Day: July 20, 2011

Priority 2a: Maximize patron access to newly received monographs by cataloging as much of this material as possible

A Catalog Department priority will be to move the same number of materials out of the final phase of our new cataloging workflow, as enter the first phase. In this process, we will try to minimize the number of items that receive Level 3 cataloging (i.e., In process call#s)

There also have been cases where new materials have not been cataloged because old Gladis procedures were not updated for Millennium (e.g., analytics, accompanying materials, dissertation photocopies, etc).  We have identified all categories of materials with this problem and have made great progress in drafting, vetting and approving new procedures.   

The Catalog Department has categorized and made an attempt to quantify the different types of record maintenance requests we receive.  For example, book and record do not match, mistake in a record that compromises retrieval (e.g., in an authors name), incorrect treatment (book cataloged as a monograph that should have been part of a MVM set), reclassification needed.  We are in the process of developing a plan to distribute this work throughout the Department.  This will require the development of a new “ticket” tracking system (e.g. based on Footprints).  A Task Force has been charged to design and implement this new system.  Its members include people who submit tickets to ensure that we develop features such as a user-friendly form to report errors and the ability to allow library staff to see the tickets they have submitted.  

Over the past several weeks, I have been blogging about the Catalog Department’s new priorities. We started work on our third priority, “Find Creative Methods to Address our Large Backlog,” by categorizing and counting the backlog.

As part of this process, we discovered that well over 2,000 dissertations & thesis were waiting for cataloging. LSO programmers volunteered to catalog a small number of these every day, starting with the dissertations. Catalog Dept. staff have now trained the Systems programmers on the finer points of dissertation cataloging and they have begun work on this backlog.

I haven’t tried to estimate when this project will be completed, but the end of the calendar year would be a safe bet. This collaboration between LSO & the Catalog Dept. not only has clear benefits to our library patrons, but will sharpen the bibliographic skills of a number of our programmers. It also will be a useful experience when we start receiving electronic dissertations, as we will investigate automating the cataloging process using metadata from Proquest.

A special thanks to all the people involved in this project.   …Bernie