Berkeley Technical Services Discussion Group Meeting
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
9:00am to 11:00am
303 Doe
Agenda
1. Announcements
--Jody announced that the all new version of EBSCONET is now available at www.ebsconet.com. All EBSCONET customers have until 5:00 P.M. Central Time 18 August 2006 to convert over to the new system. Jody will be setting up the new accounts for people so please let her know right away if you need an account. Any users who have not converted by 18 August 2006 must be set up by their account administrators (that is Jody) on the new system. Once an account is converted to the new EBSCONET, access will be blocked to the current EBSCONET. The Training page on the new EBSCONET includes an EBSCONET Overview, how-to audiovisual demos for major features. Again, the old site will disappear as of August 18th. Those people that use EBSCONET will need to be set up with a new username and password. Please let Jody know if you need an EBSCONET account. After August 18th the only site available will be the new one. EBSCO said that we can have groups of users for Ebsconet sharing a login ID. People can opt to have their own login/password or if a unit wants to share one, then that's ok too. Just let Jody know as soon as possible.
--Rebecca announced that as of August 1st, there will be a change in reporting lines for the Serials Cataloging Unit. The Serials Cataloging Unit will move from the Continuing & Electronic Resources Division to the Original Cataloging Division. Two staff members, Greta Pearson and Asya Usvitsky, will now be part of Original Cataloging and will report to Armanda Barone.
At this time, the Continuing & Electronic Resources Division will be dissolved. The two other Units within C & E, the Check-In Unit and the Documents Unit, will become part of the Collections Core Services Division. Sherry Brown, formerly part of the Serials Cataloging Unit, will now be working in the Collections Core Services Division as the Records Manager. In this capacity she will do work for the Check-In, Documents, and Payments Units, and continue to perform several functions for the Serials Cataloging Unit. Please continue to route items to the Serials Cataloging Unit in your usual manner. Any changes in routing or workflow will be handled within the Unit.
2. Bindery Update/B. Ogden
Barclay remarked that we are all probably aware that their have been challenges with our Bindery recently. A little background: Last November 05 the Culver City (Southern Bindery) started phasing out its operations and closed completely by March 06. At this time all the southern campuses started sending their bindery to Oakland (Northern Bindery). To accommodate this increase in business the Northern Bindery hired 12 new people and had the Ultra Bind machine from the Southern Bindery shipped up here. It will take time to fully train the 12 new people since this is a trade it may take up to 2 years before they learn everything fully so this may delay things. Also the Ultra Bind machine was damaged en route to the Northern Bindery and is not yet functioning. It will hopefully be repaired soon which will ease the binding backlogs. Also, the bindery staff are working 6 days a week to try to get through the backlog.
Because of all this, Berkeley has a big backlog of materials that are still out at the bindery. Rush binds are still taking the normal 7-10 days to return, but some categories of binding are taking up to 4 months to return. There have also been more than the usual low numbers of binding errors such as issues bound out of sequence, trimmed severely, mis-marked, etc. Barclay and Tom are meeting with David Martinelli the bindery manager on Monday to discuss the problems we have been having. Please check your returned binding carefully for errors and let Tom in BPD know of any problems. Tom needs to know about the problems so he can report back to the bindery what is going wrong.
The discussion with the bindery manager will include what type of binding they should focus on first from the backlog. Barclay asked the group what binding type (Mylar, Pam, LC, Buck) we felt should take precedence. Discussion ensued and it was thought that perhaps they should focus first on Mylar since the majority of this material are books which will not have online access, where as many serials are available online. Second would be Buckram binds since those tend to be the more important serials.
This fall the Preservation Department is hoping to start a new binding project that will allow the different units to pull at risk unbound materials from their stacks for binding in addition to their regular quota. More information will come out about this project in the future, but they do not want to start this project until the bindery backlog clears up.
3. Serial/Documents claiming update / D. Lee, D. Macfarland
Don Lee reported that CCS is in the process of cleaning up and claiming RLOC=D purchase titles. They are trying to come up with some new procedures and training to stay on top of these. They have found several old lapsed orders so you may be hearing from them about these titles. The depository orders are still being handled by DOCS/Kay Sundstrom.
As a reminder DOCEX is dead so don't claim these, nothing will come. Kay Sundstrom is working on a list of DOCEX to either close out or try to switch to USGPO if they are available this way. This is very time consuming so it may take a while to get through these. Many of the DOCEX are also USGPO titles, DOCEX was the back-up claiming system we had for USGPO titles and also we are receiving these titles in USGPO fiche and electronic format so while Kay is closing the DOCEX records she is also doing research on the USGPO aspect and web and which is the correct USGPO format, creating Innopac records for the electronic formats and doing bib work on the record and closing USGPO records as well as DOCEX depending on what she finds.
David reported that Check-in currently has a 1-2 week check-in backlog. They recently lost some of their older more seasoned Check-in students and are in the process of grooming some new ones. The good news is that their temporary staff Kate Phillips was made permanent 75%. David has been examining the whole claiming process and is working on reviving and improving it. He may be working on new procedures for email claims. It seems like most publishers and vendors prefer this method to the not so clear claim slips we currently use. Check-in trys to claim online as many titles as possible through vendor websites
4. Systems Gladis Update/ C. Takaro
Update for the period 5/1/06-7/31/2006
-Charis has replaced Lorelie Mansur as the Systems Office liaison to the Technical Services Council.
