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Cataloging Department Annual Report 2000-2001

Summary

This report period, more than any since my arrival in 1997, spanned a year of remarkable personnel transition within Cataloging, with the departure of several senior staff members and the appointment of our first Library Fellow. With the departure of the Assistant Department Head in June of 2000, followed closely by the stepping down of the first SPA to have served in the capacity of Cataloging Section Head in a number of years, the report period began in crisis mode. Bao-Chu Chang, already serving as Principal Cataloger and Section Head for the Serials/Electronic Resources unit, stepped in to assume the additional roles of Acting Assistant Department Head and Acting Section Head for Database Management. Jennifer Roper, at first Acting Section Head for Monographs, assumed this role permanently at mid-year. We lost our first shared Computing Consultant, but were able to hire another to complete the projects begun by his predecessor. Somehow the Department managed to process current materials at the same pace as for the last several years, while also handling several ambitious project goals within the GPO retrospective conversion, remote storage facility, and NCSU Authors projects. All praise for this level of activity belongs to Department staff, who rose to the occasion in spite of significant position vacancies.

Departmental activities

Once again, cataloging productivity has been maintained at the threshold first established through the increase in material allocations of 1996/97. This has been accomplished during a year which saw a marked increase in transfer and withdrawal activity, both due to large weeding projects undertaken in two branch libraries, and to the forthcoming opening of the offsite storage facility on Sullivan Drive. Close to 8,500 titles were either moved or removed from the collection this year, representing over 20,000 volumes edited in DRA by Database Management staff. This figure is up by 65% from the last report period and is likely to increase exponentially this coming year as the remote storage facility opens. Planning and cost analyses of various models for the impending move were accomplished this year by Shirley Hamlett, serving on the Offsite Shelving Facility Task Force, and by the Department Head.

Interestingly, the volume of Internet-accessible materials processed this year dropped slightly from last year, reflection of a marketplace transition from single or package title licensing to large consortial/aggregator licensing agreements where literally thousands of titles need to be added to library finding aids simultaneously. The largest of these aggregator sets, the SOLINET NetLibrary titles, includes over 11,000 records purchased from OCLC and awaits loading at year end. Access to the thousands of e-journal and full-text titles available through NCLive awaits the results of experiments with Serials Solutions, a service which provides brief descriptions and periodically updated holdings information for various aggregator products. The difficulty of maintaining the currency of e-journal holdings is a high-maintenance activity most cataloging departments are not staffed to perform on a timely basis. This has naturally created a niche market for outsourced service providers like Serials Solutions.

This spring marked the end of the first phase of the on-going GPO retrospective conversion project begun almost two years ago. The first phase saw student assistants linking 250,000 "smart" barcodes to matching bibliographic records added to the Marion database last year. For the first time, these books can circulate without need for on-the-fly barcoding at the Circulation desk. Remaining to complete in phase 2, is the barcoding of thousands of single volumes which include more than one title within their binding. The Marcive load generated barcodes for each of the bound-together titles, necessitating the removal of all but one of the barcodes from DRA and the subsequent linking of all additional titles to a single item record. This is a tedious process with ample opportunity for error. Saving this effort until the end of the project allowed our student help to build on knowledge gained through experience with these materials over the year. Still to be completed are the handling of serial titles, which are currently being handled as received, microforms, maps and electronic resources. A separate load for GPO records with URLs is planned for later this summer.

Thanks need to go to the Systems Department's ILS Librarian, Erik Moore, who successfully purged our entire name authority file from DRA and then loaded it back again after duplicate unlinked records were discovered in the system. Erik also successfully loaded the Evans Collection records left from his predecessor, as well as performing a number of smaller, but just as important loads over the course of the year.

On the drawing boards for over a year, the Cold Fusion-based Boolean search interface to the NCSU Authors Database was finally unveiled to the public in April of this year. With greatly expanded functionality, the new interface enables patrons to search for particular keywords across a number of fields, to limit a search to particular formats of materials, and to compile results spanning several years of database coverage. Internal links take users to electronic versions of listed publications as they did with the static version of this tool, but new links also enable the expansion of searches by department name from citations displayed in a results set. A count of resulting records is also presented. While increased search capabilities offer improved public service, a side benefit to the new interface is a reduction in maintenance time on the Web site where mounting the static pages consumed as much as three days of staff time each month. Maintenance of the new Web service takes less than a minute each week, although gathering and entering data still consumes the largest portion of the workload of a Library Assistant.

Personnel

A significant loss to the department this year was the considerable institutional knowledge represented by three staff members in particular, David Warren, Mary Brown and Nancy Yu. David, Library Technical Assistant I within the Serials/Electronic Resources Section, left to return to studies in Georgia early in the year, leaving a considerable vacuum in departmental knowledge of authority, cataloging, and DRA implementation history. Mary left to assume another position on campus. Nancy Yu retired from the NCSU Libraries at the end of the year after a long career spanning a quarter of a century in Cataloging. Nancy managed the NCSU Authors Database project once it reached the production phase and was instrumental in such projects as the monographs retrospective conversion. Other staff leaving this year included Leon Lewis, our first Computing Consultant, Leslie Gardner, and Lynn Ballance.

Joining the Department this year were George Zeniou, Computing Consultant I, Karen Williams, Library Assistant, Christy Starnes, Library Assistant, and Kathy Wisser, the first Library Fellow to choose Cataloging as home department.

The year ahead

No annual report would be complete without mention of disappointments encountered over the year. Obviously, one of the larger disappointments this year was the failure of DRA Taos to materialize and the confusion caused by the merger between DRA and Sirsi Corporation. While testing of the Taos cataloging client showed some promise in the product, it is a product that is about six years late in development and for which the future is unclear. While architecturally stable, the DRA product is still a generation behind the rest of the library automation market. Disabilities inherent in the current product are the cause of considerable work-around activity in the NCSU Libraries, including in the very important area of electronic resources. Cataloging very much hopes that the path forward becomes clearer this year, even if this way is through a separate product such as Blue Angel's MetaStar.

