Technical Services Program Review
Government Documents Working Group
PARKING LOT
Each of the fourteen Government Documents Activities has a "Parking Lot," in which we have identified problems, concerns, and areas for study as the process improvement group begins work and the program review continues.
CONTENTS FOR GOV DOCS PARKING LOT
PARKING LOT FOR RECEIVING
- Staffing.
- Cross divisional communication.
- Microfiche is backlogged (Unlike book & paper formats, the microfiche does not have to be held until the labels come in).
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PARKING LOT FOR CHECK-IN
- Staffing.
- Cross-divisional communication.
- Shipping list only lists the monographs, not serials.
- Should there be a centralized location for sorting, packing and shipping books to other branches?
- Summary problems: there are 100,000 serial gov docs with UU in the 008 field. This is labor intensive because you have to check our shelves to see what we have before you can make corrections.
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PARKING LOT FOR CLAIMS
- Staffing.
- Cross-divisional communication.
- Limited number of copies printed means that claims have to be made quickly to receive item.
- Time lag for reprints: Sometimes rain checks are issued. This means that an item will be reprinted, but it may not reprinted for a year so there can be a long delay in receiving a rain checked item.
- The claimed items will show up in a "regular" shipment with a copy of the "claimed shipping list" so staff must be careful not to overlook it.
CONTENTS
PARKING LOT FOR SERIAL CATALOGING/ADDS
- Gov Docs serial summary holdings notes are incorrect and do not match the "Supercedes Guide." There needs to be a project to match the holdings notes to the Supercedes Guide.
- How to deal with Serial vs. Mono duplicate records. Guidelines are needed for deciding what record to use.
- Summary problems: www and 19uu. Need www summaries. Also problems between fiche vs paper where the record has GOV DOC SU DOC when the item actually is a GOV DOC MFICHE. These all need recon.
- Incomplete call #s for microfiche documents. They stop at a colon. This problem is not being addressed currently.
- Use of the wrong record for check-in.
- Why do all paperback Gov Docs go to End Processing instead of directly to Gov Docs?
- Only one person is working for Serial Adds right now, and she adds for several other locations besides Gov Docs. She also works on the transer and withdrawals 50% of her work time.
- Who should do the security stripping, EPU or Gov Docs? Both do currently.
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PARKING LOT FOR MONOGRAPH CATALOGING
- How do you connect analyzed items after you connect the full record?
- The fact that most of the Gov Docs collection has not been linked. While item "2" under status may make it appear that there is an major project to correct this situation, in fact very little is being don to link records or to create records where none currently exist in our system. The items requiring links or records could total 4 million items in Gov Docs and Tech Reports.
- There was a project that was completed by Serial Adds staff involving serials that had notes that corresponded to approved notes (allowed in TSD documentation). Half of the 1996 book was completed. What is left are multiple titles and monograph records. A procedure needs to be developed for the monographs to be flagged in some way.
- How to deal with Serial vs. Mono duplicate records. Guidelines are needed for deciding what record to use.
CONTENTS
PARKING LOT FOR ELECTRONIC GOV DOCS
- The Serials Cataloging Unit rarely adds/edits/deletes a URL on serial government document records. GPO is using PURLs rather extensively these days, and these cannot be changed. From the beginning of the remote era, the Serials Cataloging Unit has received only a handful of requests from reference staff to make any URL changes in a government document record. There is currently no URL-checking software in place to find broken URLs in a routine manner. URL changes for the most part were made b the incoming, updated GPO OCLC record overlaying the old record in Victor. Now that UM Libraries has dropped the OCLC GPO service and has switched to Marcive, Serials Cataloging staff does not know if URLs on Victor records will be updated. Serials Cataloging staff does not know how Marcive is being implemented here or what its loader specifications are.
- At the NASIG conference Summer 2000, Jeanne Baker heard Thomas Downing, Chief, Cataloging Branch, Library Programs Service, GPO, explain GPO's policy on what they consider an official government Web site to be. Even they have trouble determining what is truly official. PURLs are being used for most titles and separate records for the electronic resources will eventually be the norm rather than the exception. As the proportion of GPO remote access resources to print publications grows, GPO will only be cataloging the remote version.
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PARKING LOT FOR ANTS
- The Government Documents Head and the Head of CATM have decided that a cross?divisional group from TSD and Gov Docs is needed to organize and accomplish ANTS corrections in a systematic way and with adequate staffing. Representation to this group may include staff from CATM, Gov Docs, and EPSL. This group should bench mark partly by visiting other depositories to see how ANTS are accomplished elsewhere.
- ANTS began in 1994, but the corrections were never made. There are several thick notebooks full of ANTS documents which list many corrections on each page. Each item on the ANTS list has many ramifications that may require still more corrections.
- While ANTS (Admin Notes Tech Supplement) started being issued in 1994, its parent publication, Admin Notes, in various forms, dates back to 1950. GPO has issued corrections since then, which haven't been made here. That means that manual corrections to shelflist records will have to be figured into our procedures
- UM Libraries has been cited for noncompliance as a gov docs depository for not having these corrections done.
