The purpose of this newsletter is to provide summary information about activities
in the three divisions of Technical Service that
may be of interest to the library staff. The newsletter will be issued irregularly
via NjP-L, the Library list serve, and archived accessible from a link on the
Technical Services web page: http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/tech/hptsd.html
In this issue:
Catalog Division:
We have contracted with our Italian approval vendor, Casalini Libri, to supply
full catalog records with each shipment of
approval books. After the books are reviewed by selectors, staff and students
briefly review these records, making only modest
adjustments in notes and verifying the headings, and send the books directly
to Shelf Preparation (Prebindery or Labeling and Plating as appropriate) for
final processing. None of this material now goes to Hold.
The RLG Marcadia automated copy retrieval service was explored as possible
means to expedite cataloging turn-around time
for books in the B floor hold. The initial sample indicated that a success rate
of around 50% LC or equivalent copy could be
expected. However, due to limitations in search configuration, which are not
expressly described in promotional documentation, the first production run garnered
only half the LC equivalent cataloging known to be available for books in hold,
making the service uneconomical. Instead, it is more cost effective to have
students manually search for copy for this material.
Circulation Division:
Trevor Dawes will be welcomed as the Director of Circulation Services on March
1, 2004. See the full notice in the NjP-L
message from December 8, 2003. His office will initially be located in Firestone
Reserve.
Firestone stack shifts:
B floor shifting of GR-GZ is underway, once completed the remaining Gs will
be compacted and the collection will now begin in
B-8-A. The shift of the P-PZ collection will begin by February 2, once completed
this collection will start in B-3-F. 3rd floor shift of Richardson 6000-6399
has been completed. Octavo size books are now shelved in 3-7-C and oversize
in 3-9-D.
Order Division:
Deposit account balance summaries now available to collection development staff
in an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet lists
each deposit account, the fund charged, responsible selector, the latest deposit,
and the most recent statement balance. The
spreadsheet, with a file name of Deposit_Accounts_CD12.xls is available at:\\libntdl380\PSCD\Selectors.
We anticipate updating this monthly.
Training tutorials using Viewlets software is being developed by a group of
Technical Services staff. A demo of this is available
at: http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/order/ordoc.html
http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/order/ordoc.html
Future plans include developing scenarios that will be useful to collection
development and public services staff who use the
acquisitions and cataloging clients too infrequently to recall all the details.
Production and Statistics:
Order Division
Current turnaround time for general order placement is approximately eight weeks
from date of submission for full search
requests and about two weeks for “search and order requests.” See
the Order Division web page for a full definition of search and order: http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/order/searching/srchordgdln.html
Monograph and standing order receipts are current within the week that packages
arrive. Periodical receipts are current within
the day of arrival. Invoice processing is current within thirty days of receipt
in the unit. Binding and Labeling both are current within the current week.
Returns from the commercial binder are up-to-date with the usual two weeks turnaround.
Catalog Division
Roman alphabet hold has been reduced at a rate of approximately 1,000 books
per month over the last 6 months. For Roman
hold quarterly statistics, see: http://infoshare1.Princeton.EDU/katmandu/holds/holdrom.html
links to the other hold statistics are available on this page. The amount of
material in process in Catalog Division has also been reduced by over 2000 books
in the past few months.
For further statistical information on production see the Technical Services
web page:
http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/tech/stats.html
(Submitted by Katharine Farrell)