2CUL TSI Monograph Ordering Working Group
Summarize staffing and expertise at Columbia and Cornell, including a comparison of current job assignments.
Investigation: Members of the Working Group shared respective inventories of ordering activities and discussed details of staffing, staff expertise and job assignments in phone conversations, email correspondence, and a face-to-face meeting.
Please see "Columbia - Order Unit Staff Expertise" and "Cornell - Order Unit Staff Expertise."
Columbia has 4 FTE in the Order and Receiving Unit (OAR) who place firm orders and receive firm ordered material. One FTE in the OAR Unit is assigned 35% cataloging duties. OAR staff possess language skills at a sufficient enough level to place orders, correspond with international vendors, and catalog some firm ordered material upon receipt. The OAR Unit does not firm order Chinese-Japanese-Korean-Tibetan (CJKT) material as the processing of material in CJKT languages occurs in the technical services department at C.V. Starr East Asian Library.
At Cornell, all ordering staff also receive some material but not all staff who perform receiving also perform the ordering function. Four Cornell ordering staff who are devoted to languages in non-roman scripts, also receive all materials in those languages. Additionally, Cornell staff who order special materials with individual procurement cards, receive the materials they order with their procurement cards. And since all ordering staff are cross-trained to do receiving, when time and workloads permit, Cornell ordering staff handle more traditional receiving.
Summarize reporting and decision-making structures at Columbia and Cornell.
Investigation: Members of the Working Group shared respective organizational charts and discussed details of reporting and decision-making structures during phone conversations, email correspondence, and in a face-to-face meeting.
Monographs Processing Services (MPS) has a Divisional Director that includes a copy cataloging department which consists of three individual units, and a monographs acquisitions department (MAS) with two individual units. Decisions affecting policy and procedure within MAS are discussed between the department Head and the Order Unit Librarian and brought to the larger division as information sharing. Policy and procedural decisions affecting the MPS Division are discussed and agreed upon in consultation with the Division Director and all unit Librarians. Changes to policy and procedure that affect other acquisitions and cataloging divisions are discussed at the Print & Electronic Resources Coordination (PERC) committee. Fiscal and budgetary issues and possible policy and procedural changes affecting acquisitions and Collection Development are discussed at Materials Budget Group (MBG) meetings. Issues regarding selection, collection, and budgets with regards to selectors are discussed at the Selectors Discussion Group (SDG) meetings.
Acquisitions and Automated Technical Services (AATS) is directed by Boaz Nadav-Manes, and consists of Copy Cataloging/Inputting, Ordering and Gifts, Receiving and Documents, and Batch Processing and Metadata Management. Procedural decisions are made by the administrative supervisor or coordinator of that unit in consultation with the director of AATS. Policy decisions are made by the director of AATS who consults with one or all of the appropriate unit supervisors or coordinators as needed.
Columbia and Cornell appear to have similar reporting and decision-making structures. At Columbia, MAS is a department with two individual units (BIH and OAR), an OAR Unit Librarian, and a department head, whereas Cornell’s AATS is divided into individual units with supervisors or coordinators leading the functions.
Summarize significant similarities and differences between policies, practices and workflows in the Ordering Units at Columbia and Cornell.
Investigation: Members of the Working Group shared and posted respective documentation on policies, practices and workflows on Basecamp and the 2CUL wiki. Details regarding these documents were discussed in phone conversations, email correspondence, and in a face-to-face meeting.
Please see "Inventory of Policies, Practices & Workflows - Columbia," "Inventory of Policies, Practices & Workflows - Cornell," and "Significant Similarities & Differences."
The OAR Unit at Columbia ingests order requests from selectors by email, the Pre-Order Online Form (POOF), GOBI, and drop-offs in the Selector Review Area. Columbia processes “Priority 1” orders (patron requests, course reserves, regular rush) first before other orders. A majority of the orders are submitted with vendors pre-assigned by selectors and in the case of selections made in GOBI, are ordered with Columbia’s main domestic vendor YBP. Order requests submitted without an assigned vendor are assigned vendors based on country of publication, or language.
Cornell's acquisitions department receives orders from selectors through World Cat Select (WCS), POOF, email, and drop off/order tray. Cornell staff are committed to processing orders within 48 hours of receiving them. For orders placed in WCS or POOF, vendors are assigned by a complex matrix associated with each platform. The matrix relies on several criteria, including place and date of publication, language, type of material, and type of order (i.e. rush, Inter-Library Loan, reserve). Orders which do not fit the criteria outlined in the matrix are "kicked out" to folders from which ordering staff can manually handle the purchase order and assign the appropriate vendor.
