Occasional Progress Report 5---May 29, 2013
Hi everyone:
Here is the latest news on 2CUL Technical Services Integration. If you missed any of the previous reports, they may be found on our wiki.
Cornell CONSER Review
Columbia's serials cataloger Robert Rendall served as Cornell's CONSER RDA cataloging reviewer during the month of April. Cornell submitted three batches of serials cataloging, including titles in Chinese and Thai as well as English. Review was completed successfully and Cornell is now an independent contributor of CONSER RDA cataloging, although Robert will remain available for consultation in the future if needed.
New Staff at Cornell and Columbia
Chew Chiat Naun (called Naun informally) is the new Director of Cataloging & Metadata Services at Cornell. Naun holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Melbourne (Australia) and M.A.’s in both Philosophy and Librarianship from Monash University. He has a combined 15 years of experience in bibliographic control and information technology, including over 5 years with the University of Minnesota as their Principal Cataloger / Cataloging Strategist. He is the author or co-author of several articles on bibliographic control and librarianship in general in both Australian and North American journals, and has served on or led a number of ALA ALCTS and PCC committees and interest groups. As part of 2CUL, Sarah Elman served on the search committee. Thank you Sarah! Naun will serve as the Cornell lead on the Original Cataloging Functional Team which is chaired by Susan Summer from Columbia.
Yi Jin joined Cornell’s LTS on May 6th as Technical Services Assistant IV and will have duties in copy cataloging, batch processing and ordering with a focus on Chinese language. Yi is first being trained in copy cataloging and with a Masters Degree in computing she will be able to contribute to further Technical Services automation in the future.
Sarah Vargason will be joining Cornell on June 3rd. She has an MLIS from Kent State and is currently the certified cataloger of all nine libraries in the Bradford County Public Library system. Sarah will have duties that cover a wide range of TS activities: Cataloging, Acquisitions, and some Batch Processing.
At Columbia, Anna Perricci recently started as a grant funded web curator. Anna has an MLS from the University of Michigan and has held positions in the Occupy Wall Street Archives Working Group, ARTstor, the FIGMENT Project and the New York Public Library. Christina Harlow and Hoda Hassanein recently joined OSMC in grant-funded BA VI positions. Hoda will assist Alex Thurman in web archiving projects and Christina will assist Melanie Wacker in metadata clean up projects. Christina wrote a well-received paper on 2CUL for library school! This and other presentations may be found on the wiki.
These positions include the potential to address library cooperative agreements such as 2CUL as needs arise.
Reports from the Field
On Friday, May 17 Alex Thurman presented a talk entitled "Web archiving in context and close-up" at the Cornell Metadata Working Group Forum, following an overview by the MWG's chair, Jason Kovari, of Cornell's web archiving activities. Alex's presentation situated Columbia's Web Resources Collection Program within the context of web archiving activity worldwide, then drilled down into some of the challenges of creating and providing access to web archives, including a demonstration of Columbia's Human Rights Web Archive portal. The prior evening Alex enjoyed a welcoming dinner with Jason, Adam Chandler, Chew Chiat Naun and Pam Stansbury. On the way to catch the bus to return to New York City, Alex and Jason saw the fences that had been in place for 3 years being removed from the Stone Arch Bridge over Cascadilla Gorge.
At this point all Functional Teams are appointed and working on the first phase of their charges. Just as a reminder, charges for the Functional teams and other documentation may be found on the 2CUL wiki.
Monograph Receiving Working Group: Matt Pavlick (Columbia--Chair) and Lisa Maybury (Cornell)
The 2CUL TSI Monograph Receiving Working Group has compiled an inventory of monograph receiving staff and expertise, shared procedural documentation, reviewed this documentation, and discussed it over the phone (notes to be posted to the Confluence Wiki shortly). The next steps are to compile an inventory of all policies, practices and workflows involving receiving activities at both institutions, identify dependencies and limitations, and establishing baseline numbers. The chair of the Monograph Receiving Working Group is planning to visit Cornell in early June to tour the facilities and to firm up the "next steps" part of this process.
