Cataloging Department Monthly Report
May 2008
Subject: Monthly Report – May 2008
Date: June 2008
From: Magda El-Sherbini, Cataloging Department Head
To: Sally Rogers, Assistant Director for Technical Services
OVERVIEW OF THE MONTH
Three new practicum students started to do training with the Cataloging Department they are Austin Pevler, Jarel Deaton and Quinton Kiser.
Magda gave a presentation at the OVGTSL
The Cataloging Department is participating in the OCLC Next Generation Cataloging & Metadata Services Pilot Program
All the coordinators are involved in the staff annual performance reviews.
Magda and Sherab stared to investigate the possibility of contributing NACO records through funnel.
Magda Linda and Melanie are involved in telephone interviews for the Western Languages coordinator position.
The Cataloging Department is working with Ruth R. Connell, Grasselli Library, John Carroll University, to do cataloging with recovery cost fee. The JCU sent a sample of 20 titles to cataloging them and estimate the cost and the process.
Magda attended the LC BIBCO Operations Committee Meeting on May 1-2, 2008.
Western Languages Section
[No report is available]
Non-Roman Languages Section
News and project highlights
The section is hiring two new hourly students for the JMSTC project.
Summary
This month the section received 466 new books (in 509 volumes), 88 serials titles and 35 non-book formats. The section cataloged 1260 titles. Two students were helping the ACAM section on the short bib project. They investigated 200 short bibs and fixed 20 of them.
Sherab Chen (section coordinator)
Sherab held a section staff meeting with Zaineb and Anna. He asked them to help on evaluating the new E-learning Courseware for Basic Cataloging lessons. This is part of the second round usability studies being conducted at the section. Zaineb and Anna provided feedbacks on the e-learning lessons. The meeting also touched base on some on-going cataloging projects at the section. Sherab prepared job description, interviewed, and hired one hourly student for the JMSTC Japanese microfiche project. He continued to provide instructions to student workers and training the new student, while supervising the section's workflow.
Zaineb Bayahy (Arabic cataloging)
Zaineb wrote 1 GAA evaluation for Omer (5/19). Her section statistics follow.
| Languages | Original | Copy | Enhanced | Total | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arabic books | 16 | 43 | 59 | 33 | |
| DVD Arabic | |||||
| CMT Non-Western (English) | |||||
| Autio Books | |||||
| Turkish Books (Mesut) | |||||
| French Books | 23 | 28 | 51 | ||
| English | |||||
| Arabic Retrocon cards | 186 | 186 | |||
| Thesis retrocon | |||||
| Thesis retrocon (Omer) | |||||
| Musiccd (Turkish) | |||||
| Analytics | |||||
| 296 |
Anna Batchev (Slavic cataloging)
Anna cataloged 258 new Slavic titles (32 in original cataloging), and 62 Czech gift books (20 in original).
GAAs cataloging performance
ChineseYang Yu (GAA) cataloged 5 monographs, 19 DVD titles, and 20 CD-ROM/electronic titles, among these, 25 are in original cataloging.
Mei Zhao (GAA) cataloged 120 new Chinese titles (19 in original cataloging).
Hsiao-feng Tsai (GAA replacing contract cat.) cataloged 101 new Chinese titles (26 in original).
Qing Cao (hourly) cataloged 59 new titles (17 original), added 82 duplicates, and cataloged 4 maps (1 original). She also reviewed all newly cataloged Chinese books and checked authority files.
Miao Liu (hourly) investigated 200 short bib records and fixed 30 of them.
Special project GAA
JapaneseFusako Yoneda (GAA) cataloged 97 new Japanese titles, including 56 original cataloging of monographs, 12 serials, 9 CD-ROMs.
Natsumi Hirota (GAA) cataloged 218 Japanese Meiji Era pulications titles on microfiche, all in original cataloging.
Korean(no activities)
Turkish(see under Zaineb)
Principal Cataloger and Special Projects
May 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 PromptCAT and backlog titles.
