Technical Services Round Table

Annual Report, 2001-2002
ULA Technical Services Roundtable

This year our roundtable sponsored a workshop called Metadata: Beyond MARC at the Moab Fall Workshop in October 2001. We also sponsored six programs at ULA May 2002 annual conference:
      Preconference on Authority Control in 2 sessions.
            Morning session was devoted to basic authority control information: what it is, why it is
                  important, how it can be applied; costs; outsourcing, how to read an authority
                  record; how to research headings.
            Afternoon session covered cooperative cataloging programs offered by the Program
                  for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC): their programs, guidelines, associated costs,
                  benefits, training, etc.

      Managing E-journals (in 2 sessions): Panel of librarians and reps from EBSCO and Serials Solutions discussed how libraries are coping with the ever-growing number of electronic journals and some of the new products available to assist them.

      Giving up Journal Checkin: Two people from Univ of Nevada, Reno Libraries described their controversial discontinuance of checking in journals: what they did, how they made it work, why patrons are better off as a result.

      Metadata: Beyond MARC and LCSH: Three catalogers described what metadata is, how it works in a digital environment, what some of the problems are, and how quality control and authority control figure in.

      OCLC’s Cataloging Metadata Desktop: Rosario Garza from BCR brought us up to date on the new metadata/cataloging web browser interface that will be available in July 2002 and will replace OCLC Passport in December 2002. Also discussed the new completely redesigned Windows client version that is scheduled for release on July 2003. Passport will no longer be support after Dec. 31, 2002; CatME will continue until the Windows client is available.

      Authority Control in a Nutshell (in 2 sessions)
            A compressed version of the Authority Control preconference.

We also organized a group lunch for each of the two ULA conference days and held our annual member business meeting on Thursday, May 2 from 3:15 to 4 pm. Minutes of that meeting are attached at the end of this report.

The Chair of our roundtable and another roundtable member worked with the ULA Public Relations Committee to sponsor a round table summit meeting to discuss ways to re-invigorate round tables and stimulate participation. About 40 ULA roundtable officers, past and present, attended.

Officers for 2002-03 are:
      Co-chairs: Cheryl Walters (USU,) and Rachel Wadham (BYU)
      Members at large are: Erminia Chao (BYU), Monyee Yip (Weber County Library),
                  and Catherine McIntyre (Utah Valley State College)

This year we started planning a PCC Funnel group for the Utah region (including Idaho, Nevada, etc.) to be called Mountain West Funnel which will train catalogers to research and submit new name, subject, geographic and series headings to Library of Congress for inclusion in the national authority files. We started recruiting participants and submitting applications in June 2002 and hope to sponsor at least two 3-day training sessions this year to get us started. Members will benefit from free intensive training by certified NACO/SACO/BIBCO trainers and having the ability to contribute new headings to our national authority files.



Minutes, Business meeting of the Technical Services Roundtable

Technical Services Round Table membership meeting
      at ULA 2002, Thurs, May 2, 3:15 - 4 pm.
Present: Cheryl Adams, Erminia Chao, Shannon Hoffman, Mavis Molto, Cheryl Walters,
      and Monyee Yip

Discussed ideas for programs and activities for coming year. All agreed that we should try to sponsor some NACO training (Name Authority Cooperative Program), perhaps two sessions, one in Logan and another in Salt Lake City. These would be 3-day sessions that would prepare libraries to become contributors to a proposed NACO funnel for the Utah/Nevada/Idaho area, maybe called the Mountain West funnel. This funnel would allow regional libraries to contribute name headings to the national authority file.

Also, some of our round table members are interested in somehow focusing more on serials. Cheryl W. will discuss this with ULA Board to see what the possibilities are. Some possibilities that come to mind are forming a discussion or interest group for Serials while another possibility would be forming a separate Serials Round Table (this might be problematic).

Some other program ideas included:

• A program on general topics that pertained to all units of the round table such as management, statistics, staffing, technical services workflows, etc.
• A discussion of issues session with specific tables designated for discussion of specific issues or specialties.
• Bringing in someone from CONSER to do serials training; only costs would be travel expenses for trainer. Particularly timely in view of significant AACR2 chapter 12 changes this summer.
• Have a meeting sometime during the summer/fall to identify 2 - 4 issues of interest that warrant investigation and discussion by round table members. Break into subgroups to do more investigation/discussion before ULA, then hold sessions during ULA to share results, conclusions, recommendations developed by subgroups.
• Have training session on improving OCLC searching techniques
• Session on measuring/evaluating efficiency of cataloging/acquisitions workflow.
• Sponsor follow-up serials meeting from ULA serials table talk discussion. Have meeting at Utah Valley State College Southern Utah University and have our round table fund refreshments for the meeting.

Page last updated July 2002.