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Columbia has 4 FTE in the Order and Receiving Unit (OAR) who place firm orders and receive firm ordered material. One FTE in the OAR Unit is assigned 35% cataloging duties. OAR staff possess language skills at a sufficient enough level to place orders, correspond with international vendors, and catalog some firm ordered material upon receipt. The OAR Unit does not firm order Chinese-Japanese-Korean-Tibetan (CJKT) material as the processing of material in CJKT languages occurs in the technical services department at C.V. Starr East Asian Library.
At Cornell, all ordering staff also receive some material but not all staff who perform receiving also perform the ordering function. Four Cornell ordering staff who are devoted to languages in non-roman scripts, also receive all materials in those languages. Additionally, Cornell staff who order special materials with individual procurement cards, receive the materials they order with their procurement cards. And since all ordering staff are cross-trained to do receiving, when time and workloads permit, Cornell ordering staff handle more traditional receiving.
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Columbia and Cornell appear to have similar reporting and decision-making structures. At Columbia, MAS is a department with two individual units (BIH and OAR), an OAR Unit Librarian, and a department head, whereas Cornell's Cornell’s AATS is divided into individual units with supervisors or coordinators leading the functions.
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The OAR Unit at Columbia ingests order requests from selectors by email, the Pre-Order Online Form (POOF), GOBI, and drop-offs in the Selector Review Area. Columbia processes "Priority 1" “Priority 1” orders (patron requests, course reserves, regular rush) first before other orders. A majority of the orders are submitted with vendors pre-assigned by selectors and in the case of selections made in GOBI, are ordered with Columbia's Columbia’s main domestic vendor YBP. Order requests submitted without an assigned vendor are assigned vendors based on country of publication, or language.
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Both Columbia and Cornell handle similar material, process priority and non-priority orders, and receive them in similar ways. However, there are significant differences in policies, practices and workflows between the two institutions and some of these are inherent in the systems utilized to ingest and place orders. Columbia utilizes GOBI as its main discovery, selection and ordering tool for domestic and UK imprints that are not specialized material, e.g., fine art and architecture and music scores. The POOF is primarily used by selectors to submit orders, then OAR staff enter the orders directly into Voyager after ingesting the record using WorldCat's WorldCat’s Connexion. OAR Unit staff are authorized to approve purchase orders in Voyager and are reviewed by the Order Unit Librarian or Head, MAS before they are forwarded to vendors.
Cornell does not use GOBI in the same manner as Columbia. Cornell's Cornell’s primary discovery, selection and ordering tool is WCS, and increasingly, Cornell selectors are using POOF to submit orders, making it possible for the purchase order to be created automatically. The daily approval of new orders at Cornell is performed as an activity discreet from the creation of orders activity. Not all Cornell ordering staff handle the daily approval function, but there are currently 5-6 staff across AATS who are trained to do it. Cornell ordering staff use a carefully-maintained spreadsheet to determine correct vendor or change automatically-assigned vendor, when appropriate.
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Please see "Dependencies & Limitations."
Columbia and Cornell's Cornell’s ordering units depend on external departments such as collection development, Information Technology (IT), and accounting departments, which can sometimes inhibit their ordering processes. Columbia cannot conduct business with a vendor until it has been set up by the university's university’s vendor management team. Cornell's policy is a bit less rigid in regard to doing business with new vendors. Credit cards are strictly controlled at Columbia and only the Order Unit Librarian and Head, MAS possess credit cards for firm ordering. Several of Cornell's Cornell’s ordering staff have their own credit cards, and track those purchases carefully on individually-maintained spreadsheets. Both Columbia and Cornell rely on their respective collection development departments whenever an order is submitted on an overspent fund. Columbia must ask for collection development's development’s permission to proceed on orders over $500. Cornell staff must ask a member of the accounting department to handle individual credit card purchases which exceed $500.
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As mentioned in the summary of staffing and expertise section of this report, the processing of Columbia's CJKT material takes place in C.V. Starr East Asian Library, which is physically and organizationally outside of the Monographs Processing Services Division at Columbia. Cornell processes materials in CJKT within their central library technical services division. This organizational difference explicates the three distinct groups of baseline productivity numbers displayed in our reports: Columbia, Columbia-Starr (C.V. Starr East Asian Library), and Cornell. The overall numbers show a steady decline in the quantity of firm orders for Columbia and Cornell, while Starr's Starr’s productivity numbers have stayed relatively the same over the same span of time. Cornell's Cornell’s numbers with CJKT are higher than Columbia's Columbia’s without CJKT. However, Columbia's Columbia’s productivity numbers combined with Starr's Starr’s CJKT numbers are higher overall than Cornell'sCornell’s.
Recommendations regarding a work plan and critical issues to explore in Phase 2 of the group's group’s assignment.
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. For example, Columbia could order books for Cornell, and have them delivered to Cornell, especially when we arrive at the place where we use the same library management system.
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