Cataloging Department Annual Report
July 2000-June 2001
By Magda El Sherbini,
Head, Cataloging Department
I. SUMMARY:
The Cataloging Department successfully completed the cataloging of 46,481 titles in the year 2000/2001. This includes 32,691 new receipts and 13,647 retrocon projects (converting cards and cataloging analytics). The following are details of the cataloging Department accomplishments from June 2000/July 2001. See attached statistics generated from OSCAR.Cataloging newly received materials:
The Cataloging Department kept current in cataloging the newly received materials, as this is Cataloging's first priority for all formats and all languages (except for serials, which are the responsibility of another department). This includes complex copy cataloging and original cataloging for Western language materials and original and all copy cataloging for non roman language materials. In addition to the new receipts, the Cataloging Department continued to catalog the overflow materials forwarded from the Monograph Department. In July 2000/June 2001, the Department members cataloged 32,691 titles. This includes
ITK: 1563 Baggs: 176 EL: 1,500 UMI Express 852 A. Johnson collection 979 Regional Campus 3577 OSU Thesis 1392 -
Retrospective conversion projects:
In addition to keeping current with the cataloging of the newly received materials, the Cataloging Department members were involved in cataloging many other retrocon projects. 13,647 titles were cataloged this year:
Card retrocon 6850 Analytic retrocon 6940 The Cataloging Department used the students hours effectively and these students were involved in the actual cataloging and the production. In addition, some Cataloging staff was given overtime to work on some of these projects.
II. DETAILS OF THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS ON THE CATALOGING PROJECTS:
Arthur E. Baggs Memorial Library project:
Upon the request of Susan Wyngaard, the Head of Fine Arts library, the Cataloging Department launched a new project to catalog the Arthur E. Baggs Memorial Library at Hopkins Hall. M. El-Sherbini and J. Murphy planned the project. The collection consists of approximately 1500 titles, mostly about ceramics, and many of the ceramic art objects in the Baggs Collection. The project will be divided into two parts: 1) cataloging the printed collection; 2) cataloging the ceramic art objects. At the end of December, 176titles were cataloged.
Cataloging the EL, AH, and PREA project:
Upon Jim Bracken’s request, the Cataloging Department launched a new project to catalog about 14,000 titles classified in local call numbers EL (English Literature). M. El-Sherbini planned this project, and Wilma Steele was assigned to this reclassification project. Progress in this project is very slow due to the Cataloging staff involvement in many other projects. As of December, about 1,400 titles were cataloged.
Cataloging the OhioLink IT Knowledge:
The Head of the Cataloging Department has volunteered the department to catalog the OhioLINK IT Knowledge titles, a collection of about 1400 electronic monographs (E books), specifically software guidebooks and related IT materials. Although OSUL has never actively collected this type of material in paper format, we have cataloged a great many as these were selectively added to our holdings. M. El-Sherbini worked with OCLC and OhioLINK staff to catalog these materials. J. Murphy and J. Diaz are designated to catalog this collection. As of December, all 1563 titles were cataloged. The director of the library, the library’s colleagues and other librarians outside Ohio positively commented completing this project.
UMI Dissertation Express:
The Cataloging Department continues to receive and catalog the UMI Dissertation Express. This year, 852 titles were cataloged.
Cataloging Electronic Theses and Dissertations:
This year, The Cataloging Department started to catalog Electronic Theses and Dissertations. In order to do the cataloging, M. EL-Sherbini attended OhioLink DMS to discuss the cataloging issues. J. Murphy and M. El-Sherbini wrote the cataloging guidelines and participated in Graduate School workshop to discuss the impact of providing the online information on the cataloging. J. Murphy already cataloged 7 titles and is current in cataloging these materials.
The Arnold S. Johnson Collection:
The Arnold S. Johnson Collection of radical literature originally consisted of 118 cartons of materials. Many of these materials were evaluated by library and university faculty and processed by the Cataloging Department in the mid 1980s. Approximately 1300 titles were added to the system at that time. The remaining pamphlets were stored in filing cabinets in the History Graduate Library. At the request of David Lincove, History Grad librarian, we began processing these remaining items in 1999. The pamphlets (which were usually in English, often discussed communism, socialism or anarchism and were mainly published in the 1920s-1960s) were used for beginning cataloging training for new staff members and GAAs in the Cataloging Department. All of the pieces were pam bound after cataloging and sent to STX. The collection contains 3648 titles. This year we cataloged 979 titles and since the project started, 3201 have been completely cataloged and the remaining 447 titles (which are the most difficult) are being processed.
