Cataloging Department Monthly Report
October 2008
Subject: Monthly Report – October 2008
Date: November 2008
From: Magda El-Sherbini, Cataloging Department Head
To: Sally Rogers, Assistant Director for Technical Services
OVERVIEW OF THE MONTH
Some members of the Cataloging Department are working on the department workflow video to be presented at the Division meeting.
Along with Magda, Henry Griffy created a new I-Con for the practicum students on the Technical Services and the Library web site. This I-con will direct the Library School Student to access the project web site so that they will be able to choose what project are available and interest them.
Magda continued to teach two Freshman Seminar and organization of information. She also attended the CML on site tour.
Western Languages Section
October 2008 was a busy month for the section as we continued to do our regular tasks. This month section members continued to work on titles in Western languages (for example, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish), both new and backlog. We cataloged in non-book and book formats, including analytics and ebooks.
Beverly McDonald spent her time this month training, answering questions and solving problems. She continued to work with Lisa Chiong (staff), Moriana Garcia (volunteer) and Eunice Min (GAA). Beverly gave a presentation at the 24th Annual Conference of the Academic Library Association of Ohio (ALAO) in Wilmington, Ohio on October 24, 2008. Her presentation was a part of the ALAO Diversity Committee meeting.
Christina Moore gave two presentations of the New Student Orientation Workshop (October 17 and 24, 2008). She also spent time working on the Cataloging Department video that will be shown at the next Technical Services Division meeting on November 13. Magda El-Sherbini assigned Jim Whitcomb to a new project along with Rocki Strader: ECIP (electronic cataloging in publication). They will be using LC's On the MARC software to create the bibliographic records from the publisher's electronically submitted galley, primarily for Ohio State University Press titles.
Finally, members of the section took some leave time (Beverly, for example, took three days of sick leave time and six days of vacation time).
Non-Roman Languages Section
Summary
This month the section cataloged in total 1,258 titles, and received 533 new titles.
Sherab Chen (section coordinator)
Sherab took 3 week vacation. He attended the 2008 ALAO Annual Conference as a Conference Planning Committee member on 10/24. He also worked with the Department presentation ad hoc committee, took pictures and participated video editing at the Digital Union.
Zaineb Bayahy (Arabic cataloging)
Zaineb led the Middle East cataloging team. Their performance revealed in the following statistics.
| Languages | Original | Copy | Enhanced | Total | Volumes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arabic books | 48 | 64 | 55 | 167 | |
| Arabic retrocon | 50 | 50 | |||
| serial | 1 | 1 | |||
| Recon books | |||||
| Books in French | 42 | 6 | 37 | 85 | |
| Books in English | |||||
| Books in Turkish | 0 | ||||
| 303 |
Anna Batchev (Slavic cataloging)
Anna cataloged 57 new Slavic titles (20 original), 160 Hilandar gift books (60 original) and 7 serials titles.
GAAs cataloging performance
ChineseYang Yu (GAA) cataloged 90 Chinese titles in 96 volumes (60 are in original cataloging).
Hsiao-feng Tsai (GAA) cataloged 125 Chinese titles in total 157 pieces: 104 books (45 original), 9 DVDs, and 2 maps.
Miao Liu (hourly) cataloged totally 108 Chinese titles (5 original).
JapaneseFusako Yoneda (GAA) assisted training the new GAA, fixed Japanese maps cataloging records at the Geology Library, and she cataloged totally 76 titles in 140 volumes: 70 books (61 orignial), 6 serials titles all in original cataloging, and 3 DVDs. Her map cataloging work is not included in this statistics.
Natsumi Hirota (GAA) worked on the Japanese microfiche project and she cataloged 275 microfiche titles all in original cataloging.
Gumiko (GAA) was learning cataloging. She cataloged 21 new titles (5 in original cataloging) and add many item records in totally 81 volumes.
KoreanCatherin Lee (work study) cataloged 27 Korean books (18 original) and 5 serials (3 original).
Turkish(see under Zaineb)
Principal Cataloger and Special Projects
No Report
Authority Control and Database Maintenance
Lin’s student Jourdan came back from summer break, as well as Melanie’s student Indre. Jourdan is helping Lin with her work, but is also assisting the section with an inventory of the problem shelf. Indre and Jourdan are checking to make sure these items are displaying as at Technical Services. Melanie has also worked with Indre on marking specific reserve items for deletion and removing holdings from OCLC for last copy withdrawals. As the students are going through the problem shelf, Melanie and Lin are completing the problems that are relatively quick fixes. If the problem is really an original cataloging problem or another problem that needs the series statement added, revised, or created, Melanie fixes the series problem and then hands the books over to Beverly for her section to complete. There are a lot of French and Spanish books, but Ed has also been helping with the English.
Melanie also hired a work study student, Nora Shannon. After training, she started working on reporting Bibliographic File Maintenance to OCLC. Next month she will start on another project.
Andrea continues to work with Rocki’s student Bridget on reports. She will start working with Nora in a similar capacity next month.
Melanie met with Mary Ann Reis in GOV DOCS on the 6th to discuss an easier way to work with the thousands of withdrawals they will be making in preparation to move back to Thompson. Instead of printing out the pages, Mary Ann suggested we collect a Boolean by what she enters into the item record to show that the material is being withdrawn. This idea works really well, so Melanie will be running this Boolean at least once a month to collect last copy withdrawals. Mary Ann and Melanie also discussed the possibility of globally updating withdrawals in certain call number ranges. Melanie said she would experiment with that.
Molly from preservation alerted Melanie to some problems with the brittle books record suppressions. Molly periodically gives Melanie lists of books that need to be handled as last copy withdrawals. She noticed that some of these from the past had not been suppressed correctly. So, she and Melanie worked on a Boolean strategy, Melanie collected the Boolean and updated the records that were not completely suppressed (1468 records).
Melanie talked with our sales representative from Backstage Library Works via phone on the 30th at his initiative. Melanie made some suggestions for increased communications. The Backstage Web site was down for over a week, but they did not let their customers know about this. They also discussed some ongoing issues with the authority loads.
Melanie, Rocki, and Christina met a few times during the month to keep momentum going for the Cataloging Department movie project while Sherab is on vacation. The group as a whole began working on the shooting and videotaping and started putting the movie together on the 31st.
Melanie attended the Faculty Meeting on the 14th, a conference call with the WorldCAT Local team on the 16th, and attended the ALAO Conference in Wilmington, OH on the 24th. Melanie has completed her 2 year term on the conference planning committee.
Catalog Librarian
Rocki Strader attended the following meetings and events: Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Soceity, OSU Chapter Executive Board meeting, Oct. 8; ALAO Annual Conference, Oct. 24.
misc.:
The ad hoc committee for CAT Dept presentation met on Oct 10, 13, 17 and 31. Film and still photos were downloaded into iMovie (at the Digital Union on Oct. 31) and the group began editing the material.
ECIP: LC's David Bucknum successfully tested FTP access to our server and placed a copy of the cataloging software there for us to pick up and install. Patricia Hayward (also of LC) set up accounts for Jim Whitcomb and Rocki, and will provide training/test records.
ETDs: Rocki received notification from Tim Watson of the Graduate School that electronic submission of masters theses will be required/mandatory beginning in Winter Quarter 2009.
Cataloging Department Monthly Statistics