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Highlights of the
Year
Staffing
Achievement of Objectives
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The MARC Department made progress in maximizing its flexible response capabilities during times of shifting need. With over half the staff trained to perform the full breadth of acquisitions duties as well as to catalog a variety of materials from LC and OCLC copy, the department has become increasingly able to handle the seasonal ebbs and flows of selector order requests and new receipts. New policies for the creation of provisional records, the editing of cataloging copy and assigning of Dewey class numbers were also implemented to help streamline operations and add new meaning to the “R” in MARC’s acronym.
Staff set new records in productivity as their knowledge of technical processing steadily increased. Faced with a reduced volume of monographic acquisitions, MARC staff had more time to devote to copy-cataloging, recording a dramatic 59% increase in titles cataloged. Additional staff were trained to process materials from the Africana backlog and the number of Africana titles cataloged in MARC more than doubled. Combined with the work of the Catalog Department, this resulted in a whopping 45% reduction of the total backlog. In addition to backlog reduction efforts, MARC staff worked throughout August (and into FY04) to process some of the Library’s hidden collections. These included creating access in Voyager to a collection of 3000 NU faculty publications housed in Archives and analyzing a classed-together series in Art.
The increased focus on cataloging in FY03 was made possible in part by a 5% decrease in the total number of monographic titles received. Orders placed by MARC staff fell by an even greater 13%, thanks to the willingness of a growing number of selectors to place their own orders online. Following a two-year period in which book donations to the library had increased three-fold, those numbers suddenly fell back to the more moderate levels recorded prior to FY01.
As a reward for everyone’s hard work and spectacular achievements in FY03, the MARC Department took a field trip in August to the distribution warehouse of Baker & Taylor in Momence, IL, from which many of our Yankee shipments are made.
MARC bid farewell to several departing staff in FY03, though an unusually high level of staffing was maintained throughout most of the year as a result of intensive recruiting and training efforts. Monique Brada resigned in March after the birth of her second child, vacating a senior half-time position as Assistant Head of Copy-Cataloging. Two months later, David Cipris resigned as Assistant Head of Acquisitions to relocate to Florida. The sudden gap caused by these departures was temporarily filled by Jonathan Seyfried (Assistant Head for Supervision and Training) and several MARC staff who assumed extra duties until a new management team could be created. The decision to reorganize resulted in a new job title (Assistant Head for Liaison and Training) for the senior position to which Reinessa Neuhalfen was promoted in August. The new MARC management team was fully formed by the end of the fiscal year once Michael Babinec (from the Catalog Dept) assumed the duties of part-time trainer and consultant for authority control.
Two new permanent staff joined the department in January, when Jessica Bartlett became the Gifts Coordinator and Kyle Trethewey was hired as a new LA1. Funding had also been made available for two LA1 term positions, to which Catherine M. was appointed in October and Mark Ghazal in January. At the end of the fiscal year, two vacancies were created when Reinessa left her LA2 position and Ryan Bates, an LA1, resigned to begin a teaching career. One of the two term positions had also been vacated with the departure of Mark Ghazal.
In FY02 MARC cataloged 1 title for every
2 titles it received. The objective was to move closer to a 1:1 ratio
whereby staff would receive and catalog titles in equal numbers (inherent
in this goal is the supposition that some materials would be cataloged
from the backlog). In FY03 MARC succeeded in cataloging 1 title for every
1.2 titles received. This is a remarkable achievement, especially considering
that the statistics for titles cataloged do not include any of the provisional
records created in MARC for titles without copy, holdings records created
for added volumes and added copies, or local authority records created
for unestablished headings.
As a direct result of the gift explosion
in FY01-FY02, a backlog accumulated of several hundred out-of-print orders
and vendor reports. By developing a new procedure for the processing of
these orders and reports and by reassigning them to a dedicated team of
staff (Badara Diakhate, Kathleen Brown, Molly Zolnay), the backlogs were
eliminated by January 2003.