-Just a reminder that supervisors should be requesting account deletion for students and staff that leave the library.
-The problems staff have been having with the label macro has to do with the way LWNS changes the way the computers work, so the label macro isn't being interpreted properly to function the way it was designed. When there is more stability in the way the system works, they can work on the macro function work properly.
1- 035 Utility number re-indexed:
In order to allow SFX numbers to enter Gladis the record size in the utility number index file had to be increased. In addition, changes were made to index the new SFX numbers. Maintenance was shut down for a day over Memorial Day weekend to rewrite the file. SFX numbers appear in Melvyl like this:
035 (SFXObjID)954927706184
On Gladis the prefix to use for searching is "SFX", not the entire "(SFXObjID)" prefix. So, to search for the SFX number "(SFXObjID)954921379776", on the Maintenance search screen: UTILITY#: SFX954921379776 and on the online, gopac screen: "F UT SFX954921379776"
The SCP project is adding an 035 that reads: NO [date] to indicate that they were not able to assign an SFX number on the date in the record. This field is being carried in the 039 in Gladis - since it is not unique, it can not be in the 035 which is an indexed field. This means that it has to be searched on Melvyl, not Gladis. The 039 is being converted back to an 035 at time of export to Melvyl.
2- Changes made to the interfaces used to load records from OCLC, RLIN, Innopac, etc. to Gladis to allow the new Bib Level "i" for integrating resources (starting with cataloging done 6/2), and to allow this value to be used in the BLT in Gladis for serials (starting 6/7). The combinations of "type" and "Bib Level" that make up the BLT for various formats was reviewed to bring the interfaces and Gladis maintenance the same, and to update our table to reflect those enforced by OCLC and RLIN. No obsolete values were removed from the tables, only new values added.
Email came out from the SCP project at UCSD in mid-July instructing catalogers to stop sending bib level "i" records to Melvyl. However, this does not apply to UC Berkeley and catalogers here may continue to send bib level "i" records from OCLC or enter them on Gladis without a problem.
3- In conjunction with the changes above, new language and country codes were added to the table of allowed values on Gladis from OCLC Technical Bulletin #252.
4- Chinese converted records now loaded to Melvyl (214,000 records), many of which loaded as NEW to Melvyl. Other names authorities project records resent to Melvyl and Pathfinder (1,913,700 records).
5- SCP serials file load testing and final (?) revision of project specs.
6- OCLC problems:
a. new characters: OCLC Technical Bulletin #252 defined a number of new characters, but asked users not to use them until it announces they are ready. Meanwhile, it allows them to validate in Connexion, and they have been converting existing data to these new characters and sending them to us in our records. Gladis will be changed soon to accommodate them, but for now please do not send records that have any of these new characters. For the list, see Section 5: Character Set Changes in:
http://www.oclc.org/support/documentation/worldcat/tb/252/
b. alif: OCLC was sending our records with the wrong hex value for alif: records would load to Gladis but with bad data. Sook-Ja Park noticed this right away and reported it to us, and we reported it to OCLC. The problem has been resolved on their end.
c. missing records: Two catalogers reported records not loading from OCLC for work done 5/24. Some troubleshooting was required to see that our programs were thrown off by one of the bad characters mentioned above. The problem with how the program was handling this error was resolved so that we won't have a block of records not load like this in the future, and that any records that do have bad characters will have an appropriate message written to the log.
7- Duplicate barcodes:
Two reports of duplicate barcodes. In one case, with the help of a few people in Tech. Ser we were able to track down the barcode sheets and verify that two identical sheets had been printed on the same date, with the same job number. This was a vendor error and we believe it was isolated to this one sheet, but there's no way to know for certain. So please take the "duplicate barcode" warnings in Gladis seriously and contact me right away if you think there is a problem.
The second case turned out to be just human error - the book that had the barcode on it already in Gladis was determined not to actually have that barcode when a shelf check was done.
8- Ejournal handling removed from loader and Gladis routines.
9- RLIN/OCLC merger: RLIN and OCLC are going to merge. A specific timeline has not yet been developed, but the end result will be that we import records only from OCLC, and that catalogers will go to OCLC for all their cataloging source.
10- Continued EAL NRLF deaccession project.
11- New license file for MrWin6530 and SWAP. Restarted STRTLPB0/1 to recognize it. Each pc has to have the new license file for Wim6530 installed - LWNS is handling this aspect.
12- Created and ran a program to list NRLF level 2 and above (ie, UCB affiliates plus non UCB), looking for bill cleanups, listed out to separate files based on if the bill was paid/not paid and if the charge was to a person or institution. This is so NRLF can reimburse campuses for bills for their items paid to UCB CARS.
13- Created and ran a program to look for everything on search housed at NRLF (not just things that have reached the last search stage, like LASTSRCH).
14- Support for mass digitization: CDL is negotiating a large scale digitization project, of a scope that is greater than the OCA (Open Content Alliance) project we were supporting earlier this year, which is now in production. Details are not available yet, but programmer time is already being invested at CDL and UCB for this, with quite a bit more programmer time anticipated. This will be a time sensitive, contract driven project requiring brand new programming, so it is likely other initiatives may wait while we do our part of this.
5. Integrating Resources Bib Level i
Tabled for a future meeting
6. Technical Processing questions / Open Discussion
No questions at this time.
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