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Cataloging Department Annual Report 2002-2003

Summary

Cataloging successfully completed several large projects over the course of the 2002/2003 fiscal year, highlighted by the first full system migration in ten years. Over 1.5 million bibliographic and 1 million authority records were successfully moved from DRA into Sirsi's Unicorn over the December break with Cataloging staff going live on the new system immediately following the New Year holiday. Cataloging staff contributed substantially to the migration effort by providing Unicorn training, both to their colleagues within the department and to those within Acquisitions, Reserves, Preservation, and other groups. A project to move more than 285,000 volumes to the Satellite Shelving Facility was successfully concluded this year. Two serial projects provided for the addition of hundreds of new e-journal titles from IEEE, Ingenta, Science Direct and Springer Link to the catalog, while several thousand titles from the Libraries' E-Journal Finder were compared to the catalog to ensure that each of these tools would produce search results consistent with the other. The Department hired and trained new staff members for two professional and five paraprofessional positions.

Departmental activities

ILS migration

An integrated library system migration presents both considerable challenges and opportunities to library cataloging departments. While staff do eagerly anticipate the increased functionality and ease of use that a new generation of software represents, this must be tempered by the need to preserve the integrity of migrated data, to customize the new environment even while you understand little about it, to learn the mechanics of using the new system, to maintain productivity, and to continue to process the stream of new materials. While there is still much cleanup left to do to enable patrons to make full use of Unicorn here, the amount accomplished in a very short time is remarkable.

In the months leading up to and following our live date, Cataloging staff accepted a leadership role in system training and testing. The Department Head took on the tedious but essential task of editing the Unicorn indexing tables to optimize staff and patron search capabilities. The team of Karen Letarte, Patrice Daniels, Shirley Hamlett, and Anne Navarro created customized training packages and trained first Reserves staff, then Cataloging, Acquisitions, RISD, Preservation, and others in turn. Nancy Mottley, Kathy Brignole, Rob Loomis and others combed through records brought over to the Unicorn test server, looking for potential holdings and indexing problems and reporting these to the Department Head. A Cataloging/Authorities Module Committee met regularly for several months communicating problems as well as solutions to those problems.

On 21 December all activity ceased in DRA while records were extracted and then loaded and indexed on the new production server. Over 1.5 million bibliographic records and associated holdings, and 1 million authority records were loaded between 21 December and early January. When staff returned to the office after the holidays, they began working exclusively in Unicorn, first on the test server and finally, when indexing had been completed, in the production environment. Staff were able to make the transition to a new system in just a couple of weeks, a rather incredible feat considering adjustments to personal workflow that were necessitated by this change. During the initial weeks of the transition, Cataloging was working alone in the new system. Constant work interruptions, often lasting for days, were not uncommon as the vendor performed work in other modules, loaded orders, patron records, and reserve items, and continuously reloaded holdings in the background. While productivity in January and early February was affected by these server interruptions and training, by March the number of volumes processed had exceeded normal levels. This level of activity has been maintained even while efforts have continued to clean up problems identified after the migration.

For Cataloging, Unicorn provides several advantages over DRA. The reports module, so difficult to master in DRA, is relatively simple to use in Unicorn. Global edit capabilities, restricted to authority-controlled full headings in DRA, are now extended to the full MARC record as well as to portions of headings. This allows us to quickly batch edit hundreds of base URLs when a serial aggregator's Web server is changed or thousands of subject headings when Library of Congress vocabulary changes (for example, the recent change from 'Afro-Americans' to 'African Americans'). Increased keyword search power enables Catalogers to quickly identify problems needing fixes, assign new call numbers based on similar materials already cataloged, and count categories of materials based on library, collection, format, call number or several other attributes. A system date stamp, identifying the date a title was cataloged, now enables far more accurate and timely bibliographic extracts to be generated for vendor authority processing and table of contents generation, as well as for reporting to the national union catalog.

Productivity Increases

Even while this system migration was underway, technical services productivity rose markedly this year. Much of this rise can be attributed to electronic resources added to the catalog for the first time, in particular several thousand monographs from GPO and NetLibrary and hundreds of e-journals from various aggregators, including Ingenta, Science Direct, Springer Link, and IEEE. A project supervised by Holly Chang, saw students checking catalog holdings of e-journals against the Libraries' E-Journal Finder holdings, creating records in one or the other database as omissions were noted. An earlier project in the Serials and Electronic Resources Section saw relevancy ranking information added to thousands of serial records to enable a more useful display of results from various reference tools provided through the Libraries' Website, including Multisearch.

