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Murphy Library Annual Report
1994/95

ACQUISITIONS/COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

This department has the responsibility to acquire book material which is essential for instruction, is important to the discipline, and is significant to the library and the mission of the University. We work closely with the teaching faculty to insure that the materials needed for instruction are available to the student. To achieve this, the library apportions part of the book budget to the academic departments. With help of the faculty liaison, which each academic department has appointed, we monitor the recommendations for materials made by the faculty to insure that we adhere to the Collection Management Policy which was revised by the Faculty Library Committee in the spring of 1995.

1994/95 was a difficult year. The department moved twice, had to adjust to new quarters, and at times was separated in space which made interaction more difficult. The NOTIS system was used throughout the year. We have become adjusted to it but miss many of the functions which aided us in communicating with the faculty on the acquisition of materials. There are many reports which guided the faculty in the past which cannot be generated now.

Many books now come accompanied by floppy disks or CD-ROMs. In cooperation with the Circulation Dept. we have developed a policy so these items can circulate. Material in other formats is being purchased more and more frequently and we are able to integrate them into the collection.

The Allied Health Initiatives which the University embarked on meant that we had to develop aspects of the collection which were weak. We had to consult with faculty and search bibliographies to make collections in Occupational Therapy, Nuclear Medicine Technology, and Physicians Assistant not only current but at times develop a collection in these disciplines. The Physical Therapy program has become a Masters program and the collection was expanded to serve new needs.

The Library revived a Collection Development Committee which will evaluate expensive materials for new disciplines, will evaluate electronic formats to be substituted for existing paper copies, will work with the faculty in evaluating the use of expensive items, and will initiate cooperative purchasing between Lutheran Hospital and other local institutions, if possible.

The search continued for materials on the Holocaust to aid Dr. Wegner in his writing of a grant on teaching about this subject.

In anticipation of the move of the Morris Hall Resource Center into Murphy Library we had the help of two interns, graduate students in Education. Jan Goetzinger inventoried the young adult literature section of Morris Hall so that we are able to weed duplicate and outdated material and bring the collection up-to-date. Carol Riberich assisted in weeding the H classification and recommended new materials to be added.

Weeding was done this summer in the H classification and will be resumed on a regular basis this semester.

Jan did a study on discounts given, amount of postage and handling assessed, and delivery time for the four major vendors with whom we deal regularly. This will be helpful information when dealing with vendors and negotiating discounts.

Jan also compiled a listing of all standing orders by department and cost of individual titles. We are now ready to factor these figures into the expenditure by academic department.

Internet is becoming an important tool for accessing publisher's catalogs and finding the latest currency rate tables. The ASK ERIC database makes verifying materials in the field of Education easy. The FOLIO-ON-LINE Service from Yankee Book Peddler has been useful in determining availability of books as well as giving prices.

The department received 773 books from faculty and the community. Of these 188 titles were added to the collection. The others were offered to other institutions or sold in a booksale. Because of lack of time only one booksale was held. It netted $276.55 of which $107.70 went into the materials budget, and $168.85 was added to the Library Development/Staff Recognition Fund.

The challenge to expend the book budget on a timely basis was again met this year. We will go on discussing faculty participation in the orderly process of submitting requests for materials. It is difficult to deal with the volume of requests which are submitted to us during a very short time of the school year.

I would like to thank Jan, Sue, and Karen for their dedication to the job and their willingness to take on extra tasks under difficult conditions.

AUTOMATION

The mission of the Automation Department is to provide a stable online catalog which meets the needs of our patrons and all the library departments. In addition, the Department provides assistance to the various library departments with computer and network issues (including hardware and software). And lastly, to ensure that the library is moving forward with regard to new technologies.

The past year was an eventful year for the Department. In addition to the remodeling project, a new online catalog (NOTIS) was installed in September 1994. Bill Doering was new to the position of Automation Librarian, and therefore was not familiar with the system, its operating system, nor the library's needs.

