Occasional Progress Report #10 -- Jan. 6, 2014
Hi everyone:
Here’s the latest on what’s been happening with TSI --
1. With the start of the New Year, the second phase of TSI planning has now begun. The aim of TSI Phase 2 is to begin the incremental integration of technical services workflows, practices, policies, and projects in ways that are mutually beneficial to both institutions. This “soft” integration is scheduled to take place over an 18-month period, during which the functional working groups established in 2013 will leverage their new knowledge and understanding of each other’s operations to: (a) evaluate and test options for streamlining or improving workflows, individually or jointly, to maximize effectiveness and improve service to users, (b) investigate ways to expand the collective scope of 2CUL technical services in cost-effective ways, and (c) work with TSI Steering, JSMIN, and other stakeholders to extend TSI models, innovations, insights, and cultural synergy to other library operations and divisions. Revised charges and further information on the work of the TSI functional working groups (and other TSI teams) are available under “TSI Planning Teams” on the Project Reports page.
2. The new target date for Alma implementation is July 1, 2016. While the lack of a shared LMS will clearly have an impact on our expectations for TSI in 2015, it will not derail the project. In fact, we can now move forward more resolutely in our joint investigations of the potential benefits of 2CUL collaboration with our existing systems, now that it is clear that we will not need to engage in the heavy work of Alma implementation simultaneously with TSI planning.
3. Cornell’s Jesse Koennecke and Columbia’s Susan Marcin gave a well-attended presentation entitled “I Stream, You Stream: Streaming Experiences for 2CUL” at Cornell on December 6th. In their presentation Jesse and Susan talked about issues encountered in managing streaming video collections at Cornell and Columbia, including ordering and acquisitions, licensing, putting links and records in library catalogs and course pages, digital encoding, hosting digital content, and tracking all this information effectively. The session was sponsored by the Cornell University Library’s Selector Continuing Education Committee.
4. Wei Zheng has been hired as the new Chinese Cataloger at Columbia’s Starr East Asian Library. She will begin work on February 3rd. Also at Columbia, Naeema Akter has been appointed as a Bibliographic Assistant VI and will be working on web archiving projects and quality control. At Cornell, Hannah Marshall has been hired as the new Metadata Librarian for Image Collections in Library Technical Services (LTS), a transition from the term appointment she has held since last spring as LTS’s Image Cataloger. She has also joined the TSI Non-MARC Metadata Working Group. Hannah’s appointment allows Jason Kovari to take on the role of Web Archivist in LTS, in addition to continuing much of his ongoing work as Metadata Librarian for Humanities & Special Collections. In other Cornell staffing news, Heather Shipman has been appointed as LTS’s E-Resource Acquisition Specialist to replace the recently retired Jim Spear, a promotion from her previous assignment as E-Resources Acquisitions Assistant.
That’s all for this time. As always, please feel free to direct questions to your supervisors or to any member of the TSI Steering Committee: Adam Chandler, Kate Harcourt, Colleen Major, Boaz Nadav-Manes, Robert Rendall, or me.
- Jim LeBlanc (on behalf of the 2CUL TSI Steering Committee)