GOV DOC microfiche:
In January 2000, the Cataloging Department received a box of 1181 Government Document microfiche. These date back to 1996. J. Murphy developed workflow guidelines on how to handle this substantial backlog. (Not completed)
Analytics Back Issues requests:
There are currently 62 analytics requests that the Cataloging Department has accepted because of the needs of collection managers. These are conservatively estimated as the equivalent of around one million analytic titles that must be cataloged. No progress was made this year.
Retrospective conversion of 40,000 cards returned from TALX:
In this year, the Cataloging Department announced the completion of cataloging of about 29,000 cards returned form TALX in 1999. This includes cataloging of 18,885 western languages monographic cards (12,762 copy and original cataloging, 6,123 duplicate) for OSU Libraries excluding Regional Campuses, Law Library and Music Library (8,000 cards were sent to Law, and 3,000 cards were sent to Music library for conversion) and 10,115 cards for non-roman languages. This project was done by opening of overtime for staff with high-level experience in cataloging to work on this project between 10-15 hours per pay period. We also hired and trained several student assistants to work with the staff and to do the simple cataloging. The department received many positive comments from the library colleagues and the director.
In November 2000, we discovered another 2 boxes of cards (about 17,000) and found out that they were part of the TALX project. The Cataloging Department started this project immediately and has cataloged 6,850 titles since the project began in November 2000.
Analytics retrocon (Tracing file)
The guidelines for the Retrocon Analytic Project were tested in November 1999 and the actual project started in December 1999. Initially there were over 52,000 records that needed to be properly identified, updated, exported and overlaid in the OCLC system in order to reflect proper holdings, and other pertinent information. The project started at a slow pace, as it was a low priority until the cataloging staff completed other retrocon projects. In April 2000 the focus turned to analytic retrocon when four staff members, who used to work on the card retrocon project, started to work overtime on the analytic project. Those members worked between 10 and 20 hours of overtime per pay period per person; several students also helped with the project. By July 2000, after Mike Putman and Stephanie Nicol had joined the Analytics Section and been trained, they were doing analytic retrocon full time. Overtime stopped at the end of October 2000, but Mike and Steph continued to do analytic retrocon full time until December 2000 when they were given other assignments as well as analytic retrocon.
This year 6,940 analytic records were converted to full bibliographic records. Approximate 22,000 records were converted since the project started and 30,000 remained to be converted.
III) OTHER PROJECTS THAT ARE NOT RELATED TO PRODUCTION ARE:
ERIC Documents:
N. Van Pulis worked on specifications for enhanced records for ERIC documents. This includes: added authors (field 700), pagination (field 00), plus subject terms (ERIC descriptors and identifiers) in a keyword searchable field (653). This project received many positive comments because it provides a major enhancement of OSCAR and will provide more access points to users. This is one of the greatest project in which we received a very nice congratulations from the library director.
Stopping of the archive tape from OCLC and move to export function:
On April 1, 2000, the Cataloging Department stopped producing records through the OCLC archive tape. All cataloging centers adding records to OSCAR are now doing so through the export function. This eliminates the tapeloading function for ongoing cataloging and results in savings of approximately $400 per month (OHIONET and UTS charges combined).
3) New clean up project:
The Cataloging Department created a Boolean to collect all the monographic short bibliographic records still on OSCAR. We found about 66,000 short records remaining in the system. From the initial Boolean, some of these records belong to Special Collections and some are in location libraries and the main library. Magda El-Sherbini is working on a plan to identify these records, sort them out, and process them. This plan will be implemented in 2001.
4) Pinyin conversion:
The Cataloging Department started to plan for converting approximately 60,000 Chinese language records from Wade-Gale romanization to Pinyin. M. El-Sherbini chaired a Task Force to do to the planning and the implementation. As of December, the final report for the plan was submitted to Carol Diedrichs. The Non-Roman languages Section in the Cataloging Department started the implementation on October 2, 2000. We sent 1000 records as a sample record to OCLC to be converted and wrote the guidelines for reviewing this sample.