Shift From Print to Electronic Formats Continues

The shift from print to electronic formats continues to drive cataloging operations. The past year saw 33,327 books added to the collection while an additional 15,029 Internet-accessible e-books were also added to the collection. 1458 computer file media, mostly CD-ROMs, were also cataloged this year, the first year in which these materials were sent to the stacks rather than to secured cabinets behind the Circulation Desk. On the serials side, substantially more e-journals (1911) were cataloged this year than print serials (1411, exclusive of serial titles moved to Satellite Shelving) for the first time ever. This trend is expected to continue and will likely accelerate in the next two years. While e-resources, many of which are loaded in batch, often require less cataloging effort up front, they do require considerable ongoing maintenance effort as publishers and/or servers change and increased functionality is demanded by patrons (local subject descriptors, relevancy ranking, etc.). These trends will likely cause Cataloging Departments, including this one, to continually readjust the traditional allocation of staff between print and electronic resources each year. It is indeed fortunate that Unicorn provides a lot of automated support for the batch editing of e-resource records.

Federal Documents Processing

While the initial phase of the federal document cataloging project continued to wind down this year, the loading of GPO URL records was finally brought up to date and is now being handled in Cataloging for the first time. Indeed, all batch extracting and loading, other than for orders, has now been centralized through the position of the shared Technical Services' Computing Consultant position. Dawn Pearce is now loading GPO shipping list, URL, and monthly notification records, extracting bibliographic records for authority processing, union listing, and table of contents, and loading vendor processed records, within 24 hours of receipt. Repatriation of this activity has allowed the department to better schedule follow-up activities, such as authority heading maintenance and de-duplication of GPO temporary records.

Satellite Shelving Move

The physical move of materials to the Satellite Shelving Facility was accomplished during this report year after Cataloging staff edited some 285,000 item records in the catalog. Requested changes to the selection criteria and the recall of three serial titles by faculty resulted in substantial post-migration editing of records in the catalog to reflect the final outcome of the move. A Web-searchable database, created through collaboration between Circulation, Cataloging, Systems and Collection Management staff, allowed faculty to identify titles of periodicals that were slated to be moved and to recall any that they felt should remain in the D.H. Hill Library. Readdressing Satellite Shelving serial holdings after the system migration consumed considerable Database Development time at year's end and also brought to light many existing issues with serial holdings presentation in both DRA and Unicorn. Serial holdings display problems in the catalog are considered to be a top priority for the Department over the coming year.

NCSU Authors Database

The NCSU Authors database increased in size this year, though not in scope as had been expected. Possible synergies existing between this project and work toward an institutional repository begun in the Digital Library Initiatives Department this year may bring about changes to this project. There are now almost 15,000 citations accessible through the search interface at http://databases.lib.ncsu.edu/NCSUAuthors/, representing the work of 6882 authors in 2945 different journals.

While it appears to be but a minor name change within the Department this year, the change from Database Management to the Database Development Section holds the potential for considerable growth opportunities in the coming year. With the appointments of Jamie Vermillion as our first visual resources cataloger in February and Jacqueline Samples as the first Metadata Librarian in Cataloging, the seed is planted for an increased presence within this arena in the Libraries. Jamie is working with the Design Slides Project while Jacquie has already begun working with her counterparts in DLI and elsewhere to provide more timely Cataloging input into all of the Libraries' various metadata projects.

Personnel

Major workflow changes such as this year's system migration often seem to be accompanied by substantial personnel changes. Three long-term staff members chose to retire during the implementation of Unicorn this year. Gail Cooke, hired as a Cataloger right after her graduation from Meredith College in June, 1972 was the first to go, retiring in October from her position as a Library Technical Assistant II. Margaret Melton retired to start a catering business from her home early in the calendar year after nearly twenty years in the department, most recently as an LTAI in Database Development. At the end of June, Sandra Dunn retired as Serials Cataloger after a combined thirty years of service to both the State Library and the NCSU Libraries. Two other EPA positions were vacated this year, that of Jennifer Roper, Head of the Monographs Section in mid-July and the departmental Fellow, Kathy Wisser, whose two year contract expired at the end of June. The shared Computing Consultant position was vacated in late January, when George Zeniou left to take a Computing Consultant II position at UNC.