Non-MARC Metadata Working Group: Melanie Wacker (Columbia), Jason Kovari (Cornell – chair)
The non-MARC Metadata Working Group met on-site at Columbia, April 29-30; brief notes from this meeting are linked from our wiki page. In addition to meeting, the WG has drafted our report narrative for the first three tasks of our charge; we have internal deadlines for drafting the following two tasks and are on-schedule to complete the final report during July.
Monograph Ordering Working Group: Matthew Pavlick (Columbia lead), Lois Purcell (Cornell lead & chair)
Matt and I are satisfied that we are on track to start writing our brief report to satisfy Phase I in the coming weeks. What remains outstanding is “establishing baseline productivity numbers for ordering processes and staffing at each institution to allow for future assessment of changes and development associated with 2CUL TSI.” We are currently pulling the numbers together and will be posting them to the confluence wiki soon and begin drafting our report shortly thereafter.
Database Maintenance Working Group: Dave Motson (Columbia). Barb Tarbox (Cornell -- chair)
The Group has compiled a list of Database Maintenance tasks performed by staff at both Cornell and Columbia. We have been reviewing and comparing the work needed to be done for each task and the similarities and differences between Cornell and Columbia. As we work through this process, we are gaining a better understanding of policies, practices and workflows at both Cornell and Columbia.
Batch Processing Working Group: Mark Wilson (Columbia -- chair), Gary Branch (Cornell)
The Batch Processing Working Group has worked on gathering comprehensive inventories for batch processes conducted both at Cornell and Columbia. This data is being placed into spreadsheets that identify relevant categories, such as frequency, volume, responsible depts. etc. The group leads have conferred by telephone, email and Basecamp as to how to present this data. A merged view of comparative practices and workflows to highlight areas of possible convergence is envisioned.
Print Serials Working Group: Alan Schaplowsky (Columbia), Deb Warfield (Cornell-- Chair)
The print serials group has begun comparing staffing and operations at the two institutions. We have exchanged a few drafts of these descriptions and had a few phone conversations.
We expect to continue to exchange our responses to points in the charge, and we expect Debra will continue to post on the wiki news of any significant progress toward the goals of the charge.
Copy Cataloging Working Group: *Irina Kandarasheva (Columbia--Chair). Cynthia Rich (Cornell) *
Cynthia Rich and Irina Kandarasheva had three hour long phone conversations discussing copy cataloging practices at Columbia and Cornell on 3/20, 4/17, and 5/14. At the moment the group is concentrating on the inventory part of the charge. The members of the group have exchanged org. charts, job descriptions, and tasks related to copy cataloging staff, and looked at some of the in-house copy cataloging documentation at Columbia and Cornell. The group is in a process of compiling a list of staff members, language expertise and brief job responsibilities of paraprofessionals involved in copy cataloging activities at both institutions.
E-Resources Troubleshooting Team: Jesse Koennecke (Cornell chair) Susan Marcin (Columbia)
The Group has completed its Phase 1 report.
E Resources Working Group: Joyce McDonough (Columbia), Bill Kara (Cornell -- chair)
Joyce McDonough and Bill Kara have held weekly calls to discuss different aspects of e-resources work at each institution noting similarities and differences in our operations. A charge is being written for a sub-group to investigate knowledge bases available to and used by Columbia and/ Cornell in their management of e-resources.
2CUL Meeting at Columbia May 14-15
Boaz, Jim and Adam came to Columbia for a TSI Steering Committee meeting. A highlight was touring the new NYPL Library Services Center which combines technical services for New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library. Book Ops is located in a rather desolate section of Long Island City.
We were especially impressed by the futuristic book sorting machine which reads barcodes and queries data from their OPAC to quickly sort hundreds of books a day for transport by location and call number to the branch libraries.
The Steering Committee also held a series of meetings with functional team leads, Human Resources, Collection Development and held a well-attended Open House for all staff.
As always questions may be sent to any of us!
Kate Harcourt, Jim LeBlanc, Adam Chandler, Robert Rendall, Colleen Major, Boaz Nadav-Manes