Authority processing:
During May 2000, the cataloging Department loaded 41,865 LC authority records for names, LC subjects, series and uniform titles. These replaced outdated authority records and/or added new ones, and also resulted in updates to headings on existing bibliographic records.
Final work was done on collection of nearly 200,000 bibliographic records that represent a “gap” group of current cataloging for OSUL and the LAW library. These records all have cataloging dates between OCT 1997 and DEC 1999. They were sent to OCLC/WLN for processing in early May, which will result in corrections to the bibliographic records and delivery of associated authority records. This process results in the need to resume tracking of changes to bibliographic records. N. Van Pulis planned and implemented this project.
TOC: Database enrichment:
In August 2000, Table of Contents (TOC) information was loaded and merged with the corresponding bibliographic records in OSCAR. The complete file is comprised of 124,515 TOC records. An initial test file of 6,000 had been loaded by Nancy Helmick, Information Technology, and the remaining load was done by the Catalog Maintenance Section. As of July 2001, 150,918 Table of Contents (TOC) records were loaded to enrich existing OSCAR bibliographic records. This project is a major enhancement of OSCAR and provides more access points to users.
Herbarium Project:
C. Diedrichs, M. El-Sherbini, and J. Murphy met with the new director of the OSU Herbarium and Herbarium staff to discuss continuation of the Herbarium cataloging project. No progress has been made in this area.
Polar Library project:
The Cataloging Department continued its liaison role with the Polar Library. Lynn Lay continued to be our contact person at the Polar Library. The library's key project in 2000 consisted of the addition of their duplicate titles into OSCAR. Jose Diaz served as the Cataloging Department's liaison providing technical advice on issues ranging from OCLC searches (mostly for title verification purposes) to copy numbering, item record creation and other related issues. The First stage of the project, which is adding duplicate records to OSCAR, has been completed. 2,156 duplicates have been added. We are currently in stage two which is doing copy and original cataloging. Cataloging Department would devise a workflow for the cataloging of unique titles requiring either original and/or complex cataloging.
Flory collection:
The Cataloging Department continued to catalog the Flory collection, which requires original cataloging.
Cataloging realia:
The Cataloging Department started to catalog a series of realia for the Newark branch campus. This is the first time that the Cataloging Department has cataloged this kind of materials.
GPO in electronic formats:
A total of 881 electronic resource records for GPO materials have been loaded to OSCAR. This includes a backfile beginning in 1996 and the most current monthly file through June 2000. Unlike other GPO records, these do not have associated shipping list brief bibs. This activity results from discussions with the Government Documents librarian and our Department’s negotiations with Auto-Graphics to receive the e-resource records in addition to our regular GPO profile.
ITK removed from OSCAR:
ITKnowledge records were removed from OSCAR Feb. 28.
New GOV services:
MARCIVE service for GPO records was started in April 2001.
Creating a new procedure:
CAT Dept. began using more efficient routines on March 1, 2001, using a single procedure in most cases for both original and copy cataloging, and simplifying the use of both CAT DATEs and content of field 910. This also reduced errors in CAT DATEs and field 910, which affect subsequent processes such as authorities processing and statistical compilations.
Removing OSU holdings:
This year, we collected and sent more than 10,000 OCLC record numbers to OCLC for removal of OSU holdings. These were for materials marked withdrawn from a project done by the Information Technology Division. This will reduce requests to InterLibrary Loan for materials no longer owned.
The synchronization (link maintenance) program was run 52 times and more than 143,500 records were updated.
Authority processing (July 2000-June 2001):
The Dept. sent 323,747 bibliographic records to OCLC/MARS for authorities processing and overlaid 485,992 that were returned from processing. In addition, we loaded 373,930 authority records.
IV) RETREAT:
The Cataloging Department had its retreat on July 20th. The retreat was very successful and addressed many issues related to priorities, communication, and public service needs and future plans. The full report is available through the Cataloging website.
V) STAFFING:
The Cataloging Department has lost many students, and as a result, there was very little progress in processing some of the department’s projects. We are having a hard time in locating/hiring additional students due to the minimum wage salary being offered.
The Cataloging Department lost Regina Patterson, the Administrative Assistant in June, We also lost Spiro Shituni, the Non-Roman languages cataloger, in August 2000.
