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Cataloging Department Annual Report 1999-2000

Introduction

Cataloging continued to explore new areas of responsibility this year, even while maintaining recent productivity gains in traditional monographic and serials cataloging. Handling of electronic resources seemed to cross a threshold in late 1999 when the promise of OCLC's CORC was more clearly realized after participants in this project, including Bao-Chu Chang, gathered in Dublin, Ohio. The year saw thousands of NetLibrary titles plus ejournals from several aggregators "teased out" for direct representation in the catalog, along with GIS data files representing several years' worth of collection activity by the GIS Librarian. The NCSU Authors Database became more widely recognized on campus as the Chancellor and faculty library representatives viewed demonstrations of this tool in various venues, and citations from several previously untapped reference databases were added. Work on the Design Library slide collection passed its own threshold with the creation of a new classification system for organizing this resource. Finally, the hiring of a Computing Consultant enabled us to look at delivery of database information in ways hidden to us in the past.

Departmental activities

For the fourth year in a row, productivity has been maintained at the elevated level established through the increase in material allocations of 1996/97. The Department has managed to continue to produce at this level, even after the expiration of two time-limited positions created to handle the increased load, by virtue of a highly stable and well-trained staff complement. Turnover in Cataloging has been a fraction of what many departments have had to deal with and this has enabled us to redeploy staff quickly as priorities and workflow have varied. There are indications already that the coming year may be different as we adjust to the key resignations of Janet Edgerton, Assistant Department Head and David Warren, two staff members who take with them considerable knowledge of historical policy and practice in this unit.

This marks the second year since Cataloging and Acquisitions began the "Exact Match" process for handling routine DLC monograph copy cataloging as part of the receipts process. Unlike last year, when many of the rules for handling these materials were set by an experienced former Cataloging staff member who moved to Acquisitions as a student worker, this year saw a considerable reduction in the percentage of current receipts handled entirely downstairs. With newly hired and trained students performing much of the work this year, the percentage of monograph titles bypassing the Cataloging Department was reduced from last years' 34% to only 14% in 1999/2000. While the present level may not satisfy our desire to get materials into the hands of users quite as quickly as before, it has been a trade-off in terms of time spent training students and performing post-cataloging clean-up work versus time saved through a reduction in transport of materials from one work area to another. If this process is to try to achieve past levels of production, some changes will have to be made this year, either to the diversion criteria for current monographs or the level of staff performing this work in Acquisitions. This is an area in which the Workflow Planning Group will be spending some time this fall.

The experiment begun two years ago, to promote SPA staff to positions of supervisory responsibility for the three sections in the department, was both a success and a failure. It was successful in demonstrating that there is much potential for this work in the present staff, but was a failure in that it also showed that there is little in the present University SPA structure to encourage staff to assume the additional responsibilities administration entails. Salaries are poor for the library SPA ranks and offer little inducement to match our high expectations for supervisors. At year end, the one SPA Section Head in Cataloging asked to return to her previous non-supervisory responsibilities. With the departure of the Monographs Section Head as well, this has left the Department struggling to head off a potential management vacuum.

The project to create holdings for federal documents has also proven to be a considerable challenge for the Department. It took much of the year for Systems to load the 350,000 records generated from our GPO profile with Marcive, due in large part to the integrated library system's penchant for indexing on the fly. The original file was divided into 40,000 record files for ease of handling, yet the first file took just a couple of days to load while the later ones took a month each. This left the Department with two half-time staff members who were available for other tasks for the first ten months of their contracts. They reclassified microform serials, assigned LC class numbers to state documents, helped Acquisitions get orders out, and worked on document current serial holdings. When the GPO load was complete the one remaining project staff member, began the tedious chore of barcoding monographs provided with smart barcodes by the vendor. Any number of problems arose, including works for which both serial and monograph records existed in the documents file, separately barcoded monographs which we had bound together, superseded titles which were being simultaneously weeded while we attempted to barcode them. Year end found us re-engineering this process to best meet the goals and timetable originally created by the Federal Documents Task Force.

The former "Faculty Publications" database project accomplished several milestones this year, including loading of the first citations from non-ISI databases. With help from Mary Ellen Spencer, experiments were carried out by Nancy Yu and Charley Pennell to look at the contents of both Web-accessible databases such as ERIC, Medline and the Wilson indexes, and several proprietary databases available through Dialog. While we had hoped that we would be able to increase our coverage of social science and humanities materials, we found that the most important tools in these areas either contained little not already captured, or they could not be searched by author affiliation, necessitating labor-intensive searches for known authors. In the end we added several new databases to the list of those yielding worthwhile results, including World Textiles, Agricola, Zoological Record Online, Sociological Abstracts, and Pollution Abstracts.

While the NCSU Authors Database presence on the Web has been static pages for the last sixteen months, Leon Lewis, Computing Consultant I for Acquisitions, Cataloging and Preservation, worked diligently for several months to make the current MSAccess database keyword searchable over the Web. This spring he demonstrated a working Web interface for performing Boolean keyword searches of the live database using Cold Fusion. After talking about such an interface for the past couple of years, it was wonderful to see a technological solution such as this achieved within our own department.

The year ahead promises to hold more challenges still for Cataloging, as we see several long-term projects, such as the NCSU Authors Database and Design Slides Project, coming to a head this year. This year will also be the first in which we have had to fill a professional vacancy since the arrival of the current Department Head in 1997. In addition, technological change is upon us, with the arrival of our first client-server cataloging tool in the new Taos Cataloging Client and the introduction of CORC as an alternative interface to the OCLC union catalog. As ever, we look forward to the changes with hope for an improvement in our service to the Libraries' clientele.

