions
ExLibris
training and table configuration: We plan to “go live” with ExLibris in
July 2004. The Department is actively
involved in configuring tables for the implementation, our decision to close
the fiscal year a month early to accommodate this transition, and the initial training
that has occurred with unit managers and the appointment of our department
trainers.
Serials Review: The Library conducted an extensive
serials and database review this past summer and selected titles accounting for
$300,000 of our budget for cancellation. This was a library-wide effort that
involved faculty and staff. All vendors have been notified and we anticipate
these savings to be reflected in our 2004 subscription invoices.
Monographic Series Review: The department is making plans to conduct
a review of our standing order monographic series to determine their need for
continuance relative to our teaching and research needs. It has been many years
since such a review has taken place and we anticipate that it will take a good
year for us to review the series titles and determine their future status. It
had been hoped we could accomplish the whole process before the implementation
of ExLibris but that target is now stretching into
next fiscal year.
Electronic Resources and Consortial deals: Duke has evaluated several of these
consortial deals as all of our contracts were up for renewal. The Duke licenses involve not only the
Perkins Library System (main library and branches) but the libraries of the
professional schools (law, medicine, business) as well (which report to their
respective deans). A few licenses have
not been successfully renegotiated; others have been limited by cancellations
taking place on all of the campuses of the Triangle Research Libraries Network
(TRLN) members, and some are still under negotiation. These
renegotiations have given rise to rethinking the types of access we will
provide our users in light of new contracts and costs projected by publishers.
These negotiations have also underlined the importance of clear and frequent
communication among consortium members as early as possible in the
renegotiation process relative to sharing title level access decisions.
Highlights from Cataloging
Duke
Investigates Dewey to LC Conversion: Duke completed an RFP process in March of
2003 and is now in the final throes of a decision to convert its on-site Dewey
classified collection to LC.
Barcoding
Project: The main library is
entering the final phase of a project to barcode and move at least
600,000 volumes to its off-site facility.
Facilitating this project is a concerted effort from more than 100
library staff who have volunteered to apply
vendor-supplied smart barcodes. The Cataloging Department has been working hard
to keep pace with this effort through the creation and barcoding
of item records that are necessary for the generation of barcode labels.
Authority Control: LTI processing is now routine, requiring
less than 8 hours of staff time per week devoted to authority-related
activities. When compared to some other
libraries, the Duke’s decision to spend an additional $8,000 a year for Level
II Authority Update Service saves 1 to 2 FTEs per year. Most recently, LTI expanded their validation
of series tracings to include the volume designator. Variations in volume designators have long
been a cause of tracings filing out of order, and now they are corrected
automatically. We were please to see the implementation of several suggestions
from Duke that included supplying general subject cross references in addition
to those that link to specific headings, and changing "Russian" to
"Soviet" in subject subdivisions for World War II. In April 2003, Duke became the host of the
newly formed LTI-Users listserv. If anyone is interested, our local LTI
documentation was revised in February and is now available on the web (http://staff.lib.duke.edu/orgnztn/techservices/authorities/lti.html)
PCC News:
Ana Cristan from the Library of Congress led a NACO refresher
workshop in December, with attendance from Monographic and Serials Cataloging
and the Law Library. Midyear statistics (Oct.-March) rank Duke 14th of 187 NACO
institutions in creation of name authority records, 15th in creation of series
authority records, and 23rd of 46 in BIBCO production.
End of LC year statistics: There are 46 BIBCO and 41 CONSER members, 20 of
these participate concurrently in both bibliographic programs. BIBCO members created 74,793 new bibliographic
records while CONSER members authenticated 22,342 and provided maintenance to
36,747 serial records. The average numbers per participating library are 399
new name authority records, 22 new series records, 122 modified ARs, 1625 BIBCO records. We are pleased that Duke’s NACO
statistics are well above average: 1845
new name authority records, 158 new series records, 381 modified ARs, 1004 BIBCO records.
Our statistics rank 19th in the program for new name authority records,
and 24th for BIBCO records.
Highlights from Preservation
Binding: Closed out the
2002/03 fiscal year by binding a record number of volumes (36,368 vols) through our commercial binding unit. This came
despite activities such as deferred binding, which placed some 9.000 softcover volumes in the stacks unbound.
