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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.
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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.
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