Three staff members were promoted to new positions at a higher level this year. Ella Rogers-Jones, formerly of the Monographs Section, replaced Gail Cooke as the Library Technical Assistant II for Serials & Electronic Resources and was in turn replaced by Lynn Ballance, formerly of the Serials & Electronic Resources Section. Kathy Brignole was promoted within Database Development to Margaret Melton's LTAI position. Finally, Rob Loomis made a lateral transfer from Database Development into Lynn Ballance's former position.

New to the department in 2002/2003 were Jamie Vermillion, a Library Technical Assistant I working with the Design Slides Project, Dawn Pearce, the new Computing Consultant I, and Jennifer Krause, Library Assistant in Database Development. Two new EPAs were appointed this year, Jacqueline Samples as Metadata Librarian and Karen Williams, formerly a Library Assistant in the Serials & Electronic Resources Section, now the Serials & Electronic Resources Cataloger.

The year ahead

While our workload has always increased or decreased as the materials allocation has allowed, this year is shaping up to be an extraordinary year due to the ongoing state fiscal crisis. While migration issues, particularly with holdings, will continue to occupy much of our time, discussions have begun with other departments regarding special projects that may be prioritized for Cataloging attention this year. These include a substantial gifts backlog accumulating in Special Collections; a 4000 title Textiles gift collection from ITT; materials in the Census and Law alcoves within the Reference Collection; CD-ROM, microform, and cartographic documents; and pre-1976 GPO materials. In addition, it is likely that the Database Development and Serials/Electronic Resources Sections will become more actively involved with the development of the reference-linking (SFx) project and ETDs.

Goals for 2003-2004

1. Work with Acquisitions and Preservation to further streamline workflow procedures:

The implementation of Unicorn in the NCSU Libraries presents technical services with a number of areas in which workflow could be streamlined. Some attempts at changing binding workflow this spring met with initial success but stalled when personnel trained for the new workflow in Preservation changed. A more systematic approach to the entire workflow is needed to identify areas where the new system will enable efficiencies to be made wherever possible.

2. Document changes to procedures and policies flowing from the system migration:

A task force consisting of members from the three units within Cataloging has begun collecting training materials, memoranda from the Department Head, procedures from workflow changes ironed out with other departments, and needs expressed by their colleagues, and comparing these with the present documentation contained on the Departmental Website. The resulting changes will be used to update our Website and to prevent the confusion among staff who must presently project current practice based on procedures which were designed for a different system.

3. Clean up problem areas identified in the Libraries catalog:

While needed programming changes have been documented for work by the Libraries' Systems Department, there are still a lot of largely manual changes that need to be made to both bibliographic and holdings information in the catalog. Major areas include serial summary holdings, which largely reflect serials check-in data from DRA and are not necessarily synchronized with item holdings; Periodical Service Center holdings which currently display as being in the stacks; branch library Special Collections which mapped to SPECCOLL in D.H. Hill; "spanned" records (bound-with titles which should display on either the analytic or main title record); and call number sorting problems with SuDoc records, microforms, theses, and serial volumes.

4. Recruit a Head for the Monographs Section:

This vacancy was created when Jennifer Roper left at the start of the 2002/2003 fiscal year. Unfortunately, it fell victim to a University-wide hiring freeze just as we were preparing to bring in our first candidate. Identifying a new Section Head is very important for morale in that unit and will remove the extra workload off the Department Head and other EPA staff members who have been filling this void.

5. Work with planners and architects to ensure a smooth transition to new quarters:

The long awaited departmental move from the first floor to the basement of the East Wing is now in the planning phase. Work with both planners and departmental staff to ensure that this move goes smoothly.

6. Increase Cataloging visibility in Libraries' non-MARC metadata activities:

The appointment of a Metadata Librarian in April finally gives the Department a permanent presence in non-MARC metadata planning in the Libraries. The reorganization of Database Management into a Database Development unit, to assume responsibility for both planning and production of metadata projects, represents an important shift in departmental priorities. The Department will be proactive in helping to plan as well as implement new projects including Design Images, Luna Insight, the Institutional Repository, and SFx.

Personnel changes in the Cataloging Department 2002-2003

List of Cataloging Department employees as of 1 July 2003

Appendix A: Summary of Cataloging processing activity by library and/or collection 2002-2003

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