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The four Monograph Ordering Team members met at Columbia in late February and spent several very productive hours reviewing the workflows and customs for the basic ordering practices for each institution. The inventory of Columbia's Columbia’s routines is at InventoryPracticesPoliciesCOL-Final and Cornell's Cornell’s similar document is at InventoryPracticesPoliciesCOR-Final. Cornell's workflow procedures are available at Cornell Ordering Procedures.
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The team developed a list of points of similarities and differences in order unit Order Unit processing techniques, to keep track of where we can make early impact and where we will have to invest more time and resources to bring our tools, policies, and procedures together. The document focuses on the common tools we use and the basic procedures which are executed to the same end and yet with a very different approach. The document points out issues like CJK materials being handled centrally at Cornell, but in a separate library at Columbia and is at Similarities_Differences-Final.
6. Establishing baseline productivity and staffing at each institution to allow for future assessment of changes and development associated with 2CUL TSI;
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The ordering function is an area where it's more possible to imagine an integrated environment than many other technical services functions because of the nature of an order as opposed to actually handling a physical piece. That isFor example, Columbia could order books for Cornell, and have them delivered to Cornell, especially when we get to the point of using the same library management system.
Critical issues Issues to explore:
- Might Cornell be able to use its corporate Amazon account to order materials for Columbia?
- Might Columbia selectors be able to better streamline the ordering process by making better use of the POOF interface?
- Might the two institutions be able to share one ordering specialist for more difficult/challenging-to-obtain items?