BTECH minutes - 4/5/00

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BERKELEY TECHNICAL SERVICES DISCUSSION GROUP
MEETING MINUTES

April 5, 2000 
Recorder: Judith Weeks
Guests: Lee Leighton, Tonette Mendoza, Julie Page 

Announcements:

New Statement of Purpose

The new Statement of Purpose was passed around the room. Pam has
taken the Statement of Purpose written by Gary Quien and all of the
comments she received from other members and incorporated them into a new
statement of purpose for the group. The new Statement of Purpose has been
added to our web site, so please check it out. 

INNOPAC Release 2000 Enhancements
     
There have been some new enhancements added to INNOPAC in the latest
release. Some of these changes in this release may affect our procedures
for creating Booleans and handling claim responses from our suppliers.
Those of us on the BPM subcommittees will need to keep in mind these
changes when updating the BPM. See the INNOPAC Updates section of our
website for more details.

It is hoped that in the near future, we will have access to the
on-line version of the INNOPAC User's Manual, but for now there is only a
paper copy, describing all INNOPAC Release 2000 Enhancements. Please
contact Jim Gordon, our INNOPAC Coordinator if you would like to see the
paper copy. 

LARS/III update

As of March 22, Innovative has activated the LARS/III programming for
binding preparation in INNOPAC. When you enter the binding module you will
see new menu options. Don't try to use it yet. We won't be implementing
this procedure until we have taken the time to figure out how it works and
the full impact that it will have on the binding workflow. Just answer no
at the appropriate binding prompt to bypass it. 

Agenda:

Technical Services Council - Lee Leighton

Lee talked about the various Advisory Groups that have existed in the
past and that now functional and subject Councils currently exist with the
new University Librarian, Jerry Lowell. The Technical Services Council
(TSC) has replaced the former PSAG-TS. The new Councils are now set up in
such a way that they talk to each other about various problems
and concerns. Lee also spoke about the TSC and its responsibility for
the Berkeley Processing Manual (BPM). In the past it was PSAG-TS that
wrote and approved the new or updated versions of the BPM. Now the make up
of the council is different and they have created a subcommittee
responsible for the updating of the BPM. Many of the BTECHGRP members are
now also on the BPM subcommittee and for this Lee is very grateful. The
BPM is very large and complicated and needs to be updated by a specialized
group that know and do the work. As the new sections and revisions are
worked on, he would like BTECHGRP members to read and comment on them. Our
opinion is valued. 

TSC advises and communicates with two subcommittees, the BTECHGRP and
the Cataloging Consortium (the former Cataloging Council). The Council has
the authority to set policy on technical services related issues, but
larger library wide policy issues would need to go to Cabinet for
approval. Jerry's vision of all the Councils is that they talk to and
work with each other. 

TSC is larger and more complex in membership than most Councils. The
roster includes:

2 representatives from the Humanities Council 
2 representatives from the Science Councils 
2 representatives from the Social Sciences Council 
4 ex-officio members representing an Affiliate Library, the
Systems Office, the Technical Services Department, and NRLF 
and the AUL and Director of Technical Services.

At the chair's discretion, the membership has been expanded to
include a representative from the East Asian Library, the Bancroft
Library, and the BPM webmaster. 

TSC meetings are held on the third Tuesday of every month, 1:30 -
3:00pm, in Room 303. The agenda is posted one week prior to each meeting.
If you have questions or concerns regarding agenda items, you can contact
any Council member with your concerns, or ask if you may attend the
meeting. 

Exact Item Replacement Procedure - Tonette Mendoza

Tonette opened the discussion on the procedures she has written for
Exact Issue Replacement for books with CARS activity. MAIN processes their
replacements differently from the branches, so the procedures were
initially written with a MAIN perspective. 

Suggestions were made from other BTECHGRP members to add information
for multiple copy replacements, *urecd notes, and MVM replacement
procedures. Tonette will include these additions and forward an updated
version for BTECHGRP to review.

There was further discussion regarding the differences between the
way MAIN and other unit's process replacements. Main Circulation has not
been following the established procedures that already exist in the BPM.
This has made it difficult for Technical Services to completely process
replacements in a timely manner. It was suggested that an AD-HOC group
made up of representatives from the Technical Services Department, Main
Circulation, the Systems Office, and two subject specialty Libraries get
together to discuss the problems MAIN has been having in replacing
material. Ayana Bourgeois, Judith Walker, Judith Weeks, Giulia
Sacco-Trujillo, and Kelly Ward volunteered to join the AD-HOC group. The
hope is to get the Main Circulation Department and the Technical Services
Department to start working together to more efficiently process
replacements. 

Work still needs to be done to get written procedures for processing
items returned from Conservation with a different barcode, as well as
procedures for billed unbound serial processing. Because there are no
existing procedures, staff have been creative in trying to work around
these problems, altering information in V\C fields without realizing the
impact on Autocirc records and pending CARS billing activity.

At the conclusion of the discussion, Tonette encouraged BTECHGRP
members to refer any questions to her directly. 

LARS Update - Julie Page / UC San Diego

Julie Page, Head of the Preservation Dept at UC San Diego was able to
briefly stop by and speak to us regarding the III/LARS (Library Automated
Retrieval System) binding module interface. As a beta-testing site, UC San
Diego has testing the interface since the Fall, and the first shipment
using it went to the UC Southern bindery last week.

his III/LARS interface has been developed solely for the UC
libraries by III. Originally, Innovative was interested in
working with the LARS interface but couldn't see how it would benefit
them. So all the UC Campus got together and paid Innovative to work on the
programming to interface with LARS. It has taken a long time to develop
because the LARS programer at the parent company Clearwater Software could
not start working on the LARS portion until Innovative completed their
part of the programming. This took Innovative longer than they
anticipated. Now that Innovative has completed their part of the
programming, the LARS group has just about finished all the programming
necessary for all campuses to start testing and using this new
system.

The interface is a major step forward in the sharing of critical
binding information between the campus libraries and the
binderies. The INNOPAC portion of the interface will allow library
staff to create electronic files of spine titling information at the same
time that binding slips are created. These electronic files will be
transferred to the bindery where they will be merged into the LARS
software to drive System 3 hot foil lettering machines used to impress
title and call number information onto the spines of book cases. The
interface will save both time and labor by reducing redundancies
in the processing and binding of library materials and by reducing
keying errors. For more information, see the electronic
attachment from David Jahn, UCSD regarding the UC Bind Interface. 

After learning that although Innovative has activated the III/LARS
programming, Berkeley had not been using the module, Julie gave a brief
description of how the system should work when we produce binding slips. A
file is created and sent to the server in the same way that Booleans are
created on INNOPAC. This information can then be downloaded into an Excel
file and formatted. The Excel file is saved to a disk and sent with the
shipment to the Bindery or FTPed to the Bindery. Eventually, the Northern
and Southern Binderies will be able to pull our files off of a server. 

Julie left the meeting with Gary Quien, Judith Walker and Judith
Weeks to meet with Jim Gordon to briefly look at the system on one of our
machines. The results of this meeting will be brought up at the next
BTECHGRP meeting in May.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:30 am.