7 Technical Services
During the year the staff of the division continued to demonstrate a high level
of team resourcefulness to deliver and improve services under demanding
conditions of change, preparation for further change, and large additional
workloads combined with further reductions in staff. To assist staff in this
environment the Division's Staff Development Group organised, in conjunction
with the University Performance Development and Training Unit, a workshop on
Working Positively with Change.
A major preoccupation of the Division has been participation in the selection of
the replacement automated library system and preparations for the implementation
of the preferred choice, which was the Voyager system marketed by Endeavor
Information Systems Inc.
Technical Services staff have demonstrated outstanding team performance under
extremely tight deadlines to make critical input on issues affecting the
bibliographic database, which is the heart of the system. Important input was
made to categories of record to be included in the test database. The
preprocessing of the bibliographic database provided the opportunity to remove
nearly 23,000 duplicate records, which were a legacy from the amalgamation
history of Monash University. The de-duping opportunity also required careful
identification of records at risk from the process and a number of record
categories were exempted.
A major promise of the Voyager system for the user of the Library catalogue
is the loading of authority records to provide a reference structure for names;
subjects and other catalogue access points. The acquisition, for the first time,
of the authorities file from ABN (Australian Bibliographic Network) for the
bibliographic records has required significant interaction with the National
Library of Australia.
The extraction of the Library's bibliographic and holdings database for
preprocessing and loading to Voyager has required special workflow arrangements
for all subsequent activity which will be imported in a bulk catch-up gap load
at the point of going live with circulation and OPAC expected in the first
quarter of 1999. In preparation for the database load Technical Services staff
also made intensive input to the mapping of location, item and circulation
classes for the new system as well as to the configuration of the online
catalogue.
Consideration was also given to the time frame for acquisitions and serials
implementation. Voyager utilities for the migration of orders and related data
were assessed and will allow the department to defer implementation of these
modules into the fiscal year with the added benefit of time to work out the
optimum implementation of fund structures which is one of the more demanding
aspects of the new system.
In preparation for accessing the Library's electronic resources through the
Voyager catalogue a project was undertaken to ensure that Monash specific URLS
were included in the standard USMARC 856 tag since some earlier work flows had
necessitated local variation. The opportunity was also taken to enhance
electronic resource catalogue records with data, such as local subject
descriptors and resource types, which were previously confined to the Monash
Electronic Resources Directory.
The history of Monash as an amalgamation of previous institutions
has meant the
inheritance of variant call number and classification practices. The problems
arising from this situation range from the confusion caused to users by
different call numbers for the same title at different sites, to the
inefficiencies for Technical Services in using several call numbering systems.
These problems become more acute as the Library moves towards a cross campus
faculty and discipline based service orientation with corresponding
reorganisation of teams in Technical Services and the likelihood of more
intercampus movement of materials. A thorough review of this situation was
conducted, involving a group of consultant representatives of Library staff at
all sites. A report and set of recommendations for the future consistency and
simplification of call numbering has been delivered to the University Librarian
and can be found at http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/techserv/CALLNO/contents.htm
[unlinked 01/04/2008] .
The Library wide restructure of services into faculty and discipline based teams
has significantly impacted Technical Services.
Faculty Based Allocations Working Party.
This has been one of the most demanding projects of the year for those
involved. The task was to provide the University Librarian with a proposal for
the future allocation of the Library materials budget on a faculty, rather than
a site basis. This required application of the factors in the allocations
formula by faculty rather than site, and extensive discussion on how to
incorporate certain ongoing site based and general needs. A proposal was finally
produced, to the satisfaction of the General Library Committee and all involved,
for implementation in 1999. An associated painstaking task was to rethink and
re-code library materials budget departments from existing Branch funds to
faculty funds. This had to be achieved to a target date early in 1998, so that
the new faculty fund structure would apply to 1999 serial subscriptions.
Approximately 13,000 serial records were re-coded with new fund numbers by the
target date.
Faculty Based Teams.
Steps have been taken to follow through the faculty based Library restructure
in Technical Services organisation. Technical Services has been organised in the
past to reflect the Branch based approach to services and collection
development. A working party was formed to rethink the Library's services and
team organisation along faculty based lines. This was combined with a move to
more fully integrate orders and copy cataloguing functions and build on the
multi-skilling of staff for these purposes. A new team structure was developed
for full implementation in 1999 and will mesh with other outcomes such as the
results of the call number review mentioned above and the application of the new
faculty fund structure for monograph ordering purposes.
A quality project in the Binding & Materials Handling Unit was to improve
the handling, transit and turnaround of books returned from loan across
campuses. The practice had been for these to be returned unsorted from campus
libraries to the Technical Services Loading Dock where they were sorted and
redirected to their home library. Arrangements were worked out with key campus
library circulation units to sort at source and for couriers to transport direct
to final destination. These improvements have meant, in general, that these
returned items are now available to users at least a day sooner than was
previously the case.
Long term projects to improve the quality, currency and comprehensiveness of the
Library catalogue for users continued and in some cases were completed.
The upgrading of monograph records for research areas of the collections
continued through the efforts of an able team of casual staff. 36,000 sub
standard records, which originated as no more than brief circulation records in
the early history of the Library's database, were upgraded during the year in
the Dewey ranges 909-944 and 968-999 which are areas of high retrospective use,
particularly the Australian numbers.
The similar retrospective conversion of the serial records was brought very
close to completion. The 5,000 records outstanding reported in 1997 were reduced
to 120 highly problematic titles. About 1000 records await completion of item
transfer work. This year's serial retrospective conversion has included some of
the most bibliographically demanding areas such government publications where
title changes are complex. The work in this area was preceded by a shelf check
and weed of unwanted fragmentary holdings where retrospective conversion would
have been more trouble than it was worth. Another ably conducted and completed
project was the identification and removal of 1500 duplicate serial records
inherited from the amalgamation history of Monash. Additional extra resources
were directed to the serials cataloguing area so that despite these projects,
and other demands on the team, the year ended with serials cataloguing being
current and new target turnaround times established.
The inclusiveness of the catalogue was extended by several special projects.
These employed a specialist cataloguer who processed 70 items from the valuable
Giligich Yiddish collection and a casual copy cataloguer who processed 1000
items from the Lindsay Shaw donation of juvenile literature. 800 items were also
added to the Kipen Judaica Collection from the Rothenberg donation of Jewish
studies material.
The Serial Processing team dealt with the cancellation of 444 titles for the
Matheson Library necessitated by the drastic decline in the value of the
Australian dollar. This was achieved under great pressure in less than twenty
working days by highly efficient planning and action. Some account was taken in
the cancellation process of a project undertaken in Technical Services to
identify all duplicate subscriptions across the Monash Libraries.
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