Condition assessments: Completed
data gathering for three separate condition assessments: general collections
monographs, general collections serials, and special collections monographs.
Data are being analyzed and the condition assessment report written.
NCCU mold problems: Advised
North Carolina Central University (NCCU) on treatment for their mold problem
and strategies for cleaning the volumes before moving them to Duke's
Accompanying materials: Put
forward a task force report to address accompanying material, particularly
CD-ROMs.
Exchanges: Called
together a task force to examine the Perkins Library's exchange program.
Aspects to examine include cost to Duke, percent of titles that would be
retained if the exchange agreement was discontinued, and effect on acquisitions
budget.
Environmental monitoring: Expanded the Library's environmental
monitoring program with a pilot program installing internet-accessible dataloggers in branch libraries. The pilot site is the Vesic Library, which experienced a severe mold outbreak
last year.
Conservation project:
Began a conservation project to treat the Baroque literature portion of
the Harold Jantz Collection. This collection, in excess of 3,500 titles,
is rivaled only by the smaller and complementary Faber du
Faur collection at Yale. The project began with an item-level
condition assessment. From that we
determined which volumes had the highest priority and pulled them for review by
faculty and bid by three vendors.
Harvard University
Round Robin Report
1. During the last week of December, 2003
Harvard migrated to version 16 of the Aleph system (Ex Libris). Although we have been testing this version
for several months, the production of real life is just beginning. The OPAC and circulation systems made the
transition smoothly. The organization
has expended huge amounts of time and effort in adjusting to version 15.2 which
was implemented in July of 2002.
Harvard College Library
Technical Services, the largest tech services unit at Harvard has experienced a
dramatic increase in its cataloging backlog.
Because of design inefficiencies in the system, cataloging is off by
nearly half of its previous levels. Acquisitions,
receiving, and payment functions have experienced similar, serious
setbacks. We are working steadily at
developing macro applications to address these issues. To be fair, our previous system had been
finely crafted over nearly two decades with many highly developed productivity
features, so we are beginning a new era at a basic level. Also, some small units at Harvard have had
few productivity problems during this past year. We are all examining workflow on an ongoing
basis.
2. During this past year, we completed a report
entitled “Technical Services in the Harvard College Library – Issues and
Recommendations.” This was a multi-year
effort of focus groups with technical services staff across the College Library
culminating with recommendations. The
report outlines a set of seemingly obvious recommendations, but for us to
commit them to paper and implementation is progress. We held two open forums in the fall to review
the report. We have subsequently
organized a technical services managers group.
Their first charge has been to review and analyze the various
classification schemes in the College Library with a goal of weighing the
advantages and disadvantages of moving more completely to the Library of
Congress system. Our Collections Management
Council, which guided the work of this report, will oversee the implementation
and progress of the recommendations.
3. We continue to wrestle with issues
surrounding scholarly communication. A
provost’s committee is being developed to consider mechanisms to explore these
issues with faculty. We did take an
important step of rejecting a multi-year license agreement with Elsevier and
canceling approximately 100 little used titles.
The decision was driven in part by our financial situation, but also by
a desire to work towards a more fiscally sustainable environment for research
publications generally. This decision
has considerable short-term costs but will give us more flexibility and control
over our collections.
4. Also, as a cost containment measure, we are
in the process of identifying duplicate serial titles and planning their
cancellations. As part of this process
we are establishing a “Library of Record” sub-field and guidelines for documenting
responsibility for titles across Harvard.
This has implications for what we store in print at our depository
library and what might be retained in print at one of our campus libraries.
5.
As at other
institutions, we are facing a period where there is a serious gap between our
income and our expenditures. The income
from our endowment and from unrestricted sources does not match the increased costs
of collections, utilities, and staff salaries and fringe benefits. In an effort to reduce costs, we are in the
process of identifying areas where there is duplication of collections or
services. Our goal is to safeguard the
overall quality and to reduce in areas where we can build back when the
economic situation improves. This year
we have moved a number of technical services positions onto endowed acquisitions
funds where the terms would allow. But
there is a limit as to how much we can do and still maintain a balance. These are not easy times, but we look forward
to better conditions and improvements in our own efficiency in workflow and
systems.
