Copy Cataloging Unit
Annual Report 2008/2009
FY2009 brought the retirement of friend and coworker Gloria Cockerham. Gloria worked in our unit for almost 20 years. As expected Gloria's retirement resulted in the loss of one staff FTE; however, this loss was mitigated considerably by the promotion of Judy Rummel from Library Assistant 2 to Library Assistant 3. Because Judy had primarily cataloged DLC/PCC level records as a LA 2, two student assistants (Aamer Shareef and Ryan Crooks) were trained to catalog this material to cover Judy's previous cataloging responsibilities. During FY2009 the unit employed on average 7 student assistants for the fall and spring semesters. Student assistants continued to be an integral part of the Copy Cataloging Unit. Students searched at least 85% of the new material coming into the department. In spite of a retirement and the training required for Judy, the unit still cataloged more titles in FY2009 than FY2008. A total of 13,517 new titles were cataloged by the unit this year, including 228 serials, 103 sound discs, 785 videos (VHS & DVD) and 955 electronic theses and dissertations. In addition, the unit reclassed 1,279 titles for the first phase of the storage reclass project.
Below are some of the unit’s activities in FY2009:
- The unit completed a two-year storage reclass project. During that time, the unit reclassed 2,465 titles for Library West and Marston Science Library. Toward the end of the fiscal year, the unit prepared to begin the second phase of the storage reclass project with all libraries other than Education participating.
- Responsibility for loading the Bib Notification files from OCLC was transferred to Copy Cataloging from Database Maintenance. Patsy Mongo graciously agreed to take on this new responsibility. Jackie Heiland provided the training. Patsy was able to quickly eliminate the remaining backlog.
- Four staff members from different areas of the library, Kelli Schoneck (Ill), Ryan Litsey (Reserves/Ill), Susie Potter (Law) and Jamie Beserock (Reference/Journalism), were trained in searching and cataloging. Kelli and Ryan remained with our unit several weeks as part of an internship, cataloging primarily DLC/PCC material. Susie Potter worked with Fern Carlson on the cataloging of complex member copy records. Jamie Beserock sat in on training for how to search in OCLC using Connexion.
- An on-going goal for our department is to provide cataloging support in order to make Special Collections material more available to patrons. The unit continued to provide cataloging and support for several types of Special Collections material. Patsy Mongo continued doing the bulk of the copy cataloging of the Florida History Collection material. Fern Carlson worked 1/3 time through the spring providing support for the NEH Baldwin grant which is currently cataloging late nineteenth-century children’s literature. The current pahse of the NEH Baldwin grant ended in April 2009.
- The unit continued providing support for the P. K. Younge Developmental Research School's Mead Library. Student assistants search material in OCLC and export it to Aleph where it can be cataloged by the Mead librarian.
- The unit continued to work with Paul Lightcap and Raimonda Margioni in Acquisitions and Licensing to identify material received on standing order that could possibly be received shelf-ready and also to identify material ordered regularly that could be put on a standing order saving both time and reducing errors.
- As the first phase of the storage reclass project wound down during the winter, the unit began preparations for the second phase. Approximately 1,200 high-usage titles have been identified for reclassification in this phase of the project.
- In May, Copy Cataloging began participating in the Storage Documents Cataloging Project. Todd Chisholm began working one day a week at ALF, searching for records and cataloging them. Fern Carlson will join him one day a week starting in July. By the end of July the unit will be contributing .4 FTE per week to the Storage Documents Cataloging Project.
- In June student assistants spent the month in some major clean up projects. 1) A backlog of approximately 350 records were deleted from the catalog. 2) Under the guidance of Susan Constantineau, s ummaries (520s) were added to 65 Florida newspaper bibliographic records. 3) Under the supervision of Gerald Langford, approximately 56,840 subject and name headings were corrected -- eliminating virtually all of the backlog of updates for subjects and reducing the number of backlogged updates for names by a third. 4) Working with Jimmie Lundgren and Susan Constantineau, several maps and an atlas in Arabic were cataloged with the help of one of the student assistants who reads Arabic fluently 5) Under Hikaru Nakano, Cyrillic was added to several hundred bibliographic records in Russian and Serbian.
- In response to OCLC's initiative to encourage more libraries to participate in database enrichment of records in OCLC, the unit began adding a limited number of enhancements to records in OCLC, replacing the records.
- Doug worked with the Development Office, Cataloging Department staff and Acquisitions to develop a procedure for implementing virtual bookplates as a fundraising tool.
- The unit (with Contributed Cataloging) completed all of the searching and 95% of the copy cataloging of the remaining Coastal Archives Collection material.
- Working with Jason Fleming, a report was created to be run in Aleph each week to detect hold requests placed on items with an Item Processing Status of PP or CT. This was in response to frustration on the part of patrons who mistakenly believed that by hitting the Request button in Mango they were placing a rush cataloging request, when in reality a hold was simply placed on the item. Cataloging had no way of knowing when a hold was placed on an item; thus making it impossible to set cataloging priorities. We implemented a pilot program through November 2009 to see whether this report will help us identify and catalog items most needed by patrons.
- Committees:
- Todd Chisholm continued to represent Copy Cataloging on the Print Media Planning Committee.
- Judy Rummel and Fern Carlson served on the Cataloging Department’s Party Committee.
- Doug Smith served on the, the Storage Committee, the UF Libraries Job Competencies Working Group and the Cataloging and Metadata Department Training Committee (chair).