The year ahead should see an improvement in the work lives of overloaded catalogers. The hiring of a new Assistant Department Head should ease the burden of supervision and completion work on professionals in the Department, while the creation of a new position for a Metadata Librarian will allow us to more fully focus our attention on the future of non-MARC cataloging activity at the NCSU Libraries. The appointment of a Library Fellow whose outside project involves EAD development will allow us to strengthen bibliographic ties already strong with Special Collections and will further build on the department's metadata expertise.

Major accomplishments for 2000-2001

Phase 1 of Federal documents retrospective conversion completed

With the drawn-out load of the Marcive GPO records complete, the Department's Federal Documents Project was completely reorganized in the fall, with Nancy Mottley in charge of hiring, and Kathy Brignole supervising, a large coterie of student workers. The first phase of the post-1976 GPO retrospective conversion was completed in May when our student assistants completed the "smart" barcoding of those monographs not bound together into aggregate volumes. The second phase, a cleanup of the bound monograph volumes, along with a handling of problem titles, is being continued through this summer. Completion of this work will see over 300,000 barcoded US documents available for circulation through DRA.

First materials destined for Sullivan Drive remote storage processed

Using a new DRA location code, Database Management staff have completed processing of the first materials destined to be transferred to the remote storage facility when it opens later this year. While these materials currently display in the catalog as being held at DH Hill, this location can be toggled overnight to reflect their new home once the new facility opens and materials are moved.

Boolean search capability provided for NCSU Authors Database

Completely rewriting the Cold Fusion code first written last year, Computing Consultant George Zeniou has provided the first publicly searchable interface to the NCSU Authors Database. This work saves considerable staff time previously spent each month updating static Web pages. It also enables patrons to search the output of particular authors or departments over the entire coverage period for the first time as the static pages were segmented by year of publication.

First Cataloging Fellow appointed

While Cataloging worked with the very first Library Fellow, Rachel Kuhn, on her Design Slides project, the appointment of Kathy Wisser in late June marks the first time we have served as home department to a Fellow. Kathy will be learning original cataloging this year while also working with Special Collections on their EAD Project.

Productivity maintained while staffing was reduced

Recent levels of productivity were maintained throughout the year even while supervision was strained within the department and some staff were occupied in the GPO recon and offsite storage projects. Large weeding projects put an increased strain on DMS which responded with a 65% increase in withdrawal and transfer processing.

Goals for 2001-2002

Hire a Metadata Librarian and develop a working unit devoted to non-MARC metadata

Three years after drafting the Verity Report, Cataloging is preparing to begin work on embedding metadata in the Libraries' Web content. There are three facets to this work: developing a controlled vocabulary that will suffice across the entire Web site, or at least that portion not under EAD (Special Collections); developing, in conjunction with DLI, a technology for easy embedding of Dublin Core meta-elements in both retrospective and future Web documents; performing the actual work of placing metadata on both the public and staff servers, at least for retrospective pages. Besides the Libraries' Web site, ETD would be another area to investigate the embedding of locally-generated metadata.

EAD Development

Through both our Fellow and the Cataloging liaison to Special Collections, work with Special Collections on EAD developments.

Move 250,000+ volumes to the new Remote Storage Facility

Costing has been done to cover the first 250,000 items which will be relocated to Sullivan Drive. Based on the outcome of this report, a model will be developed for ongoing support for this effort over the life of the project, e.g. determining the number of items to be removed each year, setting up workflows, and editing holdings in the ILS.

Port the NCSU Authors Database to Oracle

There are now close to 10,000 citations in the NCSU authors database, considered by many as the threshold at which MSAccess should give way to Microsoft's SQL Server or some other enterprise-level database application. In this fiscal year, Cataloging, in conjunction with Systems, will investigate porting this data over to Oracle, the enterprise database of choice at the NCSU Libraries.

Complete post-1976 federal documents recon project

Current plans are to have the work on the post-1976 GPO titles completed by February of 2002. We also need to start planning the next phase of this project, namely the loading of MARC records for pre-1976 documents into the OPAC. This may be accomplished through a consortial agreement, such as that between members of the CIC (Big Ten +) Libraries.

Cataloging of large aggregator e-resources

This is the year that NCLive either renews, or starts new, three-year contracts. It is also the time we will likely be loading MARC records for over 11,000 new NetLibrary titles purchased through SOLINET. These titles need to be cataloged, but first, work needs to be done on resolving the following issues: combining print with electronic bibliographic records (MulVer) vs. separate records, coverage of the subscription (availability of specific volumes), and how best to identify Internet-accessible titles through the OPAC (adding call number to a MFHD, as at present, will become very time-consuming for aggregators with tens of thousands of titles). The purchase of Serials Solution, or a similar package, will affect any decisions here.

Integrate Blue Angel's MetaStar processing into Cataloging operations

The purchase of Blue Angel's MetaStar is likely to have long-term implications for Cataloging, both in its Public Website metadata efforts, and in looking at other possible repositories of network-accessible data, particularly GIS and possibly NTIS metadata.

Train the Digital Library Initiative Department's Data Services Librarian in cataloging principles and procedures

James Jackson Sanborn has been hired to fill the vacancy left some time ago by the departure of Doris Sigl. Cataloging has agreed to train James to fulfill his new role.

Personnel changes in the Cataloging Department 2000-2001

List of Cataloging Department employees as of 1 July 2001

Appendix A: Summary of Cataloging processing activity by library and/or collection 2000-2001

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