In July 2003, Harriette Hemmasi, Associate Dean and Director of
Technical Services, was promoted to the newly created position of Executive
Associate Dean within the Indiana University Libraries. In August, Mechael Charbonneau (Head,
Cataloging Division) was named Director of Technical Services and Lynda
Fuller-Clendenning (Head, Acquisitions Division) was named Associate Director
of Technical Services. Both Mechael and
Lynda will also continue in their roles as division heads.
Linda Cantara, Metadata Librarian, has accepted a position at
With the merger of Academic Book Center (ABC) and Blackwell’s
Book Service (BBS) in early September, acquisitions staff in accounting,
ordering, and approvals have worked diligently over the past several months to
ensure a seamless migration.
Work continues to identify automated approaches in order to
reduce or eliminate manual acquisitions processes. A program is being developed that will enable
batchloading of MARC records and order information received from vendors into
our local system. A pilot project with
EBSCO is being conducted for submitting electronic data interchange (EDI) claim
transactions. In a joint project with
university IT personnel, acquisitions staff worked to add ordering and accounting
data elements to our local data warehouse (Datamart)
and to create a user-friendly search interface
Bibliographers are now provided with a new fund management tool that
allows them to produce their own specialized reports on demand. Although we have several small shelf ready
programs in place, our goal for 2004 is to expand shelf ready to a larger
range of materials, particularly in the area of approval plans.
A new batch loading technique was recently implemented. Using a macro, catalogers flag records within the local online catalog that are then extracted on a weekly basis and sent to OCLC for FTU (first time usage) updating.
Cataloging continues to provide a substantial amount of support to facilitate the selection, retrieval, preparation, and transfer of materials for off-site shelving in the new Ruth Lilly Auxiliary Library Facility (ALF). To date, a total of 263,127 items have been accessioned in the ALF collections vault.
Staff in the Western European Cataloging Section began
providing cataloging support to 13 libraries on the
In our continuing efforts to provide access to electronic
resources, we expanded our Serials Solutions (SS) services to include monthly
MARC record files. In September, a total
of 11,770 MARC records were loaded into our local online catalog. Our users now have access to approximately
77% of the 30,000+ electronic journals listed on our A to Z web page.
The metadata librarian continued to consult with units
(internal and external to the libraries) in preparation for future digital
projects as well as participating in many library initiatives. Examples include the development of a
MARC-to-Dublin Core crosswalk for OAI harvesting for
Catalogers participated in a special project that involved the
review of over 8,700 digitized vernacular photographic images within the I.U.
Digital Library Program’s Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection
(http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/index.jsp). In addition to proofreading and editing
descriptive metadata, the catalogers also identified and added eighty-four new
subject headings not included in the original project thesaurus.
Mechael D. Charbonneau
Director of Technical Services & Head, Cataloging Division
Indiana
Main Library, Rm. E-350
1320 East Tenth Street
Bloomington,
Phone: 812-855-5674
Fax:
812-855-7933
E-mail:
mgago@indiana.edu
NLM
ILS:
NLM has not yet installed Voyager's release 2001.2 since there
are a few outstanding issues with callslip. We hope that Endeavor will resolve
these soon and we can move it to production early in 2004.
ENCompass:
Work on the installation of the Index Catalogue of the
Surgeon General on ENCompass continues due to the large size of the Catalogue
and the magnitude of data formatting needed for display and retrieval Over
three million records have been loaded so far. We hope to be live early in
2004.
NLM published
the NLM
Classification 2003 in July 2003.
This edition reflects additions and changes for MeSH 2003 and its
publication put the online classification on an annual revision schedule. Internally, NLM completed enhancements to the
Windows-based editor for the NLM
Classification that supports annual validation against the changes in NLM’s
MeSH vocabulary. With this software in
place, NLM anticipates publication of the NLM
Classification 2004 sometime in the second quarter of this calendar year.
DOCLINE/SERHOLD
Version 2.0 of
DOCLINE, NLM’s automated ILL request and
routing system, features links from
DOCLINE and Loansome Doc via PubMed to free full text articles whenever the
article requested is available either in PubMedCentral or at the producers site. For more
information on DOCLINE 2.0, see Technical Notes NLM Tech Bull 2003 Sep-Oct;(334):el.
