13 Technical Services
The successful migration of Technical Services operations to Voyager
has been the major achievement of Technical Services staff in 1999,
following the preparations reported in 1998. With the bibliographic
record as the key to other modules it was a matter of urgency that
cataloguing data structures and procedures were finalized, potential
problems with data identified and addressed, and staff fully trained
to create and edit records in the new system so that preparations
for the introduction of circulation and OPAC could be made in plenty
of time for Semester 1. This often highly complex work was achieved
through brilliant teamwork, under considerable pressure, both within
the Department and by liaison with staff across the Library.
One of the first cataloguing decisions was to shift all our cataloguing
activity to the Voyager cataloguing client after a thorough comparison
with the new Kinetica cataloguing client which replaced ABN. The
benefit of all cataloguing being done locally is that the record
is immediately available to the user with real time indexing. A
number of other libraries have since followed us in adopting the
policy to catalogue locally. Our plan for future contribution of
catalogue records to the National Bibliographic Database is to
bulk upload them from Voyager. In this context Monash was able
to negotiate a site license for Kinetica use in 1999/2000 which
reduced the cataloguing services budget by $100K.
The shift to cataloguing in Voyager now requires the cataloguers
to work with three MARC formats for bibliographic records, holdings
records and authority records. The introduction of authority records
to our catalogue addresses some of the main grounds for complaint
from users of the catalogue in the past. Authorities also required
a rethink of our cataloguing procedures to maximize the benefit
of authorities with the minimum of in house work. Kinetica will
remain the principal source for Australian names/titles/series
and all subjects.
Voyager also gives the benefit of Z39.50 retrieval of records
from target databases which has replaced our previous practice
of batch downloading/uploading for import of bibliographic data.
The new approach makes the imported records available immediately
at the individual PC. With Z39.50 there is a change of emphasis
from reliance on a single central bibliographic utility to the
efficient transmission of records from multiple sources as the
key to shared cataloguing.
Technical Services staff also made a key contribution to the configuring
of OPAC displays and searches. Because Voyager is highly customisable
in this respect their detailed knowledge of standards and local
data was vital to the optimum design of the Monash Voyager interface.
Voyager also permits much fuller use of the data in the bibliographic
record, allowing us, for example, to define (and redefine if necessary)
keyword indexes on any useful MARC field or subfield. As an example,
a separate index was easily defined for our Monash
electronic resource descriptors [unlinked 01/04/2008] in the local subject access
fields 691 and 692. Finalizing these descriptors, which allow retrieval
of electronic resources in a locally tailored manner, was a significant
project this year.
Voyager has given us other benefits for managing access to electronic
resources. Links to electronic resources are permitted in the holdings
records which are well suited to certain local institution specific
data, allowing additional links for help files and summary holdings
information. The updating of catalogue records for full text journal
collections to implement these features was almost complete by
year-end.
After Voyager implementation of cataloguing it was the turn of
acquisitions and serials. A major preliminary task here was the
drawing up of a ledger structure to handle our allocations to faculty
funds and departments and also to accommodate the University practice
of accrual accounting for serial subscriptions. Considerable ingenuity
from the Acquisitions task force was required in this respect.
Some necessary fine-tuning of the data transfer utilities, and
other causes, somewhat delayed the implementation schedule but
acquisitions and serials went live on 17 August 1999.
The process of individually approving transferred monograph orders
was completed by end of September, including 4,500 records which
had to be manually transferred as a result of bib ID matching problems
which could not be avoided. In the case of serials the data transfer
utilities provided skeleton records for only gratis serials and
subscriptions paid in Australian dollars. It was necessary to create
other serial records from scratch and all of our approximately
15,000 serial records had to be individually touched to check they
were linked to the correct bibliographic record, to establish check-in
patterns and the correct payment ledger. The ability of the teams
concerned to handle this complex task was simplified by the creation
of a serials data display screen providing all the information
required in one view. Serial startup has revealed the extent to
which a truly integrated system requires the cataloguing standards
governing the bibliographic record to be applied at the serial
check-in stage. In the previous system, which employed a separate
serials subsystem, such matters had often been overlooked leading
to the discovery of many title changes and ISSNs not previously
notified to the serial cataloguers. Apart from many ad hoc problems
for the serial cataloguers, serials implementation has raised a
number of retrospective tasks including the need to transfer our
serial holdings information into the preferred Voyager format for
OPAC display. A specially funded retrospective project has accomplished
this for most of the current subscriptions.
As the first full-scale implementation of Voyager in Australia,
the Monash experience has generated considerable professional interest
Australia-wide. A well-received paper was given at the October
National Cataloguing Conference on aspects of our implementation
by Chew Chiat Naun of Technical Services. It was published as "Voyager
at Monash" in Cataloguing Australia v.25 no. 1-4, March-December
1999, p 208-214.
Technical Services staff have long been creating metadata in MARC
format. Our metadata skills are now being extended in projects
involving new metadata standards. |
