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The Year in Summary

MARC welcomed a new Assistant Head librarian in the Fall and expanded its management structure. Total monographic receipts fell in FY05 by 3% despite increases in special purchases (43%) and DVD receipts (28%). MARC staff succeeded in keeping copy-cataloging current with receipts in all areas except Africana special purchases. Catalog staff assumed responsibility for Africana copy-cataloging during five months of FY05, while MARC staff worked to eliminate the backlog of titles waiting to be received. As the result of a continuing skills training program, by August all members of the MARC Department were able to perform all basic acquisitions and cataloging processing functions. Cataloging quality improved as a result of the annual revision program, with the average level of accuracy reaching 95%. Electronic resources made their debut in MARC as two staff began importing and editing copy for the Internet version of a major electronic series subscription (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). A Spring book sale yielded revenues of $9317, with 70% of the total stock sold. MARC began implementation of the new Performance Excellence evaluation system by completing the first quarterly review in August.

Highlights of the Year

MARC welcomed a new librarian Assistant Head in October with the arrival of CEG, who is responsible for supervising the Department’s nine Senior Acquisitions Assistants/Bibliographic Editors. The MARC management structure was expanded to ensure a more manageable set of duties for each supervisor. RNEU assumed a new role of Acquisitions Specialist and continues to supervise the Gifts Coordinator. A third supervisory position was created in March with the promotion of CBD to an LA2 position with responsibility for supervising the LA1’s. CBD resigned in May and RAR was recruited as her replacement. He joined the MARC Department in August.

After three years of ongoing training initiatives in MARC, all gaps in the knowledge of basic skills were finally eliminated. These knowledge gaps had appeared after the merging of the BRS Department with the monographic acquisitions unit of the Serials and Acquisitions Department in 1999. For the first time since its creation, by August 2005 virtually all MARC staff were capable of performing all basic ordering, receiving, cataloging and classification functions. This new state of readiness should significantly increase the department’s ability to remain flexible in times of flux and keep cataloging current with receipts.

Total monographic receipts in FY05 fell 3% from the previous year. Approval plans with our US, UK, Italian, Spanish and German vendors were reduced significantly. Firm order receipts fell by 4%. The final tally for receipts in FY05 would have been even lower had it not been for dramatic spikes in certain categories. A 28% increase was recorded in the number of DVD’s purchased, as well as an overall 43% in special purchase titles, including Special Collections (up 36%) and Africana special purchases (up 29%). The Zuleta Alvarez and Patterson collections, although purchased at the end of FY05, are not included in the FY05 receipts. They will be processed in FY06.

The quality of cataloging in MARC continues to improve with the Department’s program of annual cataloging revision. Each staff member submits 75 titles representative of their work for review. The average cataloging accuracy level for MARC staff in FY05 (as determined by the annual revision exercise) rose from 92% (in FY04) to 95%. Additional training exercises were conducted in August to instruct staff in the pitfalls of working with older (pre-AACR2) copy. This new knowledge will be especially critical in FY06 as the entire department works to catalog the Zuleta Alvarez collection of early twentieth-century titles, most of which were cataloged pre-AACR2.

An important cataloging “first” was recorded in 2005 with the successful integration of a type of electronic resource into the copy-cataloging work flow. In January 2005 two MARC staff members (JDB and MC) began importing and editing copy for the Internet version of an important monographic continuation--Lecture Notes in Computer Science—which the Library is now receiving electronically on subscription.

Under the general direction and supervision of JLB, Gifts Coordinator, the Library held its second book sale in the Ver Steeg Lounge in April 2005. Approximately 70% of the 7000 volumes were sold for a revenue of $9317. The stock of items for sale was considerably lower than at the previous sale, in November 2003, when 13,400 volumes were sold. An important lesson learned from the experiment with a Spring sale was that book acquisition seems to be less enticing for students in April than in the Fall, probably because in the Spring most students are looking ahead to a summer move. JLB recommends holding all future book sales in the Fall.