After learning the new operating system which is not otherwise supported on campus, understanding the basics of how each individual module works, and how they interrelate with the other modules, the department determined what reports need to be run, when they need to be run and how to obtain valuable output. In April the IBM mainframe was moved to accommodate the growth of the Wing general access computer lab. We also revised scripts written by UW-River Falls to automatically perform daily batch jobs without Terry Stika, the night operator, having to be present to respond to console messages. The staff hours saved were used for other pc based issues.

Numerous enhancements were implemented which were not available through the old online system. Access was provided to the University of Minnesota and the other UW System library catalogs. (This includes those in Madison and Milwaukee which use different online systems.) Online (MDAS) indexes were also made available (ERIC, Periodical Abstracts, ABI/Inform, and numerous Wilson databases). La Crosse became the host site for the UW system for the ABI/Inform database. All of this is available remotely via modem, the campus network or internet.

As a result of the Library Resource Center (LRC) remodeling all pcs moved to new areas, many moved multiple times. This required not only the physical moving of the computers, but also making new cables for use with NOTIS, the campus network and telephones. In addition, the remodeling allowed us to use voice/data jacks instead of traditional dedicated wires for obtaining access to NOTIS. This provides much greater flexibility for the future, but required much effort by myself, Hedy Otto, and several people in Information Technology (IT) to figure out the wiring requirements. The department also attempted to ensure that the construction project would guarantee adequate resources for automation and computer needs in the future.

As the result of unfilled positions, the department also served many functions related to network and pc issues. We worked on the development of the library's web page and provided support for network software including eudora, nupop, netscape, mosaic, hgopher, gopher, and winftp and served as backup for the library's local area network. For pc issues, we provided support for library applications of commercial software, including wordperfect, paradox, procomm kermit, novell, dougmenu, automenu, norton utilities, dos, windows, VLPS, and diskload. We also provided hardware support for library pcs, including creating an inventory and monitoring service agreements with IT. Two new computers were installed for use with bibliographic instruction and allied health resources. Terminal emulation problems were resolved for accessing the NOTIS system and hot keys were written.

Patron usage statistics were also automated. In addition, over 13,000 bibliographic records were added to NOTIS for materials from the Government Documents collection. In this effort, software was written and the records were added during the summer of 1995.

With the LRC remodeling completed and NOTIS fully installed the department hopes to spend more time in the coming year making our current computer resources more accessible to students and by remote users and to do more planning for the Library's future with computer technology. Major efforts will be to write grants to fund, among others things, new pcs to replace the current dumb terminals used within the library for NOTIS searching.

ONLINE CATALOG USE STATISTICS
MONTH OPAC SEARCHES PACLINK FROM LA CROSSE PACLINK TO LA CROSSE MDAS SEARCHES
JULY 1994 N/A N/A N/A N/A
AUGUST 1994 N/A N/A N/A N/A
SEPTEMBER 1994 N/A 925 231 4,250
OCTOBER 1994 N/A 1,036 424 7,521
NOVEMBER 1994 34,204 493 285 8,290
DECEMBER 1994 28,348 253 N/A 5,264
JANUARY 1995 13,483 363 N/A 2,042
FEBRUARY 1995 40,495 1,216 110 10,197
MARCH 1995 36,155 848 1,425 9,973
APRIL 1995 38,389 998 1,076 11,190
MAY 1995 15,914 220 421 3,713
JUNE 1995 9,738 362 171 4,192
TOTAL 1994/95 216,726 6,714 4,143 66,632

CATALOGING

This was a year of transition for the Cataloging Department. In September NOTIS became fully operational. In December the department moved to temporary quarters in the new wing of the library while our area was remodeled. In January Yvonne Hyde retired after 35 years of dedicated service to the library. We also closed the card shelflist in January. In August we moved back into our remodeled area.

The most momentous event was probably the remodeling of our area. The new layout is much nicer than the previous one. It should also prove to be more efficient.