To support the first SERHOLD
to OCLC batch update, staff in the Cataloging Section updated approximately
3,500 serial bibliographic records to match NLM’s serial bibliographic records
with the corresponding serial records on OCLC.
Serial bibliographic records were edited both in NLM’s database and in
the OCLC database to assure that reciprocal links were present and accurate.
Wade-Giles to Pinyin Conversions Status
Conversion
of Chinese language Wade-Giles romanization to the pinyin schema has been
completed. Manual review and updating of
pre-AACR2 Chinese authority records is still in progress..
Regular
distribution of new cataloging records for Chinese materials romanized in
pinyin began on a weekly basis on
Progress on Developing XML for NLM Bibliographic Data in Voyager
NLM has finalized the XML DTD
for NLM bibliographic records and plans to make XML data available to licensees early
in 2004.
Personnel News
On
Christa
F.B. Hoffmann, Head, Cataloging Section, was awarded the Frank B. Rogers Award
for her leadership and vision in the reinvention of the production,
dissemination, and maintenance of the NLM
Classification at the NLM Board of Regents meeting on September 9,
2003. In addition, after twenty-three
years in the position at NLM, she has announced her retirement effective March
1.
TSD continues its effort to expand teleworking
opportunities for staff. Currently about nine percent of the staff are
teleworking one or more days a week.
BPA:
A competitive procurement for blanket purchase agreements for monographs and continuation services is nearing completion. Award announcements are expected by the end of December.
New NLM Web sites:
NIHSeniorHealth.gov (www.nihseniorhealth.gov), a new
talking web site with formats and topics tailored to the needs of older people
was launched on October 24. The senior friendly site takes advantage of
techniques developed by the National
Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to encourage older
people to use the Internet, and this site in particular, as a resource for the
best information on health and medical research.
The Library As Place: Symposium on Building and Revitalizing
Health Sciences Libraries in the Digital Age : This symposium, held at NLM on
The Web site includes links to Web sites and print citations relevant for planning, as well as links to recent health sciences libraries building projects (both new and renovated buildings). There are also links to resources for help and advice for those considering a building project or in the midst of one. A videocast of the Symposium and the slides from most speaker's presentations are available from the Agenda, Presentations, and Videocast portion of the site.
Round Robin Report
January 2004
The
book budget was permanently reduced by $1.5 million this fiscal year. An
emergency fundraising campaign has raised 2/3 of its $6 million goal that would
compensate for the funding loss. No
We
completed our initial push to transfer materials to the new storage facility in
early November, reaching our goal of transferring 1.8 million items in 22
months. Annual transfers will reduce to approximately 155,000 items per year.
Planning is underway to build a 4th module at the facility.
A
new main page for the web opac was designed and debuted in December. The search
and results screens will be redesigned in the future as new stylesheets are
created. Work is underway to install functionality that allows search and
display of records in Hebrew and CJK vernacular scripts.
In
the fall the Research Libraries completed specifications for the last of the
1.5 million smart barcodes and item records purchased from Backstage Library
Works ( formerly MARC Link). We’ll take receipt for
the final quantity of barcode labels early in 2004.
The Preservation Division completed a preservation microfilming project funded by NEH for its brittle books program. This project was the second devoted to the microfilming of Latin American collections in the General Research Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library that was supported by NEH. 5,808 monographs, periodical and pamphlet titles were filmed during the period July 2001-June 2003. A total of 13, 368 titles were filmed over four years. The microfilm master negatives and original texts will be stored at ReCAP, the remote storage facility to insure their longevity and safekeeping.
StatisticsThe Research Libraries are in the process of revamping gathering and reporting of statistics. In spring 2003, Technical Services defined new data categories for the gathering of cataloging statistics from units within and outside of the Cataloging Division. A similar process is underway for preservation and measuring collection growth, among other activities.
Administrative ChangesBill
Walker, who served as Director of the Research Libraries, left to become
Director of Libraries at the
NYU round robin report
I. Search for a new ILS. We are inching closer to a contract for a new ILS. We expect to bring up the new system Spring/Summer 2005.
II. Budget. Our non-faculty hiring freeze has melted to the extent that we can fill vacant positions as long as we reserve vacancy accruals.