MARC supervisors and staff attended training workshops in June and July to prepare for a transition to the University’s new Performance Excellence evaluation system. Based on what they learned from these sessions, new performance goals were drafted for FY06 and every staff member met with his/her supervisor for the first quarterly evaluation review in August. It is expected that both staff and supervisors will gain greater understanding of how the new system is meant to work in the coming year.

1. Complete training of new Assistant Head librarian
Although the new Assistant Head came to Northwestern with several years’ experience as a cataloger, she had no prior experience in acquisitions and was not used to assigning call numbers in Dewey. After four months’ intensive training, however, she had bridged those gaps by learning to perform all of the basic ordering, receiving, cataloging and Dewey classification functions. By January she was able to apply her new knowledge by training others in the department and revising their work for accuracy.

2. Keep cataloging current with new receipts
The year began with a backlog of eight trucks of Africana special purchase monographs (about 1200 volumes) in queue for processing. As new Africana purchases arrived throughout the year at an unprecedented rate, it was impossible to catch up without outside help. In February, the MARC Department declared an emergency and asked its staff to temporarily cease cataloging of Africana materials, focusing instead on receiving the items and getting provisional records into Voyager. The MARC Department is grateful to PDO and SM of the Catalog Department, who took over the copy-cataloging of Africana receipts from February to July. The backlog was finally eliminated in July, at which point cataloging responsibility for these materials returned to MARC. This temporary halt in an important area of cataloging operations had a big impact on the total number of titles cataloged in MARC in FY05 (down 15% from FY04). A number of recent staff resignations (JES and KBT in FY04, CBD in FY05) also contributed to the decline in cataloging production, as new staff had to be recruited and trained.

3. Update online procedures to reflect current policy and practice
Approximately thirty new procedural pages were added to the MARC website in the past year. Some were new documents outlining completely new practices while others contained revisions to existing procedures. Of special note were the new documents created for the “856 Field” and “Collected Works and Other Classed-Together Multi-Part Series”, as these new procedures provide clarification on complex issues of long-standing confusion. While these additions to the website are welcome, there are still many other procedures in need of documentation or revision. Much work remains to be done before the online procedures can be said to accurately reflect accepted policy and practice in MARC.

4. Reduce the approval profiles for Harrassowitz and Casalini
Significant changes were made in the Fall to the Harrassowitz and Casalini approval profiles, effectively reducing the number of titles that are shipped automatically and ensuring savings in the expenditure of foreign currency. Approval receipts from Harrassowitz fell from 1786 volumes (in FY04) to 1432 in FY05. Approvals from Casalini fell from 975 to 682 volumes.

5. Implement online ordering with Casalini
MARC continued to improve efficiencies in its acquisitions processing by completing the automation of Italian receipts. In September a default fund code was assigned to the Casalini approval plan which made it possible to program the creation of purchase orders in Voyager. In addition, electronic invoices were provided by the vendor via FTP. Together, these automated processes saved valuable staff time in processing the 700 titles that were received on our Italian approval plan. To complete the automation of our Italian receipts, in January we switched to online ordering from the I Libri database. Now, with the push of a few buttons a firm order can be placed, funds encumbered, a brief MARC record and electronic invoice generated, and a purchase order created in Voyager. This represents an important savings of time and labor in processing the 200 Italian firm order titles that were placed in FY05.

6. Revise gifts policy for donors and selectors
A revised gifts policy for donors and selectors has yet to be written. Efforts were made, however, to calculate the average cost to the library (in staff hours and benefits) of processing gift items. After calculating all of the processing steps performed in MARC, Catalog, Preservation and Collection Management, it was determined that gift books which are accepted and added to the collection cost the Library approximately $30 per item. Gift books that are not selected for the collection but go to the book sale cost about $7 per item. It is hoped that by sharing this information with selectors, we can send the message that “there’s no such thing as a free book."

Goals for 2005-2006