Cataloging Department Monthly Report
January 2009
Subject: Monthly Report — February 2009
Date: March 2009
From: Magda El-Sherbini, Cataloging Department Head
To: Sally Rogers, Assistant Director for Technical Services
Western Languages Section
February 2009 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 attended the 5th Tri-State Diversity Conference, Cincinnati, Ohio, February 5-6, 2009, where she presented a poster session on the Libraries' Diversity Committee. She listened to a webinar on the OCLC Expert Community Experiment, a project that enables cataloging members to make more changes to OCLC WorldCat records (February 17, 2009). She attended a meeting of a subcommittee of the Libraries' Diversity Committee that is working on an application for an American Library Association diversity research grant (February 27). Beverly held a meeting of the Western Languages Section (February 26). Finally, she attended a workshop on the latest version of OSUpro, which is now used to prepare our Faculty Annual Review (February 12).
Christina Moore attended a Training Advisory Council meeting (February 26). She has been working on item record training, including documentation. She also acts as liaison to the Risk Management Committee. Theresa Wei checked the work of her new student Alex Slivinski and gave him feedback. Vickie Fitzgerald trained her new student, Aarthi Gobinath. GAA Eunice Min spent her time doing analytic retrocon.
Many members of the section took leave time this month (Beverly, for example, took three days of sick leave for cataract surgery and recovery time).
Non-Roman Languages Section
Summary
This month the section cataloged 1259 titles, and received 221 new volumes (not including Middle Eastern).
Sherab Chen (section coordinator)
Sherab met the East European collection manager to discuss about the status of some old Slavic materials left at Cataloging. He helped the Head to revise contract cataloging memorandums with John Carroll and University of Cincinnati, and directed the first batch of contract cataloging for John Carroll University (20 volumes).
He communicated with LC PCC liaison about OSU's participation on Arabic and CJK BIBCO. He trained a GAA on helping CJK NACO.
Zaineb Bayahy (Arabic cataloging)
Zaineb reviewed cataloging records by the new student shahrzad. She also reviewed Thesis cards cataloging project done by Bridge and Mesut's Turkish cataloging records. He helped Anna on cataloging new Bosnian books. The Middle Eastern section has a production statistics as follows.
| Languages | Original | Copy | Enhanced | Total | Volumes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arabic books | 9 | 71 | 49 | 129 | 3 |
| Arabic DVD | |||||
| CMT Non-Western | |||||
| Audio Books | |||||
| Turkish Books (Mesut) | 57 | 5 | 9 | 71 | |
| English (Mesut) | 2 | 10 | 1 | 11 | |
| Arabic retrocon Cards | |||||
| Persian Books (Shahrzad) | |||||
| French Books | 17 | 12 | 21 | 50 | |
| Total | 261 | 3 |
Anna Batchev (Slavic cataloging)
Anna cataloged 167 new Slavic titles (46 in original cataloging), 112 old tiles (42 original) and 2 serials.
GAAs cataloging performance
ChineseYang Yu (GAA) cataloged 85 new Chinese titles (50 in original cataloging), 10 DVDs and 5 microfiche titles, all original cataloging.
Hsiao-feng Tsai (GAA) cataloged 39 new Chinese titles (17 in original), 13 microfiche titles (11 original).
Miao Liu (hourly) cataloged 43 new titles (7 in original) and 4 DVDs.
Special project GAA
JapaneseNatsumi Hirota (GAA) cataloged 208 JMSTC microfiche titles, all in original cataloging, in totally 228 volumes.
Gumiko Monobe (GAA) cataloged 57 new Japanese books (50 orginal).
Mari Konno (hourly) cataloged 203 JMSTC microfiche titles, all in original cataloging. She also cataloged the Japanese titles in the first batch contract cataloging.
Akina Hanada (hourly) cataloged 21 JMSTC microfiche titles all in original cataloging.
KoreanCatherin Lee (work-study) cataloged 30 new Korean titles (10 in original cataloging).