III. Renovation of Bobst Library. A reconfiguration of Technical Services workspace will be the first step in an overall renovation of Bobst’s 11 floors. We will not be given any additional space (on the other hand, we have lost some positions over the past few years), but we will get a nice-sized TSD conference room, better-proportioned offices for supervisors, and improved HVAC. Once Tech Services is moved, the rest of B-Level will renovated for group and individual study space and a refurbished electronic resources center.
IV. Staffing. Dawn Lawson starts as our East Asian Studies Librarian on January 5th. This is one of three area studies positions with split selection and cataloging responsibilities.
V. Offsite storage. We are finishing up moving 66,000 volumes to our temporary offsite storage facility. Monographs were selected based on circulation activity reports from our ILS. For education, sciences and business we are using the criterion of no circulation within the past five years. For journals, we are first focusing on JSTOR titles. As part of our selection process, we also weeded over 20,000 duplicates of non-circulating titles. Most of these duplicates date from time when NYU had two campus libraries. The project is staffed by a library assistant supervisor and students—making it economical but a bit difficult to manage. We are also sending off barcoded, boxed, archival materials for which we indicate box-level holdings in our online catalog.
VI. Digital projects. The Cataloging Unit is working with our Digital Team and the University’s Center for Latin American Studies to catalog a collection of reformatted videos relating to Latin American performance art. The original videos belong to libraries that are part of a consortium of NYU and Latin American academic institutions.
VII. VI. Library Website. The library launched its new website at the end of the Summer. Reactions have been largely favorable, though users are not thrilled with our subject index to e-resources, mostly because at this point results are not sortable. Technical services staff added locally created subject headings to cataloging records for over 10,000 e-resources.
January 2004
ALA
Midwinter Round Robin
Preparation for renovation of Main Library
Progress continues on target at the rate of
over 100,000 volumes/year to transfer monographs, serials, and
microforms out of the Thompson Memorial (
In addition to keeping current with the cataloging of over 35,000 new receipts in western languages, non-roman languages, and non-book formats, Cataloging personnel have been very successful in conducting several special projects to meet renovation preparation goals. A retrospective conversion project targeting materials residing in the Main Library was initiated to facilitate transfer of items to the compact storage facility. By converting short records up front, the Cataloging Dept. has been able to reduce the number of books sent to the department at a later time, allowing a larger volume of material to be transferred more quickly. About 75% of the 23,500 brief records for Main Library materials have been converted.
A project to convert brief records for OSU theses and dissertations held system wide from cards pulled from the card catalog was undertaken a year ago; to date about a third of the 40,000 records have been completed.
Cataloging also
negotiated an on-site cataloging contract with OCLC TechPro
to eliminate backlogs of brittle Slavic and Hebrew materials prior to
renovation. (OSU already had a standard contract with TechPro
for cataloging of current receipts in these languages.)
Accounting
interface with University
The Libraries are now
transmitting our main approval plan vendors' electronic invoices from our
INNOPAC acquisitions system to the PeopleSoft system used by the University’s
Accounts Payable. The Libraries, the OSU Office of Information
Technology, and Accounts Payable have been working together for about a year to
develop the means for the Libraries to transmit processed invoices to Accounts
Payable for payment.
Due to loss of purchasing power from a relatively flat budget, cutbacks are being planned in both serials and monographs. A mid-year reprofiling of the primary domestic approval plan is in progress with the goal of slowing expenditures approx. 5% on that plan. Preparations also are underway for another major serials cancellation project necessitated by the flat budget and inflation.
We did receive some good news at the end of the year when the Libraries received a portion of the licensing and trademark money generated by the OSU football team’s 2003 national championship title. This money will be used to augment the materials budget.
Knowledge Bank
The Libraries received $400,000 in one-time funds from the University’s central administration to support the campus-wide Knowledge Bank initiative. These funds will be used over the next two years for personnel and equipment in the Libraries and other campus units to advance the project. Currently OSU is piloting the DSpace software developed at MIT as a platform for the Knowledge Bank institutional repository. The OhioLINK consortium also plans to develop a statewide Digital Resource Commons, and OSU personnel are assisting with the planning.
Migration to GOBI2
In-house workshops are being developed and all collection
managers, staff, and student assistants are being trained on GOBI2, the 2nd
generation front-end software to YBP's vendor database.
Access to "original"
OCLC Connexion implementation
Having participated in Connexion
field testing, we are now preparing for full-scale implementation.