Both Columbia and Cornell handle similar material, process priority and non-priority orders, and receive them in similar ways. However, there are significant differences in policies, practices and workflows between the two institutions and some of these are inherent in the systems utilized to ingest and place orders. Columbia utilizes GOBI as its main discovery, selection and ordering tool for domestic and UK imprints that are not specialized material, e.g., fine art and architecture and music scores. The POOF is primarily used by selectors to submit orders, then OAR staff enter the orders directly into Voyager after ingesting the record using WorldCat’s Connexion. OAR Unit staff are authorized to approve purchase orders in Voyager and are reviewed by the Order Unit Librarian or Head, MAS before they are forwarded to vendors.
Cornell does not use GOBI in the same manner as Columbia. Cornell’s primary discovery, selection and ordering tool is WCS, and increasingly, Cornell selectors are using POOF to submit orders, making it possible for the purchase order to be created automatically. The daily approval of new orders at Cornell is performed as an activity discreet from the creation of orders activity. Not all Cornell ordering staff handle the daily approval function, but there are currently 5-6 staff across AATS who are trained to do it. Cornell ordering staff use a carefully-maintained spreadsheet to determine correct vendor or change automatically-assigned vendor, when appropriate.
Summarize dependencies and limitations in working with other functional units at Columbia and Cornell.
Investigation: Members of the Working Group shared and posted respective documentation on dependencies and limitations on Basecamp and the 2CUL wiki and discussed details during phone conversations, and a face-to-face meeting.
Please see "Dependencies & Limitations."
Columbia and Cornell’s ordering units depend on external departments such as collection development, Information Technology (IT), and accounting departments, which can sometimes inhibit their ordering processes. Columbia cannot conduct business with a vendor until it has been set up by the university’s vendor management team. Cornell's policy is a bit less rigid in regard to doing business with new vendors. Credit cards are strictly controlled at Columbia and only the Order Unit Librarian and Head, MAS possess credit cards for firm ordering. Several of Cornell’s ordering staff have their own credit cards, and track those purchases carefully on individually-maintained spreadsheets. Both Columbia and Cornell rely on their respective collection development departments whenever an order is submitted on an overspent fund. Columbia must ask for collection development’s permission to proceed on orders over $500. Cornell staff must ask a member of the accounting department to handle individual credit card purchases which exceed $500.
Summarize available baseline productivity numbers in the receiving departments at Columbia and Cornell.
Investigation: Members of the Working Group shared and posted respective documentation on baseline productivity numbers between fiscal years 2009 and 2012 on Basecamp and the 2CUL wiki. The productivity numbers were discussed in detail during phone conversations, email correspondence, and a face-to-face meeting.
Please see "Baseline Productivity Numbers - Ordering Group."
As mentioned in the summary of staffing and expertise section of this report, the processing of Columbia's CJKT material takes place in C.V. Starr East Asian Library, which is physically and organizationally outside of the Monographs Processing Services Division at Columbia. Cornell processes materials in CJKT within their central library technical services division. This organizational difference explicates the three distinct groups of baseline productivity numbers displayed in our reports: Columbia, Columbia-Starr (C.V. Starr East Asian Library), and Cornell. The overall numbers show a steady decline in the quantity of firm orders for Columbia and Cornell, while Starr’s productivity numbers have stayed relatively the same over the same span of time. Cornell’s numbers with CJKT are higher than Columbia’s without CJKT. However, Columbia’s productivity numbers combined with Starr’s CJKT numbers are higher overall than Cornell’s.
Recommendations regarding a work plan and critical issues to explore in Phase 2 of the group’s assignment.
The ordering function is an area where it's more possible to imagine an integrated environment than many other technical services functions because of the nature of an order as opposed to actually handling a physical piece. For example, Columbia could order books for Cornell, and have them delivered to Cornell, especially when we arrive at the place where we use the same library management system.
Issues to explore:
- Might Cornell be able to use its corporate Amazon account to order materials for Columbia?
- Might Columbia selectors be able to better streamline the ordering process by making better use of the POOF interface?
- Might the two institutions be able to share one ordering specialist for more difficult/challenging-to-obtain items?