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Tech.
Services > Metadata > Cat.
Policies & Procedures
Technical Services Redesign Implementation Team
June 14, 1995
Status of Process Changes
Process Changes 1 and 2:
1. Acquire shelf-ready materials from
vendors; defer selector's item review for both
approval materials and firm orders until the
materials are ready to be shelved.
2. Exchange data electronically with
these same vendors: submit orders directly to
their on-line databases and receive electronic
bibliographic, holdings, and invoice information
for all items supplied.
Receiving half our materials shelf-ready from
vendors who also can provide data exchange
services (sending online records back and forth)
offers the greatest opportunities in the plan for
lowering costs; it also is probably the most
complex to accomplish. We are focusing on
activities which will get these initiatives
moving as soon as possible. The Task Force on
Selection of Fast Track Vendors has been charged
to deliver vendor assessment and decision by
October 1, 1995. The next step for us is to
investigate the issues surrounding endowed fund
accounting and management.
Testing of a potential technology solution
(Unicorn, by Sirsi) for making fast-track
processing possible in a local system is
happening over the summer. Mid-September is the
target for the decision to go forward or not to
the next stage, the "scale test." Should we
decide to proceed to that stage, Stanford would
work with Sirsi and IBM to create a test
environment with 5-10 million bibliographic
records, and to then run multiple, automated
transactions (e.g., searches, circulation
charges, adding records) against that file in
order to test response time and other measures of
system performance.
Process Change 3. Use automated batch
search services to repeat bibliographic searches
when fuller cataloging copy is
needed.
Also known as "cycling for copy." Willy
Cromwell and Karen Kalinsky are participating in
RLG's development of "Diogenes" product which is
intended to do this cycling. SUL/AIR is preparing
a file of 4000 PUB records as test records for
the Diogenes matching algorithms; alpha testing
of the service is targeted to begin at end of
June. We also will accept OCLC's offer to
participate in a test of a similar service. We
anticipate iterations of testing over the summer;
with luck, by end of summer we will have a sense
of viability of each product. Success with either
or both products suggests potential for
short-term PUB re-searching.
Process Changes 4 and 5
4. Consolidate the processes of
receiving and posting of payment for materials
received and invoiced manually.
5. Use standards-based technology to
support simultaneous pre-order searching of local
database and of bibliographic utilities; automate
batch creation of order records as a
result.
Each of these changes requires a technology
solution which will be an extension of fast-track
technology. At this point our plans do not call
for tackling these changes until the Unicorn
decision is made and fast-track initiatives are
well on their way some time in 1996.
Process Change 6. Decentralize certain
categories of catalog maintenance.
Apart from official implementation of the
Redesign Plan, Catalog Department staff met with
Branch Library Council to discuss possible scope
of local maintenance. A previously identified
pilot project in Engineering will be undertaken
this summer. As the beginning to broader
implementation of Process Change 6, Cataloging
staff and the Head of Science and Engineering
Resource Group (SERG) are scheduled to discuss
the scope of maintenance that could and should
happen locally. As this scope gets defined and
off the ground, the other RGs will have similar
opportunities, perhaps with some resolution by
end of summer. In the meantime, staff from
Cataloging are doing some maintenance work
on-site in some of the branches.
Process Change 7. Use technological
enhancements to facilitate the activities of
original cataloging and redesign original
cataloging workflow to assign tasks across a
broader range of staff.
Half of the catalogers in Original Monographic
Cataloging (OMC) are (or have been) involved in
pilot projects to explore two changes in original
cataloging procedures: 1) to divide the task of
record creation between a library specialist and
an original cataloger, with the library
specialist responsible for preparing the
descriptive cataloging and the original cataloger
responsible for assigning call number, subject
headings, and authority work; 2) for materials in
certain languages, to use library specialists and
students to translate key bibliographic elements
in order to facilitate the cataloging
process.
The beta version of LC's Cataloger's Desktop
is installed in the OMC in Galvez Modular using a
CD-ROM tool shared through Windows for Work
Groups network software. The production version
is on order to support all catalogers in Galvez,
Green, and Meyer, with expected receipt by end of
July. Other CD-ROM tools to speed up cataloging
are announced for October release. A
determination on how best to include music and
maps catalogers in this technical environment
will be considered in the fall after the
production environment has been working for
awhile.
Process Change 8. Eliminate redundant
functions between central Technical Services and
the Service Units for Serials check-in [new
wording].
We have decided to delay the analysis
necessary for this Process Change until the
results of the Unicorn test are known, sometime
after mid-September. We expect to charge at least
one task force in fall quarter to develop the
recommendations necessary to eliminate redundancy
in serial receipt. In particular, it will need to
identify:
- what are our serials control needs
- which tasks are currently duplicated and
why
- what are the pros and cons of the different
serials control models: decentralized,
centralized, and hybrid
- what are the one-time and ongoing costs of
the different models.
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