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Bibliographic Control Services Division This year, to reflect its status as a single unit, the former Acquisitions/Cataloguing Division was formally renamed the Bibliographic Control Services Division. New Initiative: The following article appeared in the MUN Gazette (December 10, 1998)
Personnel The division experienced unprecedented stability during the past year in regard to staffing. The only change that occurred was the assignment of Bill Tiffany, who had been working in the Division four days a week, to Bibliographic Control Services on a full-time basis. Carol Earle was on leave for an extended period due to eye surgery. An unsuccessful search for a replacement for former Division Head, Charley Pennell was conducted during the summer and two candidates were interviewed. It was decided to postpone further searching and Suzanne Ellison's appointment as interim head was extended to August 31, 1999. Current production Because of a sharp decrease in orders beginning in September, book orders from April to December were 12,745, compared to 13,940 at this point last year. Receipts from April to December totalled 16,682 as compared to 14,279 at this point last year. 29,207 monograph titles were catalogued in calendar 1998, almost identical to 1997 year's figure of 29,220. 2,036 non-book titles were catalogued. This is a significant decrease from 1997's figure of 2,586. This decrease is more than accounted for by a 60% drop in the number of map titles catalogued. Non-book items that showed marked increases are audio CD's (82%) and remote electronic resources (146%). 816 serials were catalogued, a slight drop from the 971 done in 1997. In September, a party was held to celebrate the elimination of the copy cataloguing backlog. Most newly received books are catalogued immediately. Books without adequate copy are held for a limited time period before a second search is done, but these constitute very small percentage of receipts. The routine for rush requests from patrons ('pink slips") was changed to permit in-process books to be immediately retrieved by Circulation staff and circulated to waiting patrons without being catalogued. More details are available at: http://www.mun.ca/library/cat/pinkslip.htm. Sources of Cataloguing Copy The capture of the best possible cataloguing copy at the lowest possible price in the most efficient way has been a long time concern of the Division. It affects the entire process from the original order to the final cataloguing as well as ongoing maintenance and retrospective projects. Sirsi's Smartport, which seemed to offer a free or cheaper, seamless source of cataloguing copy, has proven to be somewhat of a disappointment because of the slow response time and its limited search capabilities. Many staff members have gone back to using the more cumbersome and costly Passport software to search OCLC when free copy from other libraries cannot be found. The expenditures for AG Canada more than doubled in the period from June to August when the pricing structure was changed from a flat monthly fee to a per search charge. Even more alarmingly, the costs of OCLC also doubled when it became available, via Smartport, to all workstations equipped with the Unicorn GUI client. An investigation into the amount of usage of both of these utilities by technical service staff could not account for even half of the searches. In the new year, access to these utilities will be limited to staff who require it for technical service functions. The CD-ROM subscription to LaserQuest was cancelled at the end of the year due to financial pressures and the availability of copy from other sources. Retrospective conversion 8,865 titles were done in the systematic and "on-the-fly" recon in classes BP-BX, E, L, Reference and Government Documents. This is up from last year's figure of 6,500. The Division continues to assign the equivalent of two full time LAVII's to the project. In an attempt to speed the process, during quiet times at the desk, Lending Services and Periodicals are pulling shelf list cards for items not yet converted. Because of the drop in new orders, Bibliographic Control staff who usually do ordering are able to assist in searching and capturing copy for recon. The project was considerably hindered by the loss of two prime sources of copy, Melvyl (the California State Union Catalogue), and University of Virginia. An inexplicable Telnet communication problem caused the loss of Melvyl and a problem with Unicorn caused it to start rejecting records from Virginia. In addition, painfully slow response times resulted in the Z39.50 servers timing out. Staff members doing recon have been encouraged to concentrate their searching activities to the early morning hours and to search in batches. Government Documents integration In late December, the Government Documents Reference section reclassification was all but completed, with only two shelves remaining to be reviewed. Staff from Bibliographic Control, Periodicals, and Information Services were involved in the process of evaluation and weeding of the Government Documents Reference collection, the weeding and shifting of the Reference Collection, reclassification and relabelling. Thanks go especially to Jill Charlebois, Gail Green and Blanche Keating, in Bib Control; to Gary Tucker in Periodicals; and to Stephen Field, Aspi Balsara and the students in Information Services. Approximately 2,600 Gov Doc titles were reclassified and transferred to Reference or the Bookstacks. Staff Activities:
Elizabeth Browne: Pamela Cline-Howley Suzanne Ellison Carol Kennedy Marion Matthews Ralph Tapper Bill Tiffany Judy Winsor |
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http://www.mun.ca/library/cat/annrept98.htm Last revised: 21 February 1999 Revised by: Charley Pennell |
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