Cataloging Department Monthly Report
February 2008

Subject: Monthly Report – February 2008
Date: March 2008
From: Magda El-Sherbini, Cataloging Department Head
To: Sally Rogers, Assistant Director for Technical Services

OVERVIEW OF THE MONTH

Magda Attended the OCLC Members Council, continued teaching and attending the PPLI program.

Members of the cataloging and Special Collections Department participated in the RDA prototype field test. In addition, we were giving a one week to test the produce by two of the catalogers.

The Cataloging Department is now providing bibliographic records with Russian scripts to both OCLC WorldCat and to OSCAR. Anna Batchev, the Slavic Cataloger, started to input the Russian scripts after she had been trained. This will allow patrons who know the Russian script to use it in searching rather than the romanized form.

The cataloging Department is taking advantage of Moriana Garcia, the Kent State volunteered student, to work with Lisa Chiong on cataloging the Spanish.

Ed Plunkett started helping the Authority Control and Catalog Maintenance Section with OCLC duplicate reports.

There are about 2150 short OUS thesis that need to be converted. Rocki hired a student t to convert these records.

Western Languages Section

[No Report]

Non-Roman Languages Section

Summary

This month the section cataloged 1,592 titles (not including Korean books cataloged) and received 1,189 new titles

Sherab Chen (section coordinator)

Sherab organized a meeting with the head and coordinators (2/18/08) to discuss how to better present the Cataloging department in the next TechServ Meeting. Using Captivate, he began to work with Melanie, Rocki and Beverly to design the presentation of section workflow. He was at the initial stage working with Melanie to design an e-learning lesson for NACO procedures.

Following up with his investigation on how to input Cyrillic on bibliographic record in last month, he provided a brief training for Anna, the Slavic cataloger, to contribute records with original Russian scripts to WorldCat. And announced this news on the section's blog.

He also trained the new GAA (Tsai) on how to assign LC Subject, Classification, and related MARC fields practice.

Zaineb Bayahy (Arabic cataloging)

In addition to maintain the Middle East section workflow, Zaineb was on the search committee for Middle East librarian. She was on 4 telephone interviews with candidates. She attended the general meeting. Detailed statistics follows.

Languages	Original	Copy	Enhanced	Total	Volume	PCC	NACO
Arabic books	36	151	131	318		7	2
Arabic DVD	3	12	7	22
CMT Non-Western
Turkish Books (Omer)
French Books
English (Omer)			10	10
Arabic retrocon cards
Total				350		7	2

Anna Batchev (Slavic cataloging)

Anna made a successful move in providing Russian scripts in her original cataloging records. Thus, we the OSUL Cataloging Department Non-Roman Cataloging Section are now contributing Russian records with Russian scripts to OCLC WorldCat, as well as to the libraries' OPAC, OSCAR. This will benefit library users who are familiar with the language in finding what they are looking for, and can improve access to our East European & Slavic Collection.

She cataloged 336 new Slavic monograph books (82 original) and 3 Slavic serials.

GAAs cataloging performance

Chinese

Mei Zhao (GAA) cataloged 107 new Chinese monograph books in 117 volumes. 48 in original cataloging.

Yang Yu (GAA) cataloged 56 new Chinese titles including 32 in the formats of audio-visual materials (DVDs, Video cassettes, computer files, and audio tapes), 43 are in original cataloging.

Hsiao-feng Tsai (GAA) received advanced training on assigning LC Call number and Subject Headings. She cataloged 118 new Chinese monograph books (36 original).

Japanese

Fusako Yoneda (GAA) cataloged 138 new Japanese titles including 7 serials (12 original)

Natsumi Hirota (GAA) was working on the JMSTC Japanese microfiche project and she created 206 new records, all in original cataloging, and added 8 title duplicates.

Akina Ikudo (hourly) was working on the JMSTC Japanese microfiche project and created 105 records (99 original and 6 duplicates)

Sakiko Endo (hourly) also worked on the JMSTC Japanese microfiche project and created 52 records, 51 in original.

Special Assignments

Qing Cao (hourly) was assigned to double check student cataloging records and search for name authority record for new receipts. She checked and fixed 70 records, and also cataloged 21 new titles.

Miao Liu (hourly) was assigned to work on backlogs of Chinese gift books and cataloged 101 English titles in the backlog.

Korean

Sankyo Lee at Special Collection Cataloging continued to help us removing Korean backlogs.

Turkish

(See under Zaineb)

Principal Cataloger and Special Projects

February 2008 was a busy month for the section as we continued to add item records for monographs received from MOD as well as doing our regular tasks. This month section members continued to work on new analytics and analytic retrocon and worked on English language backlog titles.

Beverly McDonald spent her time this month training, answering questions and solving problems. Training was a full time occupation as she continued working with three people with three very different skill levels at the same time. The skill levels were: undergraduate degree in library science (the staff member), experience with serials cataloging (the GAA), and no library experience (the volunteer, who was just starting library science classes at Kent State University). Only the staff person worked 40 hours per week. The GAA worked 20 hours per week and the volunteer 8 hours. On the days when all three people were here at the same time, things got hectic. When training more than one person at a time, Beverly still had to train one by one because the people had different knowledge levels of cataloging. The basic cataloging manual that she had prepared was still used to train all three people. Staff member Lisa Chiong is now doing both Spanish and French books as part of her training. Volunteer Moriana Garcia, who knows Spanish, is answering Lisa's questions about Spanish publications.

