Technical Services: December 2011 Archives
I'm delighted that the recordings from the Ohio "Cataloging Efficiencies that Make a Difference" member event are now available on the OCLC website! This event took place on 21 October at OCLC's very own headquarters. OCLC Vice President Bruce Crocco joined me at the podium to welcome our participants, and then Ted Fons, Executive Director for WorldCat Global Metadata Network, described in some detail how WorldCat is helping libraries work at "webscale." David Whitehair updated us on tech services trends and good practices with emphasis on how the OCLC cataloging subscription can facilitate workflow efficiencies.
The highlight of this day was
our exceptional panel of member librarians:
- Susan Banoun, Head of the Electronic Resources Department at the
University of Cincinnati, described the challenge of acquiring, describing and
maintaining access to the 1.2 million records with URLs in the UC catalog (35%
of their catalog records). Records originate from vendors; from WorldCat
through Collection Sets or through the WorldCat Cataloging Partners program; or
via item-by-item cataloging from WorldCat. Her team manipulates records in
large batches using specially-created loaders, MarcEdit, and other programming
tools like SED and Python. Susan describes her approach as, "minimal edits to
ensure access!"
- Morag Boyd, Head of Special Collections Cataloging at The Ohio
State University Libraries, introduced one of several catch phrases of the day:
referring to the eight special collections under her purview, Morag says, "you're
all special, but you're special in the same way.". Partly in response to a
dramatic reduction in staffing a couple of years ago, Morag has been
introducing workflow tools to standardize how special collections are processed
through her team, like a checklist for adding commonly-requested notes to
records. She aims to bring "the right expertise at the right time" to unique
and special materials: both within the OSU libraries, and more widely, by
collaborating with other libraries in OhioLINK.
- Pam Matthews, Acquisitions Manager at Cuyahoga County Public Library, lead us through an impressive tale of increased productivity and cost efficiency, in the context of declining budgets, reduced staffing and a stringent union environment. Her advice? Work with your vendors to get maximum value for your library: press them to offer you their very best discounts, and then scrutinize invoices to make sure they are applying your negotiated terms. Ask for more helpful labeling of boxes, e.g., color-coding, or prefixing order numbers and invoice numbers so you know the format and can route the items directly to the right person or team for processing into the collection. Finally, Pam ascribes some of her dramatic success to luck: though reduced in number, her staff have skills that enable them to work smarter.
Group discussions focused on how
to do more with less: how to streamline workflows, re-deploy staff, and
cross-train both within tech services, and with other functional areas of the
library, to cover more bases, expand our opportunities and promote our
visibility in the library. The challenges we face are serious: a consensus
began emerging that library work is changing and we, as library staff and
supporters, need to change with it.
We were honored to welcome Beverly
Cain, Ohio's State Librarian, whose closing remarks really articulated how
the library landscape has been changing; and how libraries in Ohio are
responding. She focused on collaboration as a key to library sustainability in
the future - with other libraries, and with other partners such as community centers.
She sees shared library systems and consortia as a growing trend; combined with
evolving technologies and user expectations, the future looks bright for Ohio's
libraries.
Diane Baden, Head of Monographic Services at Boston College's O'Neill Library,spoke recently at the "Cataloging Efficiencies that Make a Difference" event at Harvard University's Gutman Library. Her presentation titled, Piloting E-Books Why, How, Who, and other Questions, hinted that her presentation would leave participants with more questions than answers. Diane covered the O'Neil Library's pilot e-book project that was strategically funded to study the effects of incorporating e-books into their collection. What they eventually tested during the pilot included purchasing individual titles through GOBI and packages with some major publishers, using trials to assess e-books, using patron-driven acquisition (PDA) through ebrary, and digital-driven acquisition (DDA) through YBP. As the pilot progressed, they learned that this is a market in the state of flux, and libraries and vendors are learning from each other as the market develops. And, libraries owe it to vendors to offer guidance on good practices for this developing market.
At the end of the pilot, several issues hadn't been resolved including a collection development policy, budget allocations, and digital rights management. In the next year assessment will be a key goal for the task force. At this point, it's not clear who's using their e-book collections and why and, like with serials packages, whether a package is a good value versus one-off purchasing.
As for cataloging staff, the long-term implications of purchasing fewer materials could bode well for them, allowing them time to perform functions that have been neglected in the past. At the same time, new job functions may require continuing education/training.