Yvonne Hyde's retirement was also a momentous occasion. She had been working in cataloging much longer than anyone else in the department. Her knowledge and enthusiasm will be sorely missed. This also marks the beginning of an era of retrenchment as she will not be replaced. Cataloging will have to reduce services offered, in addition to increased efficiencies from automation, to absorb such a great loss. We also hope to mitigate the loss by getting Ellen Nordstrom's eight hours of office work reassigned to the Cataloging Department. This would mean that we would lose only twelve hours instead of twenty. The office support would have to come from somewhere else in the library.

We have made great progress in cleaning up problems resulting from the conversion to NOTIS. We have completed clean up of the authority record conflict report. We will continue to have records to clean up as a result of future cataloging, but future reports will be much smaller. We make steady but slow progress on examining retrospective conversion records and making necessary corrections. Bill Doering wanted to do a little cataloging for us, so he has been working on records from our Deferred Cataloging File which were not converted because OCLC records were not available.

With relatively new computers on Barb Nord's and Susan Grebel's desks, our primary need is for a more powerful computer for Ellen Nordstrom. The OCLC M310 Workstation died this year but we decided to cancel our second line into Technical Services and use only our remaining line here and the one into Interlibrary Loan. This was possible, in part, because all library staff can now access OCLC at our desks through the internet. This was accomplished by Bill Doering with some assistance from Charles Marx. We continue to try to implement OCLC Cataloging Microenhancer for original cataloging but problems with the software make it difficult to use on networked computers. Bill has assisted with this problem, but OCLC will probably have to redesign the software to resolve the problem.

MURPHY LIBRARY CATALOGING DEPT.
1994/95 STATISTICS
REVISIONS
Corrected OCLC Cataloging (Recataloged for new call number, series, name, typos, etc.): 42,045 (+414%)
Transfer between holding libraries: 30 (-57%)
Titles cancelled on OCLC: 715 (-62%)
NON-BOOK FORMAT CATALOGING
(EDIT + INPUT, NEW IN OCLC)
Serials 58 (-55%)
Scores 14 (+180%)
Manuscripts 3 (-21%)
Sound Recordings 2 (+900%)
AUTHORITY WORK
Names Established 4646 (+100%)
Series established 455 (-17%)
Input Forms 119 (-74%)
Retrospective Conversion 11 (-97%)
ADDED WITHDRAWN
Titles 5704 (+2%) 858 (-63%)
Stack volumes 5897 (+1%) 903 (-7%)
Reference volumes 692 (-17%) 548 (-47%)
Special Coll. vol. 349 (-18%) 29 (+6%)
Microfilm reels 1 (-94%) --
Microfiche sheets 582 (+19%) 4 (-99%)
Other Microform pieces -- --
Microform titles 331 (+27%) 3 (-73%)
Parenthetical percentages are the change from the average of the last five years. Large changes may reflect an anomoly in previous years.

PERIODICALS

In order to provide access to journal information to the library's users, the Periodicals Department's ongoing activities and functions include the following:

  1. Selection, ordering, and funds control of periodicals, newspapers, and microforms;
  2. Receipt and check-in of periodical issues, volumes, newspapers, and microforms;
  3. Claiming of non-received titles or issues;
  4. Shelf maintenance and shelving of bound, current, and microform periodicals and newspapers;
  5. Binding of periodicals retained in paper format;
  6. Weeding, withdrawal, and disposition of periodicals;
  7. Cleanup and maintenance of the periodicals database.
Periodicals Statistics
Vendor Subscriptions 1632 $ 314,228
Publisher Subscriptions 54 26,974
Microform Subscriptions 687 43,519
Gift Titles 118 n/a
TOTAL 2491 $ 384,721

Inhouse Journal Uses Estimated at 70,000 (actual statistics not recorded due to remodeling and conversion activities)

Public Service Questions July 1994-June 1995 = 752

Activities of the Past Year

In addition to the traditional activities of the Periodicals Department, three major events affected our work this year: completion of conversion to the NOTIS system, a forty hour per week reduction in staffing, and the remodeling of the library.

