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Metadata and Cataloging Department
Annual Report 2005-2006

Departmental activities

The department continues to thrive and to find innovative solutions to the challenges posed by our remote location in the Brickhaven space. We look forward to rejoining our colleagues at D.H. Hill in 2007 in our renovated space.

We have enjoyed a very productive year, participating in a number of successful initiatives and bringing many on-going projects to fruition. Highlights include:

• Rapid Cataloging Workflow: We collaborated with our colleagues in Acquisitions to establish a new workflow that enables a significant percentage of new receipts to reach the shelves within 48-72 hours of being unpacked at Brickhaven. Preparation for implementation began in the previous fiscal year as we established the criteria for identifying materials to be processed upon receipt in Acquisitions. The planning and analysis phase was completed by 1 August and staff training then commenced. The goal was for 50-60 percent of monographic receipts to be handled through this workflow, but our initial statistics showed that actually closer to 40 percent of items were processed upon receipt. The remainder of new titles are sent to Cataloging, where we expedite processing, with 48-hour turnaround time as the established standard for these materials. 9,413 new monographic titles passed through rapid cataloging this year. An unanticipated advantage of this workflow is that we have been able to expand the categories of materials that can be handled at the 59 level.


• Digital Project Involvement: the department was well-represented on a number of strategically important Library-wide projects and contributed expertise to make the following services and initiatives successful:


• Endeca Implementation
• E-Matrix
• SFX
• Website redesign
• Journal List
• Quick Search
• Faculty Publications Repository Implementation

Now that some of these new products and services are maturing, we receive many requests for data enhancements to provide improved service. This spring, for example, we received a request to expose all of the Science Direct resources that are available to our users in the catalog. The entire department worked on this project collaboratively and we provided a one-week turnaround on the request.

Another highlight is our collaborative work with colleagues in Acquisitions on the licensing module for E-Matrix, which is ongoing. The Serials and Electronic Resources Librarian contributed approximately 50 percent of her time to this endeavor this spring.

• Departmental Re-Organization: While a considerable loss to the department, Glen Wiley's departure afforded us the opportunity to consider a major restructuring of the department. In early February, under the leadership of Greg Raschke, Interim Associate Director for Collection Management, Organization, and Preservation, we undertook an ambitious internal reorganization to enable the department to better support the strategic goals and priorities of the Libraries. The department's name was changed from Cataloging Department to Metadata and Cataloging. Reflecting the Libraries' emphasis on digital collections and services, Charles Pennell, Head of Cataloging, accepted a reassignment into the pivotal role of Principal Cataloger for Metadata. With Charley's reassignment, Karen Letarte, Assistant Department Head, was appointed as Interim Head, Metadata and Cataloging. Bao-Chu Chang was appointed as Interim Assistant Department Head. Jacqueline Samples, Metadata Librarian, accepted a new position as Serials and Electronic Resources Librarian, as well as continuing to support the Acquisitions Department in her half-time role there as Senior Acquisitions Librarian.

These personnel changes paved the way for restructuring the department to promote greater efficiency and to best leverage our considerable expertise in metadata creation for digital resources, while providing for much tighter integration between the units. The department was re-organized into three units:

1. Metadata. Charles Pennell, Principal Cataloger for Metadata, is head of the Unit. Rob E. Loomis (LTA1) provides staff support. Presently, Charley works collaboratively with staff across the department and the Libraries on a number of metadata initiatives, including the Faculty Publications Repository and Course Catalogs digitization. This collaborative model works well during this transition time. We anticipate moving more staff into this unit in the future, as its role and functions grow and stabilize.


2. Continuing Resources and Database Management. This unit was formed by merging the former Database Development Section and the Serials and Electronic Resources Section, a change that has allowed us to invest significantly greater staffing resources towards digital collections than under the previous structure. Bao-Chu Chang, Interim Assistant Department Head, leads the unit. Bao supervises Patrice Daniels (LTA2), Beverly King, Jennifer Krause, Hayley Kyle, Nancy Mottley, and prior to her departure, Holly Chang (LTA1s). Jacqueline Samples, Serials and Electronic Resources Librarian, supervises Stacey Austin, Courtney Horton, Jannette Mina, and, prior to her promotion, Jennifer Krause (LAs).


3. Monographs. Under the leadership of Veronica Walker, Head of Monographic Cataloging. (Flora Blackley, Terri Chance, Kay Dudley, Shirley Hamlett, Anne Navarro, Ella Rogers-Jones, Barbara Weinberg.)