In an effort to eliminate the processing
“frontlogs” that had piled up in MARC in FY00, a decision
was made that year to transfer responsibility for the processing of multi-volume
sets and added volumes to the Catalog Department (with the exception of
sets for Music and Africana, which remained in MARC). In January 2003
the MARC Department took back the cataloging of all multi-volume sets
and added volumes with copy.
Following the increase in book donations
made to the library in FY01 and FY02, several procedural changes have
been implemented to help streamline the gift processing operations. A
spreadsheet was created to record the intake of large gift collections
and to track their processing. A keyword searchable code is now inserted
into the catalog record for every new gift item that is accepted as part
of a donated collection. An arrangement was worked out with the Mailroom
to assist with the pickup and delivery of large gift collections. Responsibility
for maintaining the gift donor database and generating acknowledgement
letters was shifted in the Fall from MARC to Collection Management. These
changes have all contributed to making the processing of gifts a much
more manageable operation.
Yankee’s new GOBI interface for
online selection and ordering went live in August 2002. Northwestern was
the first library in the country to perform beta-testing for the new product,
migrating its entire operations to the new version at the beginning of
the fiscal year. Selectors were encouraged to use the new system for slip
selection and direct ordering. While this provided MARC staff some relief
from high order request volume, it also required training the selectors
to recognize complex orders as “taboo” and to transfer them
to MARC for expert processing. This workflow had not been anticipated
by the GOBI developers, who contacted MARC with a request for permission
to profile Northwestern’s operations in an article mounted on their
GobiWorks website at: http://www.ybp.com/ybp/gobiprofile_files/northwestern.htm
A standardized training program was developed
for new MARC recruits in FY02. Since then, many policy changes
have been formulated for the editing of catalog copy and assigning a Dewey
number. In an effort to give feedback to staff who have not benefited
from recent training initiatives and to monitor adherence to new policies,
a program was implemented to review the cataloging work of all trained
staff. From November 2002 to February 2003, four MARC staff had their
work checked and were given written feedback on errors before the program
came to a sudden pause with the departure of the Assistant Head for Cataloging.
It is expected that this program will be resumed in FY03 under the new
MARC management team.
Efforts began in FY02 to redesign the MARC space to accommodate its growing numbers and allow staff more options for personalizing their work areas. A reconfiguration of the total space allowed for a total of twenty work stations, each with convenient access to phones, printers, fax, and documentation files. The redesign was completed in September 2003 with the installation of paneling around each work area.
Though all staff have been fully trained
to order and receive materials, the work of copy-cataloging is far more
complex and requires a much longer training period. Two LA2’s are
still awaiting training in cataloging from OCLC copy and creating local
authority records. One LA1 and one LA2 are in line to be trained to catalog
literature and criticism. Once these goals have been met,.all MARC staff
will have acquired a range of cataloging skills appropriate to their level.
In FY02 MARC implemented a program of
cataloging-on-receipt which effectively eliminated the possibility of
processing “frontlogs”. Despite the loss of several staff
positions in FY03, it is hoped that MARC will still be able to keep up
with all new materials entering the library without sending anything to
the backlog that has catalog copy.
A hidden collection of 2500 primarily
South African children’s books is being identified for priority
processing in MARC by the end of the fiscal year.
Limited documentation is currently available
to MARC staff on how to create authorized headings. Developing a broad
collection of documents to guide the copy-cataloger through the maze of
issues involved in establishing new headings is a priority for MARC now
that it is ready to expand its base of staff that catalog from OCLC copy.
Procedures are most urgently needed for the creation of personal name
headings and series headings.
Existing policies for the donation and acceptance of gift books to the Library have not been clearly disseminated and so are often ignored or misunderstood by donors and selectors alike. A thorough revision of the policy is required, along with a more visible presence on the library’s website and a clear articulation of the policy to selectors.
Content Questions? Contact c-grove@northwestern.edu
Technical questions? Contact j-bartlett@northwestern.edu
Last reviewed: 01/24/08
