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Cataloging Department Annual Report 1998-1999

Introduction

1998-1999 continued many of the trends first reported in this forum last year, including continued growth in processing volume, differentiation between simple Library of Congress (DLC) "copy one" cataloging done in Acquisitions and all other in Cataloging, a shift in supervision over to SPAs, and increased activity on the electronic resources and database development fronts. 1998 also saw the beginning of rare book cataloging following the general rules outlined in Descriptive Cataloging for Rare Books (DCRB) and the first of several large government document integration projects.

Cataloging productivity, split since early 1998 between Cataloging and Acquisitions, continued at a high level, with the total number of titles cataloged fairly consistent over the three years which have passed since tuition increases enabled current levels of monograph ordering. While the title count has remained stable, the volume count has not, rising by over 20% in the last year. This was accomplished with a reduced staff, as two full-time and two time-limited positions were lost in the Department, including one EPA slot which became the Integrated Library System Librarian in Systems.

Since Acquisitions began handling routine DLC copy cataloging early last year, about 40% of the titles and 17% of volumes have been completed within that unit and passed directly on to Preservation for labeling. With the loss of the individual who did virtually all of this work for 18 months, Cataloging has again been involved with training staff in Acquisitions to maintain the momentum built up for this process. We have also been working with the Acquisitions staff who will be creating holdings and checking incoming federal documents against U.S. G.P.O. records in DRA.

On the management front, the plan to mentor SPA "Section Assistants" into full supervisory positions in 1999-2000, was at least partially successful, with much of the day-to-day supervision being handled throughout the year by 63s. While only one of the Assistants will become a permanent SPA supervisor this year, this is at least partially due to the need to combine the Serials and Electronic Resources Sections into a single unit to maintain supervisory workloads close to the University average. The other three remaining sections are Monographs, Serials and Electronic Resources, and Database Management.

One of the more unique projects carried out within Cataloging this year has been the NCSU Authors' Database. It represents a logical progression within the department from building and maintaining national standard MARC databases to building large local citation databases using a cataloger's knowledge of the structure of bibliographic data. This has been a learning experience for those directly involved and has led to our involvement with similar projects in Design and Veterinary Medicine. Our experience with Web-mounted files has also helped us to build a public Web site to bring the Authors' Database out of the Libraries and into direct public service.

Cataloging expertise has also gone into the planning of several other initiatives within the Libraries, including the handling of electronic journals and new e-text reading devices (Rocket e-books and SoftBooks), reorganization of the Microforms Room, shaping the new version of the DRA Web-based catalog, metatagging of the Libraries' Web site, organizing and indexing the Design Library slides collection, and the expansion of services within the African-American Cultural Center Reading Room.

This coming year is likely to see continued outreach from Catalogers into other Library projects while continuing to handle the increased workload of federal and NC documents, electronic journals, analytics projects, and slide and imaging projects. I have no doubt but that we will rise to the occasion.

Major accomplishments for 1998-1999

Classified 2277 microfilm serials to bring them in line with physical arrangement of the PSC and stack holdings of that title

In what turned out to be a much larger project than originally anticipated, Cataloging assigned LC call numbers to all microfilm serials housed in the Microforms Room. At the same time, we moved holdings for these titles from separate format records over to the records describing the print version held in the current periodical display and or stacks. Once labeling and shifting of these reels is completed, it is expected that these materials will finally become self-service after many years of staff mediation within the collection.

NC Document monographs classified into LC stacks

After many years of maintaining a separate NC document area in the stacks, this collection was largely integrated into the LC collection in the latter part of the year. A deselection project in Collection Management identified agencies whose titles should be allowed to lapse after their mandatory five years of public accessibility expired. Deselected titles will be moved to an area within the federal documents collection until their expiration date.

Began cataloging rare books according to rules for Descriptive cataloging of rare books

Jennifer O'Brien received her initiation into the world of rare book cataloging in July, when she attended the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. Upon return, she worked with Linda McCormick in rewriting local policies and procedures for cataloging these materials. Jennifer, Anne Navarro and Sheila Devaney began applying DCRB rules to rare books destined for Special Collections by late summer.

