2CUL Print Serials team
Report – Phase 1: Investigation
The distinguishing feature of serials is their on-going and changing nature. Libraries have created procedures and staffing to accommodate the peculiarities of the genre. Creating records that accurately reflect the repeated payments and receipts are the two most prominent challenges presented. Given the large number of titles, the monitoring of the subscriptions requires constant effort. Over the life of a serial the publisher may make many changes including focus, title, frequency, and format; the publisher may sell the journal to another press. In addition, the libraries’ commitment to a particular title may change over time, given space constraints, collection development and changing research needs. Staff working with print material gain familiarity with the institution’s historical practices and unique adaptations.
In an integrated environment, this fluidity and historical license will require extensive documentation, coordination, adaptability and excellent communication skills and tools from the staff involved to address these peculiarities.
Compile an inventory of print serials staff and expertise and compare job assignments.
The team has compared print serial tasks across institutions and noted the staff responsible for these tasks. There are major differences in organization and responsibility. Columbia has centralized checkin for annuals, non-periodical serials, monographic series and sets; Cornell has centralized checkin for most serial material and disseminates received issues on a daily basis. Columbia central print serials staff also has responsibility for adding bound periodicals as they are returned from the commercial bindery. Currently, Cornell print serials staff located in Mann prepare the Mann library materials for bindery and add to the holdings. This will change in September when serials staff return to Olin and all bindery processing will be the responsibility of the access services and bindery departments.
At Cornell, ordering, invoice payments, cancellations and complex correspondence are handled by the central serials staff with oversight by the supervisor, who processes renewal instructions.
At Columbia, central print serials staff performs the tasks of ordering, cancelling, payment, and renewal. (East Asian Library performs these functions for materials in the vernacular CJKT languages.) Binding functions are handled by staff in the individual library.
In both institutions, staff have language expertise. With various changes in collection development, the acquisition of material in foreign languages is a smaller percentage of the overall workload.
In both institutions, policies for claiming missing issues have changed over time. Claims are processed on receipts, when requested by selectors and identified during binding.
At Cornell, as more subscriptions have evolved into the electronic, the print serials unit has adapted to the change. These include additional responsibilities related to the electronic subscription: maintaining title lists, managing publisher packages, ordering electronic resources. At Columbia, a separate electronic resources unit handles these responsibilities.
Create an inventory of all policies, practices, tools, and workflows related to print serials at both institutions; include and evaluate reporting and decision-making structures.
Policies and procedures for both CUL’s are posted on their wiki sites, and the individual tasks and responsibilities are comparable where they match. For improved tracking, Columbia has created Google forms for cancellation requests, new standing order requests, and collecting staff work statistics. Columbia uses email aliases extensively as a method for sharing work information and problem resolution.
Reporting structures (Columbia, including Starr East Asian library)
Staff working with print serials typically report to a supervisor who is responsible for (hiring), training, assigning work, and revising the work of the staff. Staff in the individual libraries often report to a bibliographer and/or the head of technical functions in the department library.
Reporting structures for Cornell
Staff working in the serials unit report to a supervisor who is responsible for hiring, training, assigning work, and reviewing the work of the staff. Departmental staff reports to a bibliographer/librarian who manages the technical services functions in the department library.
Decision-making structures (both institutions)
Decisions about how print serials work is done are usually matters of sequence and priority. Conflicts between procedures and new situations are brought to the supervisor (and/or other administrators).
Broader decisions about print serials are generally not made by staff working with print serials. Decisions and changes are communicated to them by selectors , publishers and cataloging staff. In addition the demands of individual library collections often inject adjustments and changes to records and handling procedures in order to accommodate them.
Dependencies/limitations (Columbia)
Staff working with print serials usually are limited by function or happening location in Voyager records (e.g. department staff can checkin and claim for their locations only). Changes and maintenance of records require decisions and attention from cataloging staff and/or selectors. (e.g., change of location, change of funding, change of vendor, claiming, renewing). Generally user profiles defined in Voyager limit updates to holdings. There are various particular limitations: Staff East Asian locations are not available to central staff; only supervisors can create and/or delete order or invoice records; record updating/maintenance is generally made as a request to central staff; vendor and fund records are maintained and created by Acquisitions Accounting. Problems and exceptions are handled by supervisors.
Dependencies/limitations (Cornell)
Print serials staff is not limited by function although some user profiles in Voyager limit updates to Voyager records (bib records cannot be deleted if attached to a purchase order). Requests for changes or maintenance of records received from selectors that require attention from cataloging staff are forwarded to the serials cataloger, although most bibliographic changes are processed by the serials unit. Vendor records are created by serials staff and “fund of record” for orders are changed as requested. Fund transfers are processed by serials staff. Central accounting is responsible for the payment processing and the date when actual check or wire transfer is sent for payment is controlled by credits against the vendor’s account. Payments processed by Procurement cards are limited to $500. Problems and exceptions are handled by supervisors.
If possible, establish baseline productivity numbers for future assessment.
For Columbia, statistics of staff activities compared to hours worked suggests a very general quantitative productivity number, but the major work load for print serials includes a very broad span of activities, situations, and changes which do not lend themselves to standardized responses.
Suggestions:
Because the requirements of print serials are so distinct and dependent on the organizational structures, we have found potential shared activities rather limited. It is hard to see how staff at the two organizations could effectively substitute for each other. However, making the organizational structures more similar (e.g., re-centralizing checkin at Columbia, discontinuing series and sets orders at Columbia) might lead to greater similarity in staff expectations and procedures. With the changes in Cornell’s handling of binding tasks, Columbia may also want to reconsider where responsibility for binding and adding is located.
The team considers ongoing exchange of information about serials in general and specific serial problems as beneficial to both institutions. Perhaps both staffs could utilize a blog or Facebook page for problem and solution sharing. Changes in handling print serials at each institution should be shared with the other.
There may also be some possibility of combining the title lists from both institutions which might result in more desirable service charges, and broader collection development cooperation.
Cornell’s documentation (certainly in the area of print serials) is notably more robust than Columbia’s, and sharing documentation and its upkeep would be very useful, although there are limits to what can be standardized between the two institutions.