Beverly and section members attended the General meeting (February 20, 2008). Beverly attended the Catalog Committee meeting (February 21).

Christina Moore worked on Connexion questions and problems and continued to focus on analytics, the difficult ones in the analytic retroconversion project as well as the new analytics. She continued to work on series indexing and item record problems. Christina started to work on the backlog of Greek books formerly done by Patrick Hancy. As a member of the Training Advisory Council (TAC) and Risk Assessment Committee (RAC), she attended meetings and worked on projects. For TAC, she is working on item record training.

Ed Plunkett is doing all of the PromptCAT books and is working on English language backlog titles. He also worked on processing the David Benseler Collection, cataloged some books for the Younkin Success Center and worked on OCLC duplicate bib records for Melanie. Ed was invited to and attended a Your Plan for Health round table discussion (February 7) and attended a Staff Performance Management workshop (February 13). He continued to do the monthly statistics and helped with the student time sheets.

Student Jennifer Middleton worked with the books from MOD, adding the item records and distributing the Western language books to the catalogers. GAA Eunice Min spent her time doing analytic retrocon.

Finally, members of the section took some leave time (Beverly, for example, took 2 days of sick leave).

Authority Control and Database Maintenance

It was another busy month for the Authority Control and Database Maintenance section. After talking the matter over with Magda, Melanie changed the name of the section to reflect more adequately the work done in the section. Melanie also prepared and conducted training to three people in microfilms to help them in cataloging Sabin records that are not in the system. She also started preparing constant data for the Early American Imprints project as well (also microfilm). Melanie also globally updated a number of records for Steve Rogers so he could continue with the Landmarks of Science cataloging project. A number of microfiche, film, etc. need to be sent to STX before the move back to Thompson, so full bibs and item records must be in the system.

Melanie also joined TAC in their efforts to create item record training and electronic reserves training. Magda encouraged Melanie to join forces with TAC after it was discovered they were forming an item record training subcommittee. Melanie was planning to create training along the same lines to refresh training on item and bib deletes and suppressions and withdrawals.

	Andrea	Stephanie	Lin	Melanie
Backlog/Requested	1		162
Completed/Referred	9
Remaining

	Andrea	Stephanie	Lin	Melanie
Authority Update
Authority Delete
Authority Reviewed
Consultation				5
Boolean			8	6
BIBCO reviewed
BIBCO submitted
NACO reviewed				46
Bib/Item Deletes			5628	10
NACO submitted	46
OCLC update	2		40	361
Bib/Item changes			464	1622
Books cataloged			71	35

OSUL’s Authorities vendor was switching platforms, so there have been a variety of problems. All reports and loads were late, but the loads cannot be uploaded through the usual means. We are still working on that problem, and Melanie has a meeting planned with Rebekah Kilzer to try to work around the ftp problem. Andrea updated or deleted 92 LC Authority records, processed 3853 1xx changes.

Lin continued to train her student to help with incoming problems. Stephanie helped Beverly’s GA with some analytic problems (informal training). Ed Plunkett started helping the division with OCLC duplicate reports.

A student started working with Melanie. Indre will be working with Rocki on the retrocon M.A. thesis project, but she worked with Melanie on some smaller projects to help with training. Amira cataloged over 200 books for the LAW Library project, but also helped Melanie with some other projects in the division. Samantha marked 50 reserve bibs for deletion and processed 26 last copy withdrawals.

Melanie attended the Mock Tenure meeting on February 7th, Staff Evaluation training on the 18th, and the Cataloging Committee meeting on the 26th.

Catalog Librarian

Rocki Strader attended the following meetings and events: Libraries faculty meeting, March 5; mock tenure deliberation for untenured Libraries faculty, March 7; Phi Kappa Phi OSU chapter Exec. Board meeting, March 13; ALAO Exec Board meeting, March 15; CAT librarians meeting with Magda re: presentation ideas for TS Division meeting this summer, March 18; OSUL general staff meeting, March 20; Catalog Committee meeting, March 21; part of Collection Managers Forum re: dissertation weeding/circulation, March 27.

Misc.:

Old HMC "theses" (actually Plan B masters projects) that Jennifer Kuehn found in 2005. There were about 80 titles for which the publication dates and other miscellaneous data were incorrect, most likely from unadjusted constant data. Rocki recataloged the whole lot.

Hired new undergraduate student assistant, Bridget Fierst. She will start on March 5.

Resurrected the thesis retrocon project. There are about 2150 short thesis bibs remaining. One of Melanie's new students, Indre, will be trained on it in early March.

Received approval of full 12-week S.R.A. on LCSH vs. author-assigned keywords in ETDs.

Cataloging Department Monthly Statistics

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