• Cross-Training: Since the re-organization, we have not only achieved a degree of stability (via significant efforts on the part of section heads) but have also been able to move forward to capitalize on new opportunities. This has largely been thanks to staff's willingness to embrace change and their dedication to the Libraries' mission. One clear need was for tighter integration across the department to prevent the build-up of knowledge silos and to enable more efficient processing of materials. To this end, we have begun to cross-train all staff within each unit so that there is a stable knowledge base across each level of staff (e.g., all LAs in the same unit will possess a common skill set). The need for this was particularly obvious in the merged unit, as some staff had expertise in serials holdings, others in ETD processing, and others in monographic cataloging processes. To date, all staff in the CRDM unit have been cross-trained by the Interim Assistant Department Head in basic serials cataloging and in cataloging e-journals. Yet to come in the cross-training suite for cataloging digital resources are databases and websites. All cross-training has proceeded according to our established "triage model" so that tasks are performed by the appropriate level of staff and passed on to higher levels only as needed, to best realize efficiency gains.


• Collaboration with the Special Collections Research Center: We are always grateful for the opportunity to work more closely with our colleagues in the division and have capitalized on opportunities to collaborate with the SCRC to promote better services to users. Examples of our collaborative work include:


• Resumption of cataloging responsibility for all print SCRC materials.
• Walk-through (same day) processing for all new monographic receipts for the SCRC.
• Consultation on database structure, metadata creation, and cross-walking for metadata projects, including Course Catalogs and The University Archives Photo Collection.
• Cross-training: the Head of the Monographs unit met weekly with the Head of Technical Services, SCRC to train her in monographic cataloging (both AACR and local practice). Training is nearly complete. Following that, the Head of Technical Services, SCRC will train the Head of the Monographs unit on metadata creation for manuscript collections.
• Special Collections Faculty Publications: We created a new Unicorn location, "Special Collections Faculty Publications" and moved all SCRC copies of faculty publications into the new location. We completed this task two weeks ahead of the requested deadline. We also created a new location for Auction Catalogs and moved all copies into the new location. This has greatly facilitated the paging of materials now that the SCRC book collection encompasses three different physical locations (SCRC, LSS, and Duke storage).
• John Ptak Computer Science Book Collection: since April, we have cataloged 278 items from this collection, and plan to complete the cataloging by 30 June 2007.

Automation

• Batchloading and Scripting: We have made great strides towards automating as many processes as possible, handling as few records individually as feasible. This has largely been possible through collaborating with our Computing Consultant, leveraging her expertise in API and other programming skills. The Computing Consultant handles many routine batch loads, such as the monthly catalog extracts that are sent to MARCIVE for authority processing, and citation harvesting to feed the Faculty Publication Repository.


• E-books and Pre-Processing Batch Loads: We have also worked closely this year with colleagues from Acquisitions and Collection Management to create batch load profiles for e-book purchases and to design customized pre-processing for records received from the various vendors and services (Yankee, NetLibrary, EBL, Safari Tech, and Greenwood). This pre-processing maximizes the benefits of batch loading and has greatly decreased the number of records that must be handled manually. Now we handle only those records weeded out via our selection criteria as needing human intervention (e.g., no class number). E-book processing has now been completely integrated in the Monographs unit's routine workflows.


• Bulk Transfers: We have also used automation to reduce the human effort invested in bulk transfers. We have been able to address a greater volume of need with a higher level of efficiency, such as using API to transfer 229,339 volumes of microforms to their new locations in Media or LSSF. In collaboration with Acquisitions and Preservation, we have planned for moving (again via API) and remarking approximately 11,000 volumes from the Reference Collection into the General collection. Realizing further efficiency by outsourcing label production, we anticipate completing this move by 1 Sept. 2006.


• Non-MARC Metadata Initiatives

The department has continued to play an integral role in several metadata projects this year. These include the Faculty Publications Repository, the Design Slides Database, both projects this department has worked on for several years, and planning for the Course Catalogs Digitization project based in the Special Collections Research Center.

2750 new citations and 287 new journals were added to the Faculty Publications Repository this year. Formerly the NCSU Authors Database, the bibliographic data has provided a seed-bed for the Digital Repository. The database coverage has been expanded to cover all publications of present faculty members. While the staff interface has remained in Access, procedures have changed as the data itself now resides in an Oracle table. The Serials and Electronic Resources Librarian worked with the Principal Cataloger for Metadata on staff training and training documentation.