- Draft procedures need to be implemented and tested.
- Staffing needs to be assigned to this activity.
- Staff need training to accomplish ANTS.
CONTENTS
PARKING LOT FOR TSD HELP DESK
- Training is needed for staff to understand what is appropriate to send to the TSD Help Desk.
- The Web site for TSD Help Desk needs further development to assist people in understanding the process.
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PARKING LOT FOR TRANSFERS
- Peacock Book, or list of gov docs locations, has not been applied consistently and needs to be corrected regarding current locations of specific titles. This book is only 6 pages, so this should be a relatively easy task.
- Volume of potential transfers with 100,000 monographs and 287 serial titles currently residing in LC classification, but targeted for transfer to Gov Docs.
CONTENTS
PARKING LOT FOR WITHDRAWALS
- There are many records to be withdrawn because of problems with loaders in the past.
- Records for superceded items also need to be identified and withdrawn.
CONTENTS
PARKING LOT FOR SUPERCEDES
- Notes on the records do not match our actual practice: There should be a project to check the "Supercedes Book" against the retention notes in our records.
- Confusion among CATM staff about delays in receiving items back from Gov Docs. Confusion may result from the fact that Gov Docs retains many items as archival copies even though notes in the records call for withdrawal.
- Possible communication issues: Unless specifically requested to return superceded to Gov Docs for "Needs and Offers," CATM withdraws them.
- Short staffing.
CONTENTS
PARKING LOT FOR PHYSICAL PROCESSING AND PRESERVATION
- Periodicals have not been bound since the early 1990s or late 1980s. There are many poor condition paperbacks in the collection.
- There has been systematic and damaging taping of the paperbacks.
- There are many poor condition pamphlets with no pamphlet bindings and in acidic boxes.
- The shear volume of work to be done to preserve collections is a big issue. We have not been meeting the preservation mandates of the Federal Depository Library Program.
CONTENTS
PARKING LOT FOR TECH REPORTS
- Incomplete call numbers in bib records have been a problem.
- The Tech Report Unit in the Engineering Library does not shelve some Tech Reports (either paper or mfiche) by either Su Doc number or LC number.
- There needs to be a retro project to check all serial titles to see if the bib record has the correct location on it.
- Checking for loader problems in general.
- There needs to be a review by the Gov Docs and Tech Reports librarians regarding which items are to be sent to Technical Reports. The Peacock Book needs to be updated so that decisions can be made easier with incoming items, both paper and fiche.
- The Tech Reports Unit does not seem to be receiving all the fiche it should get.
CONTENTS
PARKING LOT FOR RECORD LOADERS
- The procedures are still to be worked out.
- Gov Docs staff comments on microfiche issues: There is a backlog of fiche that has not yet been touched/checked in. Unfortunately, records for them HAVE already loaded, so patrons often ask for a fiche document that can't be located, because it hasn't come through the processing queue yet, even though Victor shows we "have" it. In such instances, we race down to TSD to try to somehow find the fiche, but it's a real (and unsolvable) problem evenings and weekends, when we can't physically get to that backlog. Additionally, records that indicate fiche items are often not accurate, since (a) as a Regional, we get many "fiche titles" in paper, and (b) much of our fiche goes to EPSL. Cleanup for these issues has never been addressed for such records, starting with the OCLC record loader from 1991 through 7/2000 and now ongoing with Marcive.
- Records are loaded but not linked to items (except for the serial set) so that holdings and locations are incorrect in the system.
- Marianne Ryan identified a second, shorter list of stems this past Spring, but the second list has not been loaded yet.
- URLS: we do not know if Marcive will be accurate.
- Retrospective conversion: MARCIVE Archive from 1976 to 1991 is now on hold.
- Updated Bib Records: According to Arlene Klair, "We are not technically subscribed to updated Bib records for the new Marcive tapes. The reason for this is that since the loader now matches on Marcive numbers, all updates will create duplicates if the original bib record came from OCLC. When we are on ExLibris, we may be able to rethink this if a more flexible loader can be created.
- Loader Profile parking lot issues:
- Definition: "Profile," in the case of looking at a docs collection to allow for the most accurate record load to occur, means that someone(s) should have reviewed what we get, what format(s) we get it in, what number (LC or SuDoc) we want to keep it under, if we keep duplicates (such as backup fiche and under what kind of number, whether same or different), and where it lives within the library system.
- We have never been properly profiled.
- Locations are incorrect.
- The profile does not generate acquisitions info properly.
- The profile does not create summaries so we do not know all the formats we have.
- SU Doc Oversize: According to Arlene: "It needs to conform to the library wide loader enforced definition of 42 cm and above or GOVDOC will be forever doomed to a lot of custom corrections. EPSL is in the same situation as GOVDOC, no Folio loc."
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© 2000 University of Maryland Libraries
Last Revised: December 10, 2000
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