Major accomplishments for 1999-2000

Federal documents holdings project begun

The first federal document monographs were barcoded in February, with a single half-tme staff member performing most of the work. Since then, we have used some permanent and student staff to get this project off the ground. While awaiting the load of GPO records, staff have been involved with adding holdings to current document serial receipts and removing records for titles from the GPO "superseded list".

Classified microfiche and remaining microfilm serials

This project, begun in the last fiscal year with microfilm titles, was extended to microfiche holdings placed in the omnibus "Mf2" area in the Microforms Room. While this operation will not lead to self-service for patrons, as did the microfilm reclassification, it will make it easier for staff and eventually for patrons as well, to find titles in this collection.

Began the "teasing out" of e-journals and e-texts purchased through aggregator services

1999-2000 saw a quantum leap in the number of electronic resources cataloged within the Department, particularly for those titles received from aggregator services such as NetLibrary, National Academy Press, and Science Direct. A total of 2161 e-texts and 1532 e-journals or e-databases were cataloged this year, about three times the total e-resources cataloged in all previous years.

First GIS data file records added to the online catalog

Funding from Distance Education allowed for the hiring of a contract cataloger to begin describing the multiple "layers" of the NCSU Libraries' GIS data files in the public catalog for the first time. Using metadata already embedded in the GIS files, Steve Morris generated Dublin Core meta-elements using a Louisiana-based FGDC/DC crosswalk. The resulting Dublin Core records were then imported into OCLC's CORC, edited, and finally translated into MARC21 communication records for DRA.

Broadened participation in OCLC's CORC Project

Much of the cataloging activity of the Serials and Electronic Resources Section this year made use of the Mantis software provided for the CORC Project. This software enables the seamless viewing and description of Internet objects using either a MARC tagged or a Dublin Core interface and is due to become an alternative OCLC cataloging platform for describing all formats over the next year. The format flexibility of this product may prime the library marketplace for a MARC-weaning process many expect to overtake "traditional" MARC description over the next few years.

Design Library weeding project

Over 5000 volumes were weeded from the Design Library when remodeling commenced in that branch close to year end. Many of this total were completely withdrawn from the Libraries, putting considerable strain on Database Management. This trend is expected to continue into the new year as space in this branch is rationalized. As a result of the weeding, the Design Library achieved negative growth in their collection size this year.

NCSU Authors Database: Boolean search interface developed; new programs in Genomic Sciences and Computer Networking added; non-ISI databases searched with mixed results

Leon Lewis, Computing Consultant to Acquisitions, Cataloging and Preservation, developed the first Boolean search interface to the NCSU Authors Database, using Cold Fusion to broker requests from a Web search form against MSAccess97 relational queries. This should become publicly available over the course of the 2000-2001 fiscal year with Systems porting data over to Oracle. In addition, the first scores and sound recordings were added to the database this year along with materials emanating from new programs in Genomic Sciences and Computer Networking.

With help from Mary Ellen Spencer in the Research and Information Services Department, we began regular searches in several new databases this year, including Agricola, Medline, Toxline, & Aquatic Sciences & Fisheries Abstracts. Access to social science and humanities citations proved frustrating as databases such as the MLA Bibliography did not provide for searching by author affiliation.

Design slides database developed; new classification scheme devised

Much effort went into the cleaning up of accession list data entered in MSAccess over the summer of 1999. Cataloging created an authority list of artists, architects and designers using headings established in the Getty Institute's Union List of Artist Names, the Library of Congress name authority files and various reference sources. Much work has gone into describing scores of slide sets which had never been described before and which have now gone into the relational structure of the Design Slides Database. A searchable Oracle version of this data is set to be unveiled for fall term. In the meantime, Rachel Kuhn and Charley Pennell devised a new classification system destined to replace the fifty year old American Institute of Architects classification for organizing the slides collection. The new scheme covers the full range of design interests within the School of Design, including areas poorly handled using AIA.

Goals for 2000-2001

1. Return the current monograph stream to its former turnaround time frame of less than one month to clear Cataloging. Work with the Section Head in Monographs to establish the needed staff complement to handle the increased load we are now working with.
2. Mount a fully Web-searchable version of the NCSU Authors Database which includes quarterly updates from non-Web of Science indexes such as Agricola, Medline, World Textiles, and Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts.
3. Mount a fully Web-searchable version of the Design Slides database, based on cleaned up data entered from both the Design accession lists and card catalog. Work towards capture of subject data from the card catalog.
4. Reclassify at least 2/3 of the present Design slide collection from the AIA classification to the new Fogg-based ("Pennell-Kuhn") classification system.
5. Implement the Taos Cataloging Client, pointing it at the Classic database to give staff an opportunity to test this product in a live working environment.
6. Tease out e-text, e-journal and database titles from the NCLive suite of aggregators, Ethnic Newswatch, IEEE, and Academic Universe.
7. With cooperation from other Technical Service units, develop a comprehensive workflow for the selection, acquisition and cataloging of electronic resources, including "free" titles.
8. Work with Acquisitions and RISD staff to regularize the federal documents retrospective conversion. Complete the smart barcoding of post-1976 monographs by February of 2002.

Personnel changes in the Cataloging Department 1999-2000

List of Cataloging Department employees as of 1 July 2000

Appendix A: Summary of Cataloging processing activity by library and/or collection 1999-2000

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