Joined CORC

Late in the year, the department joined OCLC's CORC Project to contribute both MARC records and metadata describing largely University electronic resources to a newly created national database.

Department's Web site accessible through Libraries' home page

The Department's Web site was significantly altered over the year to conform to the look and feel of the larger Libraries' Web site. This included adding the standardized headers and footers to our pages, an activity that enabled us to go back and edit outdated text at the same time. In the fall, we were finally moved to the official Libraries' Web server, enabling us to share our policies, procedures and tools with the world.

Veterinary Medical Library inventoried

The first inventory to be undertaken for a branch library in a number of years was completed in a matter of a few weeks, using Database Management and temp service staff. The inventory of the 50,000 volumes in the Veterinary Medicine Library took approximately 230 hours of temporary staff time and 120 hours of Cataloging staff time with follow-up work within the Department consuming a further 120 hours. Total costs for this project came to about $7250.

NC Authors Database goes public, adds patents, stats

The culmination of three years of effort came when a static Web version of the NCSU Authors Database, with separate listings by author name, department, and journal title, was demonstrated at the Technologies Expo in September. By late fall, the site had moved to its permanent home at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/NCSUPubs/. Over the course of the year patents, with links to full text from the IBM Patent site, were added as were statistic pages comparing the number of citations per department and per journal for each year.

Design slides project enlarged to include current Design Library slides collection

For demonstration purposes, a database using a small sample of Web-accessible slides from the School of Design was created in Cataloging using MSAccess and mounted on the Web by DLI and Systems staff using Cold Fusion. While this project was being carried forth it became increasingly clear to the Heads of DLI and Cataloging that access to the present Design Library slides collection was below an acceptable library standard. With only on-site access through printed set guides or a card catalog, and even this limited to agent (architect, artist, designer) or broad subject, the two departments worked together to create an automated finding aid based on accession lists created over a number of years at the Design Library. Cataloging set up a database structure and worked with DLI in a project to use temporary data entry staff to enter the accession data. Clean-up work is scheduled to be a special project for one of the Library Fellows working with the Head of Cataloging in the coming year, and should serve as the basis for a keyword searching tool able to identify individual slides from within the collection of over 60,000.

Goals for 1999-2000

1. Re-examine the NC State library community's use of the Catalog and how we attempt to communicate bibliographic information from information provider to information consumer. Weigh alternatives to the single-source catalog for provision of specialized information which may not be well suited to the USMARC format and ILS search strategies. Aid other departments' efforts to provide better access to data by the most appropriate methods available.
2. Maintain currency in processing turnaround (less than a month in the Department) for any newly-received items (excluding recon and other special projects).
3. Work current federal document receipts into the Departmental processing routine with as little disruption to present operations as possible.
4. Complete the application of smart barcodes to the post-1968 holdings of federal documents, adding the remaining volumes and copies to these records. By year-end this project should be two-thirds of the way towards completion.
5. Continue to expand departmental expertise in use of non-MARC database applications by overcoming the remaining hurdles to presentation of live data to remote users through the Web. This will prove mandatory for providing access to the slide collection in the Design Library and will be of immeasurable value in presenting the NCSU Publications Database data to the public.
6. Provide a better level of access to the Design slides collection through co-development of tools with DLI and the Design Library.
7. Working with Acquisitions and Collections, provide access to monographic serial titles identified by Collection Managers as worthy of analyzing. Continue to work towards analyzing all monographic series volumes with distinct titles and content.
8. Provide effective support for the assumption of supervisory activities by SPAs. Include SPA supervisors in the weekly EPA planning meetings. For the next vacated 63 level position within Cataloging, mandate supervisory responsibilities as the key element in re-advertising the position.
9. Participate in the OCLC CORC Project at the .5 FTE level.
10. Implement the Taos Cataloging Client. Participate in the anticipated Taos Early Experience Program.
11. Integrate the shared Computer Consultant position into departmental workflow without either straining relations with Acquisitions and Preservation or burning out the appointee!

Personnel changes in the Cataloging Department 1998-1999

List of Cataloging Department employees as of 1 July 1999

Appendix A: Summary of Cataloging processing activity by library and/or collection 1998-99

Appendix B: Year-end processing totals by library/collection