In-house training on the software has been completed and OHIONET training on
cataloging using Connexion is planned for the end of
January 2004.
BIBCO
independence
Despite staffing shortages and increased workloads, OSU’s Technical Services gained independence in contributing PCC records to BIBCO. We are very pleased to have achieved this status and to be contributing to this important international cooperative cataloging program.
Staffing
The Libraries held about 28 positions vacant to accommodate budget reductions over the past two years. This fall, we carefully evaluated our staffing needs and decided to fill 6 positions, 2 of which are in Technical Services. We are searching for a Metadata Librarian to participate in the design and recommendation of metadata schema to facilitate the use of OSU collections. Initially, this Librarian will implement EAD in appropriate collections as well as concentrate on collections that will be part of our developing institutional repository. We are also recruiting for a Cataloging Coordinator to coordinate non-Roman language cataloging and other special projects. We are very pleased to be able to hire some new personnel again.
Debt Collection, Payroll Deduction :
In response to the University Comptroller's request that the Libraries institute a more robust system to collect on outstanding six figure debt, both an automated payroll deduction process (for faculty and staff) and a debt collection process, using a collection agency, have been implemented. These two programs augment the process already in place with the bursar to bill students. The payroll deduction process required individual sign-off, managed electronically, for each borrower. The collection agency Unique Management Systems, Inc. was chosen for their expertise in retrieving materials. We now have a method to collect from University employees, both staff and faculty, as well as non-affiliated community borrowers.
Desktop Delivery from Annex:
Penn State will begin using OCLC’s ILLIAD as the request and delivery tool for journal articles held at its two off-site shelving annexes. ILLIAD is already being used for materials from the University Park and campus library collections. Users can place requests, monitor the progress, and download documents from their personal ILLIAD accounts. ILL and Annex staff will cooperate in processing the requests.
EDI invoicing :
Penn State University Libraries maintains over 11,000 periodical subscriptions that are on a calendar year cycle with our major vendor. In order to process payment for these renewals in a timely fashion each fall, the Libraries opted to make renewal payments by processing invoices directly against renewal funds rather than posting against individual title level order records. As a result, title level reconciliation and problem resolution was a time-consuming process.
With the implementation of EDI invoicing, the Libraries will continue to be able to make timely renewal payments but our order records will now contain the title level payment information that we require. In addition to posting renewal payments to individual order records, the EDI invoice function also updates linked serials control records with the essential data required to process claims via EDI. This feature places the Libraries in a position to begin testing X12 subscription fulfillment claims in early 2004.
Our vendor’s renewal invoices will be downloaded from their FTP server. The invoice data files will be loaded into our Unicorn system via the EDI reports/processing capabilities that SIRSI’s version 2003 has provided. Earlier this year in anticipation of this feature, the Libraries and our vendor worked to ensure that all of our records were updated with the required EDI linking fields, i.e. Unicorn order id.
In order to implement the EDI functions, a cooperative testing environment was essential between SIRSI, our vendor, Penn State’s Digital Library Technologies, Fiscal and Data Services and the Serials Departments. Currently, we are waiting for our vendor to create the FTP files of our renewal invoices.
Serials Review Website:
Each spring our Selectors perform a “rolling review” of serials subscriptions. This may be in combination with a serials cancellation project based on the status of the collections budget. Tools provided to selectors have been a static web page list of current subscriptions, cancellation target amounts, if applicable, as well as information on e-journal implications. Selectors then provide ranked lists of cancellation decisions which are posted for all selectors to review. In addition, the Serials Department maintains Excel files of cancelled titles.
This year, we are moving from a static web page environment for serials review to a dynamic website utilizing Cold Fusion. Selectors will be able to review serials lists across the Libraries, rank/mark titles for potential cancellation, and post comments for view by all selectors. Technical and Access Services will be able to query the database for lists based on rankings, or cancellation status and post cancellation activities at the website, which will eliminate the need for the Excel lists. Summary of target titles and dollar status will be displayed dynamically via CF report and selectors will be able to post concerns about potential cancellations. We are also exploring ways to incorporate document delivery and other use data of interest to selectors.