The Year Ahead

Metadata and Cataloging will continue to support the Libraries' strategic goals and priorities by strengthening our organizational flexibility and increasing responsiveness to new demands through the effective use of staffing and other resources. As information resources swiftly proliferate and users are increasingly demanding easy access to full-text electronic resources, it seems clear that we must now ask the difficult questions about our priorities, resources, and workflows in order to realize a mission that will support and be in alignment with the Libraries' goals and priorities. We must communicate effectively with colleagues across the Libraries' so that we can preserve the services that are fundamentally important to the Libraries' mission, and seek to restructure our workflows to meet new demands.

Perhaps the most significant challenge that lies ahead is to provide a context for new service models and priorities to staff in an effective, positive, and motivating way. However, our staff has always shown that they are ready and able to embrace change, and this year will be no different.

Goals for 2006-2007

1. Increase the investment of departmental resources in enhancing discovery of and access to digital collections, leveraging our expertise to add value where it will best serve the strategic priorities of the Libraries and meet the needs of our users.


2. Increase efficiencies for growth by maximizing productivity in workflows via the following avenues:


1. Solidify categories of acceptable copy for total acceptance on receipt. Decrease exception categories for the Rapid Cat workflow so that the only materials that need Cataloging attention are


1. Special Collections materials
2. Items with a significantly less than full Encoding level (2, 3, 5, E, or J.)
3. Items with a provisional record
4. Items with no subject headings or class number (including DDC only)
5. Analyzed serials
6. Conference proceedings
7. Videos, maps & sound recordings


2. Analyze current cataloging practices for non-print materials with a view to the feasibility of expanding the Rapid Cat workflow to include additional monographic formats.


3. Continue working closely with Acquisitions further to streamline workflow for serials and electronic resources.


1. Once workflow is formalized, review and revise all documentation


4. Subscribe to OCLC's bibliographic notification service.


5. Cease all upgrades to Encoding level 8 materials and allow the bibliographic notification service to handle this.


6. Minimize the amount of original cataloging performed in house.


1. Identify appropriate categories of materials for less-than-full cataloging (see G below).
2. Investigate and formally report on the use of Marcadia and/or other services and automated methods to search for and load replacement records.


7. Implement classification-upon-receipt treatment for gifts and other appropriate categories of print monographs with less-than-full copy or no copy. Apply natural language descriptors when no subject headings are present.


8. Reduce manual processing and maintenance related to state and federal documents.


1. Investigate and report on current costs and savings to be created through reduced investment of staff time.


9. Create proposals to simplify and unify the treatment of serials summary holdings across collections and reduce staff time devoted to this process.


3. Ensure that staffing resources are used efficiently in furthering the strategic priorities and goals of the division and the Libraries. Conduct a dept.-wide task analysis to assist in using staffing resources most economically, so that each task is performed by the appropriate level of staff, and so that the dept. can increase responsiveness to ebbs and flows in workflows.


4. Continue to assist with implementation of E-Matrix, SFX, Endeca, and other resource discovery tools. In particular,


1. Collaborate with Acquisitions staff to provide authority control for organization names within E-Matrix.
2. Continue to provide timely response to data enhancement requests for E-Matrix, Endeca, and other digital projects.
3. Assist with FAST implementation if needed.


5. Expand departmental involvement in metadata projects throughout the Libraries. In particular, upcoming digital projects, including


1. Course catalogs digitization project.
2. University Archives Photo Collection.
3. Digital preservation projects.
4. Provide collection-level records for digital collections via the Catalog.
5. Continue to provide consultation services for database structure, thesauri-building and cross-walking activities.


6. Continue efforts to integrate the processing of continuing resources and monographs so that all staff have the opportunity to work with continuing resources (assigning appropriate levels of tasks to appropriate level of staff.)


7. Investigate more efficient ways to prepare materials for the shelf (security stripping, marking, etc.)

Appendix to Metadata and Cataloging Annual Report 2005-2006

Cataloging Statistics

At a glance:

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

Summary of Cataloging processing activity by library and/or collection 2005-2006

Personnel

Turnover this year was relatively stable, with the only two resignations being those of Glen Wiley and Holly Chang. Glen left to assume the Metadata Librarian position at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, while Holly accepted a staff position at Duke University Libraries. Jennifer Krause (59, former Database Development Section) was promoted into Holly's position, with a start date of June 1. Kay Dudley (61, Monographs Section), retired as of July 1 2006 after more than thirty years of service to the Libraries.

This year, the Interim Head of Acquisitions assumed principal supervisory responsibilities for Dawn Pearce, Computing Consultant for the three Brickhaven departments, but Dawn continues to play an integral role in assisting the department to automate as many processes as possible.

List of Cataloging Department employees as of 1 July 2006