Annual Report FY07
Catalog Department
| Staff |
|---|
| Marc Vezeau, Catalog Librarian |
| Suanne Bolech, Catalog Assistant |
Highlights
Changes in Catalog Department staffing during Fiscal 2007 were significant, affecting 67% of the positions. The new Catalog Librarian was hired at the beginning of the fiscal year. The previous Catalog Librarian, now the Web Services Librarian, retains oversight over the U.S. and Texas Document Depositories, as the U.S. and Texas Documents Selector. The department also experienced the loss of the Documents Assistant at year-end; this position will be filled in Fiscal 2008, as a Technical Services Assistant.
Fiscal 2007 was a time of high activity in the Cataloging Department. The staff added 5,655 items and created 3,162 bibliographic records. This equates to 47% increase in new items from Fiscal 2006. Special projects included the conversion of the Texas Region III Curriculum Textbook Collection from a local legacy classification system to the Library of Congress Classification numbering system; the conversion is approximately 50% complete. Another area of heavy activity during this fiscal year was the cataloging and physical processing of materials from several patron gift collections.
Due to the high volume of work, and with the technical support of the Head of Technical Services, the staff streamlined and automated several manually prepared statistical reports: U.S. Document Disposal Lists, Texas Document Disposal Lists, Quantity/Dollar Statistical Reports, and Batch Holdings Delete/OCLC. These efforts reduced the time involved in report keeping, while improving the quality and accuracy of the compiled statistics.
Various moves in support of the Media Library collection required material to recycle through Catalog to update material markings and bibliographic/item records. For example, nearly all of the 1085 items in Texas Periodicals were reclassified and coded for the newly located collection. In addition to these one-time updates, we removed 37,873 items from the catalog, primarily in Periodicals and U.S. Documents. Removal activities were 7.6 times the level as in Fiscal 2006. To accommodate the high volume of periodical removals and streamline cataloging processes, initial system and physical processing activities were delegated to designated Serials Department personnel, while final system and statistical tasks remained in the Cataloging Department.
A large portion of the remaining U.S. Documents Collection in print has been placed in closed stack status and shelved in the Cataloging Department. The department’s office layout was changed to accommodate the Documents, as well as to improve work flows and staff coordination.
For Collection Development, the Catalog Librarian is assigned the Hard Sciences of Astronomy, Physics, and Chemistry. During this fiscal year, 48 additions were selected, and 49 items were withdrawn.