Newspaper Finding Aid Project:
Patrons have been able to locate microfilm newspapers by chronological period or geographic coverage utilizing a website called Microfinder developed several years ago. Although a very useful resource, Microfinder is based on several hundred linked static web pages which have been difficult to keep current. We explored solutions such as a Cold Fusion application, but learned that what patrons really want to do is to have the ability to search for all newspapers by title, subject, chronological period and geographic coverage, regardless of the format. We found that we do not have a central source that can meet this need and have recommended that 1) our catalog be the central source, and get updated with relevant data from Microfinder, and 2) the Libraries develop a newspaper interface to search our catalog for newspapers only by title, geographic coverage, and chronological period. We are currently identifying and documenting required updates, and creating upload files using the cat key as our unique identifier to programmatically update. The final step of the project is to develop the newspaper interface.
New Uses for ERLIC2:
ERLIC2 is in its’ final stages of development; testing is complete, and the application is being used by the Serials Department as the central resource for all acquisitions, access and license information relating to e-resources at Penn State. All library faculty will have read access to this database, as well as faculty and staff in the Interlibrary Loan and E-Reserves departments.
Two new features have been added to the ERLIC website. Interlibrary Loan and Electronic Reserves permissions and restrictions relating to use of electronic resources at Penn State are now displayed on web pages, and made readily available to support these processes. In addition, the process of sending text files of our e-journal holdings to Ingenta and the British Library has been greatly streamlined. Text files are now downloaded from ERLIC with the click of a button and emailed to our vendors.
Personnel:
We are very pleased to announce a new Assistant Head of Access Services – Barbara Coopey. Barbara was on staff as our Interlibrary Loan Co-Team Coordinator.
SSN Project:
We are embarking on a University-wide project to replace the use of social security numbers as identifiers. This is a major undertaking as the Libraries will need to revise many paper forms and determine new ways of handling various online systems and databases. The Libraries has completed phase one of identifying all uses of the social security number. We will be awaiting instructions on how to proceed now that this information has been identified.
Bibliographic Loads:
We are continuing to rely heavily on the purchase of bibliographic cataloging records for major electronic resources purchases and microform sets. We have loaded records for:
Vendor Enhancements:
With the closure of Blackwell’s Academic Book Center and their BookBag product, Penn State implemented Blackwell’s Collection Manager in two months. As a result, all of our non-University Park sites (about 20 locations) are now placing their orders in Collection Manager. Within one day after order placement, the orders are exported to our Unicorn Workflows database. As they load, each order is automatically checked against funding and other criteria. Short bibliographic and order records are then established. Problems are kicked out to a report and resolved the same day.
Penn State has developed its system specifications for the implementation of GOBI 2 for the placement of University Park firm orders that are sent to YBP. The project is now in the hands of our developers and those of YBP to complete the implementation. Similar to the Collection Manager project, brief bibliographic and order records will be downloaded into our system the next day and a report will be generated for problematic orders. Using PrompCat, the books will arrive as full shelf-ready books and shortened bibliographic records will be overlaid with full-level records.
Circulation:
We are looking forward to welcoming a new Circulation
Services Director on
Space:
Our newly renovated art library opened in August to rave reviews. State of the art technology, good staff and study space, and beautiful appointments have made it the library of choice for study on campus. Construction of a fourth module at the ReCAP shared storage facility will begin in February. For the past year we have been transferring lesser-used material to ReCAP at the rate of more than 10,000 items per month. The main library (Firestone) will undergo a major facilities upgrade starting this summer that will focus on bringing the building up to current health and safety codes as well as modern security and risk management systems. This is anticipated to be a long and at times highly disruptive process that, among other things, will involve the installation of fire suppression systems (mainly sprinklers) in all staff office spaces and most of the book stacks. The impact upon current space for staff and collections is as yet undetermined.
Cataloging:
An experiment with Marcadia to expedite processing of backlogged receipts proved unsuccessful: returning too little acceptable copy to be cost effective. The post mortem showed that only half of the available acceptable copy was being retrieved because of profiling limitations. We have determined that employing students to do the copy searching and record overlaying is more cost-effective. We have successfully implemented a workflow that allows us to process approval books at time of receipt using full catalog records purchased from Casalini Libri. The result has eliminated both professional staff involvement in this stream and the duplicate handling of material. We are not planning to look for “better” copy later; we are accepting these purchased records, with minimal edits and authority work performed locally, as final.