The Cataloging Department filled the two vacant LMTA2 positions. Michael Putman and Stephanie Nicol are working under Beverly McDonald’s supervision, cataloging analytics.
The Cataloging Department has four vacant GAA positions, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and German. These four positions are very hard to fill. Based on a discussion with Carol Diedrichs, we decided to change these GAA positions into permanent staff positions. We combined the Arabic and Hebrew positions into one LA2 civil service classification; the Greek and German into one LA2 staff position. These jobs are in the process of being filled.
As part of the cooperation between the Cataloging Department and other TS departments, Nori Mizuno was lent to Special Collections Cataloging to catalog the Japanese serials for CGA for 4 hours per week.
To assist MOD, the Cataloging Department designated W. Steele, in addition to other staff from the Western Languages Section, to catalog the Cat-as-monos backlog.
Adrienne Dickson joined the department on October 25. She replaces Regina Patterson and is reporting to Beverly McDonald. Her duties are to work on the analytics project as well as providing administrative support to the department.
Amy McCoy joined the department on March 1st, 2001. She is responsible for cataloging German materials.
Zaineb Bayahy has joined the department on January 22, 2001 and is responsible for cataloging Arabic language material.
J. Murphy was named to the Committee on Faculty Benefits, Privileges and Responsibilities.
Noelle Van Pulis completed her year of service as Chair of the Committee on Appointments, Promotion and Tenure. She continued service as the Libraries' representative to the OhioLINK Database Management and Standards Committee.
Noelle Van Pulis and Magda El-Sherbini attended the Mid-winter and the Annual meetings of the American Library Association.
Noelle was appointed to the CC:DA Task Force on the Review of ANSI/NISO Draft Standard Z39.85, The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set.
M. EL-Sherbini was appointed to the ALCTS Esther J. Piercy Award Jury.
M. EL-Sherbini was elected to serve on the Committee on Appointments, Promotion and Tenure.
N. Van Pulis served as a member of the Technical Services Process Improvement Working Group. This is the group that revived and planned the "I Am A Book" tour.
Noelle was invited to speak at the inaugural meeting of the OCLC/WLN -MARS Users Group, to present “a library view” of their service. This is scheduled for July 10 in Chicago, at the Annual Conference of the American Library Association.
Magda El-Sherbini was invited to moderate a discussion at ALA/ALCTS Creative Ideas for Technical Services. This is scheduled for July 10 in Chicago, at the Annual Conference of the American Library Association.
Jose Diaz completed his PHD qualifying exams in American History and is now working on his dissertation.
J. Diaz assumed the chair of the Advisory Committee on Research on July 1, 2000.
M. El. Sherbini worked with T. Davis on writing a report to be submitted to OhioLink on single record vs. multiple records for electronic resources.
Hee-sook Shin attended the CEAL conference on March 21-24, 2001 and presented a paper "Quality of Korean Cataloging Records in Shared Databases".
All the Cataloging staff attended workshops related to their professional development.
All the Cataloging coordinators attended the Process Improvement training with the other Technical Services supervisors.
VI. TRAINNG AND DOCUMENTATION:
Item Record training sessions were held Sept. 12, 13 and Feb. 2001. Noelle Van Pulis prepared and distributed updated and new handouts, and gave a revised presentation and demonstration to 42 participants, mostly from public service areas.
Beverly worked with Angela Gooden, the Resident Librarian on a mini retrocon project.
All the coordinators worked on adding more cataloging documentation to the web. Among these: 1) Recommended assignment of ACODE1 values to facilitate identification and Boolean collection of authority records. These were implemented March 1, 2001 (a=name, d=LC subject, j=MeSH; 2) Recommended that records for withdrawn materials be suppressed from public display. This was discussed by various groups and approved for implementation in June 2001.
B. McDonald trained Emi Matsushita, Special Collections Cataloging Department GAA, in basic cataloging procedures. H. Shin trained Emi to use OCLC CJK program and to catalog Japanese books.
H. Shin wrote a manual and trained both Chinese GAAs and a student assistant to catalog Chinese materials using the Pinyin romanization system.
B. McDonald was involved in training all the new cataloging staff in addition to the GAAs and the students.
M. El-Sherbini, B. McDonald, and J. Diaz participated in T.S. “I am a book” tour, presenting the cataloging part.