Occasional Progress Report #8 – Sept. 26, 2013
Hi everyone:
Here’s the latest update on 2CUL Technical Services Integration (TSI). This report, along with past updates, is also available in the Project Reports section of the TSI wiki.
1. As we mentioned last time, the TSI functional working groups completed the first phase of their assignments in the late summer. A collection of the groups’ Recommendations, Ideas, and Suggestions, along with links to their full reports, is now available on the wiki. The TSI Steering Committee wishes to thank all those who have participated (so far!) in these working groups – see below for a complete list of these dedicated souls.* Meanwhile, the E-Resources Troubleshooting Team has continued its investigation of systems, software, and possible shared workflows with an eye towards integrating this function within the next few months.
2. TSI Steering has recommended the appointment of a Joint Senior Managers Integration Network (JSMIN) to help move TSI forward over the next several months – primarily in regard to balancing present staff and resource needs with the additional effort required to initiate integration as well as implement a shared LMS. This team will be composed of current members of the TSI Steering Committee, plus those technical services directors at both institutions that do not currently serve on the steering group: Sarah Elman, Joyce McDonough, and Mark Wilson (from Columbia), and Bill Kara and Chew Chiat Naun (from Cornell). JSMIN (pronounced “Jasmine”) will begin its work with in-person meetings at Cornell on October 23-24.
3. Columbia will be recruiting someone from Cornell’s Library Technical Services (LTS) to serve on the search committee to replace Ilona Bicsak as Director of Monographs Processing Services (MPS) in Columbia’s Bibliographic Services and Collection Development Group. Cornell will also be playing a role in candidate interviews for a Chinese language cataloger position at Columbia.
4. Sarah Elman (Head of Technical Services at Columbia’s Starr East Asian Library) reports that her visit to Cornell in the late-summer was an informative one, and that she is “certain that we can learn from one another and collaborate in many ways as we continue our 2CUL TSI discussions.” In addition to meeting with a number of LTS and Wason East Asia Library staff, Sarah joined Cornell staff at their annual Library Picnic.
5. Cornell’s Apikanya McCarty recently cataloged a set of twelve Thai-language maps on behalf of Columbia using scans as surrogates of the physical items: a small but noteworthy indication of how 2CUL TSI will increase our shared processing scope – see OCLC # 857004920. Thanks to Columbia’s Carol Pardo for suggesting this approach. If anyone else has ideas about expertise we can share or other ways we can collaborate, please contact your supervisor, Kate Harcourt, or Jim LeBlanc.
6. Kate and Chew Chiat Naun are currently working together on a document for the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) on relationship designators in authority records.
7. 2CUL found its way into a presentation that Kate recently gave as part of Columbia’s Tech Lightning Talk series. Entitled “Using Basecamp for Project Management in the 2CUL Technical Services Integration Project,” Kate’s talk contrasted using Basecamp (project management software that several of us have adopted for 2CUL planning) with using Confluence (our wiki software) for public information and the project’s permanent record.
8. Finally, a reminder that we continue to add information to the TSI wiki frequently. While notes and minutes from phone calls and meetings may appeal to only the most earnest among us, the sections on 2CUL Articles & Presentations and Other Consolidations and Integrations may be of more general interest. These pages contain what we ourselves have been saying publicly about 2CUL and TSI, as well as reports from relevant reorganization efforts at other institutions. Most recently, we added a link to the University of California’s Next-Generation Technical Services (NGTS) Management Team’s report on their effort “to move Technical Services operations to the network level and to pursue a transformative approach to the ‘backend’ infrastructure needed to support the user discovery experience.” UC’s initiative included the establishment of a number of POT working groups, an acronym with more interesting overtones than most.
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)
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* TSI functional working group members thru Phase 1 (Spring-Summer 2013)
Pedro Arroyo (Monograph Ordering & Copy Cataloging)
Gary Bertchume (Batch Processing)
Robbie Blitz (Non-MARC Metadata)
Gary Branch (Batch Processing)
Sarah Elman (Copy Cataloging)
Steven Folsom (Non-MARC Metadata)
Joan Jocson-Singh (Monograph Ordering)
Jesse Koennecke (E-Resources Troubleshooting)
Irina Kandarasheva (Copy Cataloging)
Bill Kara (E-Resources)
Jason Kovari (Non-MARC Metadata)
Wendy Kozlowski (Non-MARC Metadata)
Susan Marcin (E-Resources Troubleshooting)
Lisa Maybury (Monograph Receiving)
Joyce McDonough (E-Resources & E-Resources Troubleshooting)
Russell Merritt (Original Cataloging)
Liisa Mobley (E-Resources Troubleshooting)
Dave Motson (Database Maintenance)
Chew Chiat Naun (Original Cataloging)
Evelyn Ocken (Batch Processing)
Matt Pavlick (Monograph Ordering & Monograph Receiving)
Lois Purcell (Monograph Ordering)
Cynthia Rich (Copy Cataloging)
Sarah Ross (Original Cataloging)
Alan Schaplowsky (Print Serials)
Pam Stansbury (Original Cataloging)
Susan Summer (Original Cataloging)
Barb Tarbox (Database Maintenance)
Melanie Wacker (Non-MARC Metadata & Original Cataloging)
Deb Warfield (Print Serials)
Mark Wilson (Batch Processing)