Procedure for Processing Items from ATA

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Slavic Cataloging Manual: ATA Cataloging Procedures

New Trends in Slavic Cataloging at Princeton University:
ATA Procedures
July 22, 1999 rev. April, 2000

For the last three years, Russian-language items have been supplied mainly by the Russian book service ATA, and they arrive in a highly unusual fashion. We receive hundreds of separate bundles of anywhere from 5-15 volumes (approximately a handful) with a number written on the outside. Booksets are rarely sent together, and single issues of serials are also included.
Invoices are sent separately about once a month and comprise approximately 50 bundles. None of these books have order records, and as a result, when they come in, there is no choice but to drop everything and create records for these items. Also, checking the books against the invoices consumes a great deal of time. It is not easy to find the record for an individual book within all the lists of bundles.

Order Division became overwhelmed with the workload and fell behind.

At the same time, both Order Division and Catalog Division suffered staff losses, Technical Services was reorganized, and new systems were being considered. This allowed an opportunity to redesign the workflow and rethink the purpose and function of the catalog record.

Cataloging production had already increased 100% during 1998, but the number of ATA materials waiting for receipt and cataloging continued to increase. There was also a major push to ensure that each person in the workflow would handle the item only once.

Solution
The way to save time at the point of receipt was to create a searchable database of the records. The simplest way to accomplish this was to catalog the item before checking it off of the receipt. The inescapable conclusion was that cataloging had to be done at the time of receipt. The invoice would then be compared to the catalog record, and the acquisitions information added to the record at that time.

With the possibility of Marcadia and automatic upgrades, this prospect was not so dire as it would have been several years ago.
See also: Marcadia

A reevaluation was undertaken to find the minimal amount of information needed for the catalog record. The decision was taken that the purpose of the record should be to give the future librarians enough information to know if the item is already in the collection or not. This meant including the following information:

Names (1XX, 7XX) Title, subtitle (245 𡩣, 𣸆) Edition (250) Publication (260 first 𡩣 and first 𣸆, 𣽡) Paging (300 𡩣) Series (490) Subject (6XX) kept to one if possible Call number Acquisitions number (037)

Names were kept to normal practice, 100 for main entry, AE's up to three, but time constraints could not allow NACO of names to be done on a regular basis.
Subjects were limited to one or two, along with call number. The extra possibility was to mark each record for an automatic upgrade in the future (i.e. Marcadia) and the way to do this was to add an 037 field for Acquisitions information (ATA along with invoice, batch and item numbers), along with the Encoding level set to 5 (MARC Leader/17). These codes would allow the records to be tagged for a later Marcadia search. If catalogers wished to upgrade the record to full on their own, they merely had to change the Encoding level to "blank".

Support staff were requisitioned to input a preliminary record (in actuality, an enhanced acquisitions record: 100, 245, 250, 260, 300, 490, 700, adding 246's or 500's if they encountered a problem) and send it on to a cataloger for updating, subjects and call number. The idea was to take as much of the typing from the cataloger as possible, to save their time for updating and subject work.

Creating the catalog record at the beginning of the process allowed for a searchable database and made check-in much easier: the invoice could be checked against the catalog record--not against the item. Here is a comparison of the former workflow vs. the new workflow:

This shows how the item is ordered, then received. The invoice (normally included with the item) is checked and the order can be paid. At this time, the bibliographer decides whether or not to add the item to the collection. If so, someone searches RLIN to see if another library has cataloged the book. If so, the item is sent to the team for cataloging. If there is no copy, the book is sent to the hold for a time, until the book is finally cataloged and placed on the shelf.

The new workflow is almost the reverse of the previous one. First, the books are unwrapped for review by the bibliographer and a location decision is made. Since there are no orders, once the book is received, some sort of record must be created as soon as possible. The books then go to a cyrillic inputter, who creates a preliminary record. The next day or so, the cataloger catalogs the book and adds a call number.

Books are cataloged invoice by invoice, so when one invoice is finished, the invoice, along with all duplicates and non-bindable serials are returned to Order Division. It is only now that the invoice is checked against the catalog record, and the invoice can be paid.

Each staff member handles the book only once, and books are available immediately to the user with basic name/title/subject access.

The possibility of using Marcadia to automatically upgrade the records makes the need to wait for LC/PCC copy less necessary: the records will be upgraded automatically. The only loss is the LC call number, since the call number will not be changed according to the LC number, but this is standard procedure, anyway.

Now that records can be PUT into NOTIS, this procedure can go even more smoothly. Still, all records, including LC Copy, go through the hands of a professional cataloger.

A rate of 40 books per day, results in 200 books per week, or 10,000 books per year. The number of books now acquired is probably around 6000/year. This rate or productivity is therefore too high to need to sustain indefinitely, and will allow our catalogers to work on cleaning up the retrospective conversion project, and other new initiatives.

See also: ATA Procedures Table of Contents
for other reports, detailed procedures and sample records, batch numbers, etc.