Turkish(see under Zaineb)
Authority Control and Database Maintenance
Melanie continued to work towards training materials for the NACO Funnel Project and OSUL' s Cataloging. She created a Quick Guide which is a one page sheet (front and back) for people who need a refresher or need something to refer back to after training. Melanie created one catering to the Cataloging Department and a slightly different one for the funnel. Andrea helped Melanie work to make the document polished and clear.
Melanie also continued to convert LC' s two day training into one day for an introduction/background to NACO and Personal Names. LC' s training consists of about 400 slides for two days, so Melanie worked to include the necessary information for the day, but also sent background information and readings to the funnel participants so they could prepare before class.
Melanie also utilized the Cataloging Department (Authority Control and Database Maintenance Section) to provide materials and links for the funnel participants as well as our own Catalogers. Next month she will do the training in Kent and has already set up appointments for staff interested in learning more about NACO in the Cataloging Department. Sherab and Melanie also worked on the script for the NACO E-learning and have completed a rough draft.
Melanie and Stephanie watched the OCLC Community Experiment Webinar on the 17th and discussed how this would change her workflow. Since she is already at National ENH, it won' t change anything for her. Indre completed her inventory on Stephanie' s problem books and began to work with Andrea on reports. Nora Shannon left to take a job at the Optometry School, so Indre picked up her work.
Ed and Melanie continued training with subjects on the Librarians Report from Backstage and will move on to Personal Names next month. Lin and Jourdan completed work with the problem shelf, which is now clear.
Melanie met with Mary Ann Reis from GOV DOCS a few times this month as they continued their attempts to withdraw items without someone having to do the work record by record. They are having some problems with call number ranges and only gathering the records that are needed, but have already completed thousands of withdrawals using this method.
Melanie is also working with Gerry Greenberg, Judy Cerqua, Nancy Helmick, and Jennifer Kuehn to help with the ERIC move. Melanie will be updating the bibliographic records and items to show that certain ERIC documents are now found online only. Melanie is notified by Judy when a Boolean is ready for this process, and Melanie works out a time to update with Nancy. Right now, Wednesdays are the day for Melanie to do these updates.
Melanie attended the Faculty Meeting on the 10th and the General Staff Meeting on the 26th.
| NACO Statistics | Adds | Replaces |
|---|---|---|
| Arabic | ||
| CJK | 0 | 0 |
| Western Lang. | 27 | 3 |
Catalog Librarian
Rocki Strader attended the following meetings and events: Tech Center planning meeting, Feb. 6; Renovation Committee, Feb. 12; Appreciative Inquiry meeting (part of Implementation Community), Feb. 18; ALAO Executive Board, Feb. 20; general staff meeting at SEL, Feb. 26.
Misc.:
The situation from last month re: a masters thesis for FAE was resolved. Rocki emailed the digital copy to the researcher who requested it and copied Jessica Page. However, there has been no word from the Graduate School as to whether the document can be placed into the ETD Center.
On a related note, the 2008 print masters theses have been sent to Fireproof Records. Rocki expects to receive them and their associated fiche sometime in April.
Sally Rogers announced that the shelflist would be discarded at the end of February. Rocki coordinated the move of thesis, AH, and EL shelflists to her office, and the tracings file to Melanie's office.
In order to work through the thesis shelflist and be sure that all the theses and dissertations are in the catalog and WorldCat, Magda approved a new student position to be supervised by Rocki. It was posted in mid-February, and Rocki interviewed 12 students by the end of the month; several more will be interviewed in first week of March. Up to three student employees will be hired around March 9.
Rocki finished her article on keywords vs LCSH and submitted it to LRTS. She had the dubious honor of being the very first author to use LRTS' new online submission system.
LC ECIP: 2 titles were received in January 2009 (while Rocki was away). 2 more were received in February. All 4 were done in Feb. In connection with the project, Rocki worked with Melanie to establish 2 new names and 1 new series.
ETD retrocon: Carryover from January was 216. Jim Whitcomb added and recataloged 132. Total done from new and carryover was 145. Carryover for March is 203.
Cataloging Department Monthly Statistics