Science Unit Annual Report 2002/2003
Notable events for the Science Cataloging Unit this past year included the promotion of Jorge Gonzalez to Diana Hagan's former position with his previous position left vacant until Feb. 21 when Susan Constantineau joined us, part-time assistance from Jim Tillman during the summer and fall, the extended absence of Emilia Garcia for spine surgery in the fall, Jimmie Lundgren applying for and being granted tenure and promotion, and various activities associated with preparing to migrate to the new LMS. Whew!
Since there were only 3 members of the unit for more than half of the year and only 2 for more than a month addressing our cataloging demands, it might be expected that our statistics would be lower than in the previous year in which there were 4 members for 11 of the 12 months. Another factor would be the amount to time devoted by all staff to reviewing ALEPH dataloads, and by 2 of the members for training and planning activities associated with the migration. It should be noted that the grand total and internet resources cataloging title statistics were skewed by the inclusion in the previous year's figures of the EDIS initial cataloging batch so that our internet resources cataloging totals were only 575 this year as compared to 2,900 last year. Aside from internet resources, our greatest efforts go into monographs and cartographic items for both years. Counter to expectations, the total new cartographic titles actually increased from 425 last year to 568 this year. As for monographs, the total for last year was 2,579 but only 2,375 for this year, a decrease of 204 or about 8 percent. How can we account for not having a greater reduction in productivity? Well, Jim Tillman provided a lot of assistance in the fall; Susan caught on quickly and contributed in the spring, Diana had been unable to devote much time to cataloging because of her systems duties in 01-02, and we all worked really hard and utilized efficient methods such as macros and CLARR.
We attempted to assess and improve the speed with which books received for cataloging in the SCU are completed and made available for patrons with a stated objective of 1- month throughput time. We established a problem shelf to call attention to books with barriers to completion to prevent delays in processing them. Strips were put into the books in the fall to make their receipt dates obvious. From this it appeared that most books were cataloged within one month of receipt in the unit, but that some were not. Items taking longer tended to be unbound research reports from agencies in developing countries with challenges associated with languages and/or series and corporate bodies lacking authority support.
Unit staff helped in evaluation of test data loads for Aleph system in fall 2002 and summer 2003.
Jorge Gonzalez participated in training in use of Aleph in winter and spring of 2003 as a top-level trainer. Jimmie Lundgren met with the cataloging training committee. All unit members underwent basic ALEPH training.
Jimmie organized the CATME Circle with an eye towards workflows in Aleph and during the transition in spring of 2003, and unit staff attended training sessions by Jackie and Steve about CatME.
Jorge succeeded in applying a new method for the EDIS web-crawler to work off of e-mail updates sent by Diana and load using FU-Loader, etc. There was an increase in EDIS-related authority work resulting from inclusion of secondary author added entries and several other modifications were made to the E2M program and the procedures to improve the records and the efficiency of the process through further collaboration with Phek Su and Long Yu. He gave a presentation on his EDIS cataloging work for RS Training in June. As of August 2003 the catalog reflects 3,269 EDIS electronic resource titles entered over the past 2 years.
The unit completed cataloging of the 67 sets of Aerial photographs of Florida counties from the Fla. Dept. of Transportation, and Jorge updated macros in OCLC for efficient inputting of remote sensing 007 and coordinates symbols.
Strong progress was made on AGRICOLA thesis work. Jim Tillman's part-time assistance supported by training and oversight by Emilia and Jimmie enabled us to complete about 362 in fall of 2002. Since these were not new items for the library they are not reflected in new title counts. Other unit staff have also pitched in on the subject analysis and coding for AGRICOLA of our theses and other Florida agriculture and natural resources materials.
Susan caught on very quickly to the unit's work in the spring, especially to map cataloging. Jorge and Emilia both helped with her introduction to cataloging for maps, PALMM, and AGRICOLA. She also co-presented an introduction to ClassWeb with Tatiana for the department, and gave a brief solo presentation on it for MSL staff.
The unit held back for most of the year on completion of PALMM resources cataloging in our subject areas in expectation of working on them during the ALEPH "freeze" period. When we learned that would not occur until next year, we established a target rate of 5 records per week for each unit member and have made good progress. We participated in planning for digitization projects such as Sanborn, Aerial photos, etc. Emilia distributed the PALMM record printouts for other units on an almost daily basis as we received the email reports of their being loaded at FCLA.
We attempted to assign higher priority to books on General biology and work with selector to identify and catalog important and stable websites to support study of biology in support of UF strategic objective. Unfortunately, very little such material came our way, even though Jorge made an announcement regarding this at a Marston Science Library staff meeting.
Collaboration with Dr. Armstrong has focused on cataloging of materials most in-demand for classes more than on completing the cataloging of antique maps for OCLC so far. Emilia worked to make sure all the Holy Land maps are well-represented in our online catalog, while Dr. Armstrong continued entering descriptive information in the catalog for newly acquired antique maps, many of which are being scanned and will become available on the Internet via PALMM.
Jorge increased level of support to IFAS center libraries and other satellite locations such as Herbarium & Coastal Archives; prepared to help train satellite library staff in Aleph. He made a site visit in August to the IFAS Centers in Homestead and Belle Glade where he worked with center staff.
Jorge served on the RS Training Committee as well as being a systems liaison. Jimmie continued to serve on the Library News Editorial Committee, and also chaired the search committee for the Electronic Technology Services Coordinator and served with Denise Bennett and Dot Hope on the UF Aleph Indexing Task Group in December.
Jorge and Jimmie attended the ALA Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada and the FLA meeting in Orlando. Jimmie also attended the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia, the BIBCO OpCo meeting at LC in Washington, and the Florida Electronic Library workshop sponsored by the Florida State Library in Orlando.
Prepared by: Jimmie Lundgren
Last Updated August 20, 2003