Acquisitions:
A modest, although significant for
Electronic resources
and metadata:
We are testing the feasibility of loading records for titles in aggregator databases into our OPAC. We have a working model, crafted by our metadata librarian, which not only extracts the records from our SFX database and loads them into our OPAC as brief MARC records, but also sends the patron back to SFX to allow them to select among multiple instances of the same title. We are completing a search, from a strong pool, for an electronic resources cataloger.
Round Robin Report
January, 2004
Budget:
The collections budget for FY04 was the same as it was for FY03. However, the Library was asked to prepare for a 1% rescission. The $300,000 set aside for this rescission will come from collections dollars. It is unclear as of yet whether we will have to give back that money.
Electronic Resources:
We entered into a contract with TDnet to purchase their data repository. We will be adding data from Tdnet and other sources to populate our ejournal registry. This new eregistry will be rolled out sometime during the spring semester. We are also working on a link resolver and between both of these initiatives; we anticipate the access to our electronic resources to be greatly improved. We have been working with the Purchasing Department on our campus to simplify licensing and renewal procedures and Wendy Shelburne joined us as the Electronic Resources Librarian last January.
Personnel Changes:
Many personnel changes have occurred in the Technical
Services Division over the last year. As
was mentioned earlier, Wendy joined us and is based in Acquisitions. Barbara Henigman, who had been the Technical
Services Division Coordinator and head of Original Cataloging, will be moving
to the Law Library as the Head of Technical Services there. We have combined Original and Copy Cataloging
into Monographic Cataloging and have advertised internally for an interim
Senior Monographic Cataloger to work with the faculty and graduate assistants
in the Monographic Cataloging unit for 1 year.
Gail Hueting will be filling that role beginning
Workflow Changes:
We have begun the use of Promptcat for both firm and approval books. Since we’re a Dewey Library we still need to classify the books, but we are very excited at the efficiencies this will bring to us. We’re coupling this with the use of Blackwell’s Collection Manager for ordering. Selectors request books on Collection Manager, they’re reviewed in Acquisitions, and then released to Blackwell’s. This should make both the selection and ordering process much easier for the majority of our firm orders. We are moving to electronic selection slips from Harrassowitz.
We also began using Voyager Acquisitions this past July and have implemented EDI with Ebsco for our invoice renewals. The switch from III Acquisitions to Voyager Acquisitions has been challenging but ultimately using the same system for both Acquisitions and Cataloging will be much better.
We will be implementing Dewey 22 this spring.
Vendor Changes:
Last spring we wrote RFPs for both periodicals services and approval/firm order/standing order services. Ebsco and Blackwells Book Services were the successful vendors. We did a massive serials revend coupled with massive cancellations this fall and began reprofiling our approval plans this fall and winter. More RFPs are planned this spring for European monographs.
January 2004
Stanford Digital Repository (SDR)
The SDR is an amalgam of technology, content, talent, and process crossing all lines in SULAIR to build and populate a long-term storage environment for a variety of digital objects. In December, the first objects, scanned by the DL1 robot scanner, were ingested into the SDR; we expect by spring to have routine processes for loading selected categories of objects into this OAIS implementation. In the meantime, the DL1 is busily scanning books which do not have copyright complications; files are stored elsewhere and will be loading from the SDR queue.
Off-campus Shelving Facility (SAL3)
Construction of our high-density storage facility in
Business Systems
New Web Site
As of
Media Solutions http://mediasolutions.stanford.edu/ (a cost-center in SULAIR) developed the structure, designed the look & feel, selected tools for ongoing maintenance, and migrated the majority of patron-based pages. The Tech Services pages were not included in migration – using the tools such as Dreamweaver, we will rebuild our sites ourselves over the course of winter and spring quarters. Some of the more complicated patron sites (Chemistry Library for example) were too specialized for general migration, so regular staff will make the changes. Consider it a work in continual process.
Budget Reductions
For fiscal 2004, SULAIR managed a budget cut of 7.5%, approximately $2.8 million. Of the 25 positions cut (10 in T.S.), there were approximately 5 layoffs. The effective hit on the collections budget was about the same percentage. We are in process of planning for another 3-5% cut for fy 2005.