Technical Services Committee (TSC)
REPORT TO THE FACULTY
December 2005
Submitted by Sally Rogers, Chair
The Technical Services Committee met four times in 2005.
The membership was changed to include as ex officio members a representative from the Music Library, where cataloging is also done, and the head of Interlibrary Services, a unit that heavily uses the catalog to find known items. A list of current members is available at http://library.osu.edu/sites/staff/comlist.php#techserv.
Meeting summaries and other information about the committee can be found at http://library.osu.edu/staff/techservices/tscomm.htm.
Topics discussed by TSC in 2005 included:- Review of policy and procedure documentation
In response to comments received via the Technical Services communications survey conducted in October 2004, the committee focused on reviewing widely used documentation that was thought to need updating. Current, understandable documentation promotes quality catalog data, particularly when records are entered and modified by many different units. It also has become increasingly important in training new employees after long-term personnel have retired and much "institutional memory" has been lost.
In 2005, TSC discussed Lib Has statements, copy cataloging policies and procedures, the policy on accompanying materials, procedures for transferring materials to the Bood Depository, withdrawals procedures, the policy concerning retention of hard-cover edition book jackets, and electronic thesis and dissertation workflow issues. Updates to this documentation are completed or in progress. TSC also dealt with the need to create documentation for item record maintenance procedures using INNOPAC MIllennium (instead of the character-based system). This work is in progress.
Documentation is made available through the Technical Services Web site http://library.osu.edu/staff/techservices/ - The INNOPAC Electronic Resources Module (ERM)
Laura Tull gave a presentation on the ERM, the public display of which went live in early 2005. ERM records include license information so that patrons can tell which campuses are licensed for access and can view license terms if applicable. Celeste Feather, Electronic Resources Librarian, prepared a proposal and led a discussion for TSC concerning the differences in display of cancelled, changed, or migrated e-resources in OSCAR compared to the databases Web page that is generated by the ERM. OSU cataloging practice is to suppress bibliographic records for e-resources that have disappeared or been cancelled. A decision was made at TSC to continue to display ERM records for such e-resources to the public for six months with a note explaining the change of circumstances.
- Upcoming changes to INNOPAC acquisition functions
TSC discussed the implications of the installation of INNOPAC release 2005, targeted for December 2005 or March 2006. After the new release is installed, all acquisition functions will have to be done using INNOPAC Millennium. The current menu options for these functions in the character-based system will no longer appear. As a result, it was necessary to rewrite acquisitions procedures, retrain personnel, and train collection managers to submit ORTs and to check fund status using Millennium. The Law and Health Sciences libraries have been using Millennium for acquisitions for several years and their TSC representatives were able to provide helpful perspectives.
- OhioLINK issues
Tschera Connell, as chair of the OhioLINK Database Management and Standards Committee (DMSC), requested comments from TSC concerning a DMSC proposal to ask III for special programming to distinguish URLs in the central catalog for free and consortium-owned resources from URLs for resources available only to some OhioLINK members. OhioLINK approved the DMS request as a means of resolving the longstanding problem of users being confused by the lack of a distinction.
- Looking ahead: the 13-digit ISBN
In 2006, TSC will be discussing issues related to the implementation of the 13-digit ISBN (as opposed to the current 10-digit standard number) that must be accomplished by publishers and booksellers by January 1, 2007.
Document last revised: 12/21/05
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