Beverly McDonald spent her time this month training, answering questions and solving problems. Most of the time was spent working with two practicum students from the Kent State University School of Library and Information Science who were working under the direction of Magda El-Sherbini. These students were Austin Pevler and Quinton Kiser. Beverly was responsible for training them for 30 hours each in copy and original cataloging. After she finished her training, the practicum students spent time in other areas of Cataloging and Technical Services.
Austin Pevler started working on May 8 and Quinton Kiser started on May 27. On Thursday, May 29, Beverly had both students at the same time but still trained one on one because Austin was nearing the end of his training (original cataloging and analytics) and Quinton was just beginning (copy cataloging). The basic cataloging manual that she had prepared was used to train both people. Training was definitely a full time occupation this month as she continued to work with Lisa Chiong (staff), Moriana Garcia (volunteer) and Eunice Min (GAA) when not working with the practicum students. Lisa is now doing both Spanish and French books and Moriana, who knows Spanish and Portuguese, is answering Lisa's questions about publications in these languages.
Beverly McDonald attended a Diversity Committee meeting (May 13, 2008; as secretary, she took the minutes), did the annual performance evaluations for Christina Moore and Ed Plunkett (May 21) and helped to clean up after the Student Appreciation Party (May 15, which was held at SPAH-- the former Long's Bookstore). Section members went to the General Staff Meeting (May 27), but Beverly did not because practicum student Quinton started to work with her at the same time. Beverly also held a section meeting (May 30).
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. Christina worked on series indexing and item record problems and the backlog of Greek books. 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 New Student Orientation and item record training.
Ed Plunkett is doing all of the PromptCAT books and is working on English language backlog titles. He also worked on OCLC duplicate bib records for Melanie McGurr. He continued to do the monthly statistics.
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 three days of vacation).
Authority Control and Database Maintenance
The Automated Timekeeping system is going well, and, as a section, we are not having any major problems with it. We decided not to meet about it again. Andrea and Melanie put the finishing touches on the NACO refresher training since a new date was set for the meeting in June.
Melanie met with Jan Wagner in microfilm to discuss a small project she needs to complete with some cataloging help. Jan needs to send the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) fiche to STX before the move back to the main library. Some of the fiche records and indexes needed clean-up and classification work. Melanie and Jan discussed the problems and Melanie fixed and edited the records throughout the month. This small project was completed. Jan also asked Melanie to look into a larger problem with the Foreign Broadcasting Information Service fiche (FBIS) that has many different sections and needs call numbers before it can go to STX.
Melanie attended a meeting to plan for the closing of the JOU library and the movement of materials from JOU to ACK. Some projects may arise from this meeting because JOU has theses and a large number of reserves that will need to be addressed. Melanie also met with Rebekah to discuss some ongoing problems with Backstage.
Melanie worked with Beth Black and Sherry Moeller of Government Documents to come up with a list of resources for the EZProxy service that should be listed as opengov. Melanie added the information to the resources suggested. Melanie also assisted Mary Ann Reis in adding the new opengov code to the appropriate constant data so that it is now part of her regular workflow.
Melanie is serving on the Search Committee for the Western Language Coordinator. The Committee met on the 11th. Melanie also attended and presented at the Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarians on the 15th. She also attended the General Library meeting on the 27th.
Catalog Librarian
Rocki Strader was on Special Research Assignment and came in the equivalent of once a week. She was able to attend the following meetings and events: AP&T meeting for 4th year review, May 1; ALAO TEDSIG Spring meeting (she was co-chair), May 2; LC conference call for ECIP project, May 14; OVGTSL in Dayton, May 15-16;"visioning" task force introductory meeting (too much time conflict with SRA, so will not participate), May 21; met with Sally Rogers and Wes Boomgaarden re: masters thesis/ETD microforms problem, May 28; OSU:pro training for untenured faculty, May 29.
misc.:
Per Sally Rogers, no longer to include notes in bib records for embargoed ETDs. Rocki worked with Melanie to remove existing notes from the bibs for previously and currently embargoed titles.
Continued thesis retrocon from half-cards. One student assistant continued pulling cards. Another student assistant has been trained on creating bib records, which will be reviewed by Stephanie Gilchrist and Rocki.
Cataloging Department Monthly Statistics