Cataloging Department Monthly Report
January 2009
Subject: Monthly Report — May 2009
Date: June 2009
From: Magda El-Sherbini, Cataloging Department Head
To: Sally Rogers, Assistant Director for Technical Services
Western Languages Section
May 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 continued to work with Sheryl Williams, a student from the Kent State School of Library and Information Science, who is doing preliminary work for her practicum. The practicum will involve cataloging books for the Ohio State University African-American Community Extension Center. Beverly found out from Magda El-Sherbini that Beverly will be doing 30 hours of subject analysis training with Sheryl in June 2009. Jesse Higel, a volunteer from the Kent State School of Library and Information Science, continued to work with Beverly. Jesse wants to learn more about cataloging and is working with English language books from the new book truck in the Cataloging Department.
Beverly also spent time with Gunjan Kathuria, Rocki Strader's GAA (May 11-12, 2009), teaching her basic cataloging with an emphasis on subjects, then met with Rocki (May 13) to discuss Gunjan's training. Beverly also took Gunjan to the Libraries' Staff Appreciation picnic (May12) since Rocki was on UPT that day.
Beverly attended a Diversity Committee meeting (May 21, 2009; as recording secretary, she took the minutes). As a member of the subcommittee of the Diversity Committee to prepare a proposal for an American Library Association Diversity Research Grant, she attended weekly in-person meetings and dealt with daily emails about the grant. Beverly was one of four members of the subcommittee to attend a meeting with the Libraries' Executive Committee (May 11) to discuss our proposal. The proposal was submitted to the American Library Association on May 15. She attended the Diversity Committee-sponsored ReadAloud given by Gerry Greenberg (May 14). Beverly and staff members attended the General Staff Meeting (May 27). Finally, she discussed their evaluations with section members (May 4-5, 2009).
Jim Whitcomb was assigned a new ebook project by Magda-- the cataloging of 707 American drama titles for OhioLINK. He completed 221 titles this month. As a result of this new assignment, Magda had Jim stop working on ETDs. The entire workflow was returned back to Rocki Strader (at least for the time being) with Jim serving as "back up." Rocki has one of her student assistants, Bridget, working on the ETDs. Rocki asked Jim to train Bridget and he spent several hours sitting with her and going over the ETD form and various related handouts. He attended a workshop at Ohionet on MarcEdit (May 20). He also updated Ohio State's bibliographic records for the Evans Digital Edition and the Shaw-Shoemaker Digital electronic resources by changing the 856 links to 956s.
Lisa Chiong finished most of a large collection of Spanish books that were 30-60 years old. Vera Enesey started to work on a group of Arnold S. Johnson books that were in German (often in old German script). Theresa Wei did many of multi-volume sets of graphic comic books translated from Japanese. Eunice Min spent her time doing analytic retrocon.
Many members of the section took leave time this month (Beverly, however, did not take any leave time) and we all had one holiday (May 25, which was celebrated as Memorial Day).
Non-Roman Languages Section
Summary
This month the section cataloged in total 1,609 titles, and received 879 new titles. The section also completed contract cataloging for John Carroll Library. Totally 50 titles, mostly Japanese fine arts books and exhibition catalogs were cataloged.
Sherab Chen (section coordinator)
Sherab continued training the new Korean GAA and reviewed her cataloging records. The GAA started to do copy cataloging in this month. Sherab corresponded via OCLC Non-Latin and CJK email list with Korean cataloging experts on new Korean cataloging conventions and practices. He updated on the Non-Roman Cataloging Blog on this and related cataloging procedures, so that the student worker can consult and access to instructions.
He was collaborating with Melanie on creating the E-learning for Authority Record courseware. They worked on Google Docs and the Library wiki to create and co-edit the scripts. At this point they were working on the first course. Currently, the project is waiting for the installation of Captivate 2.0 onto one of the department computer work stations in order to start the actual creation of the e-learning course.
Sherab contributed 5 new NACO records of Chinese author names.
