Cataloging Department Monthly Report
September 2008

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

OVERVIEW OF THE MONTH

Magda and Melanie are involved in teaching Freshman Seminars. Magda is also teaching Organization of Information class at the KSU.

The Cataloging Department reorganized to accommodate the lose of the Western Lnaguage Coordinator’s position. the Principal Cataloger and Special Projects Section, was merged into two existing sections. Beverly became the interim coordinator of the Western Languages Section and Christina Moore joined her in Western Languages. The other section member, Ed Plunkett, became a member of the Authority Control and Database Maintenance Section where Melanie McGurr is the coordinator.

Western Languages Section

September 2008 was a month of change for the Cataloging Department. Beverly McDonald's former section, the Principal Cataloger and Special Projects Section, was merged into two existing sections. Beverly became the interim coordinator of the Western Languages Section and Christina Moore joined her in Western Languages. The other section member, Ed Plunkett, became a member of the Authority Control and Database Maintenance Section where Melanie McGurr is the coordinator.

The reorganized Western Languages Section now has six staff members and one GAA. Their duties can be highlighted as follows: Theresa Wei catalogs English language monographs, including rush books. She also does government documents and UMI theses. Vera Enesey catalogs German and Italian books as well as other languages. For the catalog as monograph (CAM) books, she does German, Italian and English language books. Lisa Chiong catalogs Spanish and Portuguese as well as French books. She also does CAM cataloging in these languages. (Zaineb Bayahy of the Non-Roman Languages Section also does French books).

Jim Whitcomb now spends a lot of his time cataloging electronic books (ebooks) and titles for the regional campuses libraries. He used to catalog the catalog as monograph (CAM) books. Vickie Fitzgerald catalogs titles in non-book formats (e.g., computer files, video recordings, microforms and maps) for OSUL locations including the regional campuses libraries. She also does preservation replacement copies (paper and film). Christina Moore catalogs analytics in many languages as well as doing monographs in Greek, Cyrillic and languages not covered by other staff members. She also does training and documentation for software applications (e.g., Connexion and Millennium). GAA Eunice Min spends her time doing analytic retroconversion. Various section members enhance records and contribute to BIBCO and NACO and everyone is working on special projects.

Beverly McDonald spent her time this month training, answering questions and solving problems. Section members attended the General Staff meeting (September 9, 2008). Beverly and other section members attended the Catalog Committee meeting (September 11). Beverly did the minutes for this meeting. Vickie Fitzgerald completed the cataloging for the Knowlton School of Architecture series and Lisa Chiong finished the last of the books left to her by her predecessor, Patrick Hancy.

Everyone had one holiday (September 1- Labor Day) and Ackerman Library was closed for two days (September 15-16) because the building did not have power. Finally, members of the section took some leave time (Beverly for example, took eight days of sick leave, including 7 days for ear surgery and recovery time).

Non-Roman Languages Section

News

Chris Kern and Yuriko Ikeda left the department, and the section is preparing to hire two more hourly students to replace them for the Japanese microfiche cataloging project.

Summary

This month the section cataloged in total 1,311 titles. The section received 633 new titles in 749 volumes (not including Middle East and Slavic).

Sherab Chen (section coordinator)

In this month, Sherab assisted the head of the department on evaluating student catalogers' performance which was part of the investigation on the contracting CJK cataloging project. He worked with Melanie, Rocki and Christina on designing a video for department presentation, and organized two workshop meetings. He also updated the Cataloging Department Wiki.

He attended ALAO Conference Planning Committee meetings, and designed the two evaluation forms for the 2009 Annual Conference. This month he created and submitted for review of 5 NACO Chinese records. He chaired a CFBPR meeting on 9/26 to communicate the recent faculty travel funding changes, and as an agreement, Joseph updated the committee's website.

He was training the new Japanese GAA, Gumiko, for basic copy cataloging. He also re-posted a job description to hire two more hourly students.

Zaineb Bayahy (Arabic cataloging)

Zaineb led the Middle East cataloging activities and her team had a detailed statistics below

Languages	Original	Copy	Enhanced	Total	Volume
Arabic books	26	81	86	193	12
Serials Arabic			2	2
Autio Books
Turkish Books (Omer)	41	44	6	91
French Books	6	3	8	17
English
Arabic retrocon
Thesis retrocon
Thesis retrocon (Amira)
Total				303

Anna Batchev (Slavic cataloging)

Anna cataloged 225 new Slavic titles (54 was in original cataloging), 1 gift book, and 15 serials.

GAAs cataloging performance

Chinese

Yang Yu (GAA) cataloged in total 121 new Chinese titles: 110 books (50 original), 11 DVDs (10 original).

Tsai-Hsiao Feng (GAA) cataloged totally 166 Chinese books (55 in original cataloging).

Miao Liu (hourly) cataloged 27 Chinese books in totally 70 pieces (5 original cataloging).

Japanese

Fusako Yoneda (GAA) assisted the section coordinator on training the new Japanese GAA, and she cataloged in total 117 new Japanese titles in 147 pieces: 95 books (57 original), 18 serials (6 original), 2 electronic resources (1 original).

Natsumi Hirota (GAA) continued to work on the Japanese microfiche project and she cataloged 287 microfiche titles all in original cataloging.

Gumiko Monobe (GAA) was under training, and she cataloged 11 new Japanese titles (3 original). Gumiko will replace Fusako's position when the latter graduates.

Korean

Catherin Lee (work study) 37 Korean books (26 original) and 1 serial.

Turkish

(see under Zaineb)

Principal Cataloger and Special Projects

No Report

Authority Control and Database Maintenance

Amira came back to the section after her UN Internship in New York. She is completing the last EL reclassifications and the few AH reclassifications that have come through from CMT.

Melanie and Rocki met on the 4th to discuss her involvement in NACO contributions. Melanie and Rocki decided to start with advisors and go from there. Rocki will also give Melanie names for students in retrocon cataloging or her regular workflow that might cause confusion if not established or revised. The goal is to have Rocki creating records that can then be reviewed by Andrea or Melanie.

Both Natalia and Joan from Special Collections have begun to contribute more NACO records.

Melanie began teaching her freshman seminar on Monday afternoons, the General Staff Meeing on the 9th, Cataloging Committee on the 11th, and a Freshman Seminar Faculty Meeting on the 18th.

Ed continues to take on work for the section. This month he assisted Melanie in working on items on the problem shelf. Lin, Melanie, and Ed have made this a priority this month. Many of these problems are series issues or analytics.

Catalog Librarian

Rocki Strader attended the following meetings and events: Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society, OSU Chapter Executive Board, Sept. 10; Catalog Committee, Sept. 11; Renovation Committee, Sept. 11; CFBPR, Sept. 24.

misc.:

Rocki evaluated another file for OCLC's Next Generation Cataloging pilot project.

Continued review of thesis retrocon records created by student assistants.

Rocki worked with Jason Thompson in Libraries' IT and David Bucknum of Library of Congress to address technical issues for our participation in LCs ECIP program. There were problems with setting up LC’s FTP access to our server. They have been resolved, and David will test the system in the first week or so of October.

Cataloging Department Monthly Statistics