Conversion to NOTIS:

Throughout the summer of 1994 work progressed on the conversion of the periodicals database from SC350 to NOTIS. First, the records that had been automatically loaded into the system had to be cleaned up to remove extraneous copies and to add holdings information. Only the bibliographic information transferred correctly from one system to the next. No holdings information of what bound volumes, microfilm, or current issues the library owns transferred automatically to the new system. During only three months of work, over 7,000 holdings records were corrected or deleted.

Once basic cleanup was finished and older holdings were input, we arranged for staff from Ebsco, our subscription agent, to create our initial online acquisitions records for us. This one-time project was made possible because they could create barcodes for each one of our subscriptions as well as creating barcodes with needed NOTIS commands. Instead of taking a month for our own staff to hand key all of the data, their staff wanded in the information and commands to create 1600 subscription records in just three days.

Subscription patterns for these titles were then created by our staff and student workers. On August 8, check-in of periodicals was cut over to the new system. Unlike many of the other UW system libraries we decided to fully implement the new system by using the LSER module of NOTIS for check-in. This module is a comparatively new addition to the system and therefore it is still "buggy." Workarounds for the bugs had to be developed to make the system workable and extra staff time is involved in maintenance of the system. In return, we gained full display of our current and older holdings for our patrons which was not possible with the old system.

In October, we undertook our first annual run of the VITLS program (Vendor Invoice Tape Load System). VITLS is a proprietary system developed by NOTIS to tape load subscription invoice information into the system rather than hand keying it in. A tape was run from our database, sent to Ebsco for them to add the subscription information, and then mailed back to us for loading. Hopefully, in the future this information can be exchanged via FTP and thereby reduce the time involved even further.

Reduction in Staffing:

As of July 1, 1994 Linda Sondreal's 20 hour LTE position in bindery expired. At the end of July Sue Burkhart's 20 hour position was also lost when she moved to Georgia. Sue had initially been hired to work on a periodicals inventory project as well as doing public service work. Over time she had taken on weeding and retrospective bibliographic conversion as well as taking a major role in the conversion to NOTIS.

The Department had to come up with strategies to address this major loss of staff. Some of the time was freed up by the automation of the order and renewal process using VITLS. Public Service statistics had formerly been compiled by Bonnie Daines and this task was transferred to the Circulation Department. Sue Burkhart's work was simply absorbed by the Periodicals Librarian including almost 6 hours of Reference Desk work.

Unfortunately, both Ginny Kreyer's and Bonnie Daine's "normal" work load increased due to the new demands of the NOTIS system. Beginning in August, the Acquisitions Department generously offered some of Karen Lange's time to provide Bonnie with needed bindery assistance during shipment preparation and receipt.

Extremely capable student assistants helped us through the NOTIS conversion. We appreciated the extra hours of student help provided by the director to complete this database cleanup project. Coreen Cockrell and Brandi Smith deserve a standing ovation for their high quality work.

Both the introduction of the new system and the remodeling project required the staff in our department to contribute above and beyond the everyday routine. Throughout both projects, the normal work of the department as spelled out in the above seven objectives, continued without interruption.

In the coming year, we anticipate further changes and challenge due to the move of the microforms collection to the first floor.

Remodeling:

The remodeling involved moving everything in the library at least once, if not two or three times. Periodicals staff spent many hours of many days assisting other departments with their moves and the favor was returned. In the Periodicals Department, every single item was moved and cleaned, including department offices and the Periodicals collections.

Periodicals offices moved to their new location on March 24. Periodicals stacks were moved in sections throughout the month of April. Microforms were saved for the end, during the months of June and July. In addition, a new location of compact shelving was added to the basement of the library. Older, inactive bound volumes were moved to this location beginning in April. This move also necessitated changes in the NOTIS database to reflect the new location.

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