Zaineb Bayahy (Middle Eastern cataloging team)
Zaineb led the Middle Eastern cataloging team. She supervised two students, reviewed their records and gave training and instructions. Mesut was cataloging Turkish books, and Shahrzad began to work on Persian retro-con project.
| Languages | Original | Copy | Enhanced | Total | Volumes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arabic books | 89 | 122 | 81 | 292 | 13 |
| Turkish Books (Mesut) | 82 | 12 | 10 | 104 | |
| Persian retrocon | |||||
| Total | 396 |
Anna Batchev (Slavic cataloging)
Anna cataloged 91 new Slavic books (14 original), 103 regional libraries books (8 original).
GAAs cataloging performance
ChineseYang Yu (GAA) cataloged 120 new Chinese books (75 original).
Hsiao-feng Tsai (GAA) cataloged 129 new Chinese books (28 orginal).
Special project GAA
JapaneseFusako Yoneda (GAA) cataloged 109 new Japanese books, 2 serials, 13 DVDs, and 2 CD-ROMs, among which 63 are in original cataloging.
Gumiko Monobe (GAA) cataloged 60 new Japanese books in 78 volumes (43 original).
Natsumi Hirota (GAA) led the Japanese Meiji microfiche project. She 56 titles (all original), checked records made by previous student and corrected 190 records.
Mari Konno (hourly) cataloged 193 Japanese Meiji microfiche titles, all in original.
Akina Hanada (hourly) was on vacation.
KoreanKyong Young Ha (GAA) cataloged 110 new Korean books (7 original) in 125 volumes.
TurkishMesut (GAA) and Shaharzad (hourly) — see under Zaineb.
Authority Control and Database Maintenance
Now that the backlog of problem books from Noelle is complete, Melanie and Lin will start helping Stephanie with the backlog problems that she has. Lin has also started reclassifying AH books brought to the section by Nick Felt.
The goal of the section to increase NACO participation continues with Melanie training Lisa on Name Authority Record work at the end of the month. Lisa and Melanie also discussed series extensively since much of the work Lisa does in Spanish and French is complicated by series issues.
Jaspreet continues to work on the Librarian' s Report and Ed began to process them during May. Jaspreet also learned how to run the macro and save records for Melanie to complete in the online save file. The goal for Ed, Jaspreet, and Melanie as they go through the reports is to create NARS for any person needing one while going through the report (instead of putting them aside and working on them later). After the names are established, Jaspreet will correct any bibs that will be effected in OSCAR. Any complicated fixes will be sent on to Andrea.
Rocki' s GAA is also saving NARS for theses advisors and dissertation authors to the online save file for Melanie to complete.
Melanie also discussed NACO work with Special Collections catalogers during the month since Mary, Joan, and Natalya (the three catalogers who do NACO work) will be moving soon. They will send the records and accompanying material through campus mail, but because of the complicated nature of some of their books, Melanie will need to call often and visit the actual books on occasion.
Indre continues to work with Andrea, and Andrea also trained Jaspreet to help with the backlog of 1xx reports. Both Indre and Jourdan will not be working during the summer.
Melanie attended CMS training on the 12th and judged at the Denman Forum on the 13th in the Humanities section. She also attended the Open Forum for the OSUL Director search on the 22nd.
| NACO Statistics | Adds | Replaces |
|---|---|---|
| Arabic | ||
| CJK | ||
| Western Lang. | 36 | 4 |
| WL Series | 6 | |
| Special Collections | 24 | 2 |
| NACO Funnel | 2 | |
| Practicum Students |
Catalog Librarian
Rocki Strader attended the following meetings and events: OSUL2013 Appreciative Inquiry learning group meeting, May 6; OSUL2013 Implementation Community meeting, May 20; staff forum on Libraries director search, May 22; general staff meeting, May 27.
Misc.:
Gunjan Kathuria, new thesis GAA, started on May 11. Beverly McDonald assisted with a couple days of introduction to the bibliographic record and subject analysis. Then Rocki took over with thesis-specific training.
ECIP: 1 carryover from April; 3 received in May. 4 done; 0 carryover.
ETD retrocon: carryover from April: 115. 51 received in May; 80 done. 86 titles carried over from May. Jim Whitcomb will no longer be doing ETD retrocon. He trained student Bridget Fierst on the OhioLINK submission procedures. Bridget will submit, and Rocki will do the recataloging.
Cataloging Department Monthly Statistics