This is always a busy time for Collections with a flurry of invoicing, receiving & cataloguing as the end of the financial year approaches. There is also a lot of IR work coming through at the moment. It is also a busy time for theses. This year the Registry is (finally!) enforcing the “no thesis, no graduation” policy so our receipting processes need to be particularly slick.

Additionally, we are involved in work arising out of the EL/PSL Merger, the Central Library Reorganisation Project and the Offsite Storage Project.

Peter Hosking is working on the serials that were moved from EL to the Basement updating the location and collection. In a number of cases there are split holdings (i.e. older volumes were put into storage and later volumes kept in EL) so this work can only be done manually. There are also a number of splits occurring with the Offsite Storage Project, and after the Crown files have been processed by Library IT we will need to cleanup duplicate serial copies. A workflow will also need to be devised for returning monographs requested from Crown to the shelves. There are also serials that are moving from Central to the Warehouse over the summer so the records will have to be updated (more splits). We are also dealing with ongoing weeding of serials throughout all the libraries. The Central Team is dealing with Reference Collection transfers.

There is a residue of Dewey material that has had recent use remaining to be reclassified. Weeding and cataloguing of Warehouse material continues.

We are concluding a project providing data for the revaluing of the current collection for insurance purposes.

The CONZULAC contract for the supply of US and UK monographs for the next three years is also being finalised.

We have staff involved in the Summon implementation project.

We are devising and implementing new workflows for e-books and will shortly be setting up a group to look at the access implications for users.

We have just been offered a significant donation of literature.

We intend having a session to plan for 2010 and will need to do some preparatory work for some of our 2010 projects, using Summer Max people, if possible.

Today is Rachel’s last day with us. Last year Rachel assisted with the cataloguing of the historic textbook collection at the Education library and for the last twelve months she has been backfilling Violeta’s position in the Central Team. We are sorry to see her go and wish her well in her future endeavours. Cynthia.

After complaints from my husband and cat about the lack of heating in our new house, I retreived my fan heater from the office in the Warehouse last evening. The oil-heated one is still there. There may be a spare fan heater availlable from somewhere around Central Library. They are generally only used when it is really cold. Cynthia.

Those of you who read the LLT minutes will be aware that the Library Committee approved changes to the Tay Formula at their last meeting. For 2010 around $2m worth of multidisciplinary packages will be moved from departmental allocations into a new general library fund. This will be partially offset by some items being charged to the departments rather than being centrally funded. Overall the Library will attempt to maintain a 80:20 serials:books ratio. (Currently it is at about 84:16). This level of commitment to serials leaves us very vulnerable to budget blow-outs. With the move to centralised packages, the funding level for serials for individual departments will remain capped at the level of expenditure necessary to maintain their existing serials with allowance for annual publisher increases. Departments will not be able to move book funds to journals. The only way to get a new journal will be to cancel another journal. This decision has yet to be conveyed to the Library Liasion Officers but advice will go out to them next week.
Readers of the LLT minutes will also be aware that the Library recently had a request from Financial Services to accept a Library collections budget for 2010 of $1,228,000. less than what was requested. The Library has agreed to relinquish $300,000 of its 2010 collections budget request . If it had had to find the whole $1.2M, serials would have inevitably have had to be cut quite drastically. There are no guarantees that we might not have to find savings of this magnitude in the future. The over-riding message is that we need to try and reduce, rather than increase, our serials expenditure. We are currently running behind budget in some of our 2009 funds but are only in a position to make one-off purchases such as backfiles. The Datasets Group will be meeting on Monday to look at the most judicious way of spending our remaing budget. Clearly we can not commit to any additional ongoing commitments in the current environment. Cynthia.

Recently a borrower returned a book in the CKI slot without its dust-jacket (they had taken it off to avoid damaging it and forgotten to put it back on). Staff were flat out at both checkin and checkout and failed to recognise the book as one of ours. It ended up in the Lost Property box and was sent down to Security. The borrower subsequently got in touch, as it was still on her record, and it was eventually tracked down and fetched back. Disputed return searches and lost book fees averted!

From the outside, without its dust-jacket this book had nothing to indicate that it belonged to the Library – no barcode, no call number label. The staff member at CKI should have opened it up to check for a book plate, but perhaps because of the rush, didn’t do that.

The question is, should we still keeping these flimsy paper covers and putting our expensive barcodes and labour intensive labels on them? Should we remove the dust-jacket straight away and apply the barcodes and labels directly to the hard cover outside of these books?

There may be cases where the dust-jackets should be routinely kept e.g. MB materials, Special Collections, but for ordinary, run-of-the-mill books – should we keeping the covers?
Your comments would be appreciated. Cynthia.

As many of you know Katherine has accepted a position at Archives New Zealand in Peterborough Street, commencing on 3rd August 2009. We are very sorry to be losing Katherine but are pleased that she has found a position in archival work, about which she is passionate. Cynthia

Please could people using the Warehouse ladders ensure that the one with the standing platform and the yellow hand-rail is returned to the area by the door after use? If it is always visible in a set place people may perhaps be more likely to see it and use it. Many thanks. Cynthia.

I am trying to determine what, if any, maintenance work we need done on any of the mobile shelving units in the Warehouse. Could you please let me know by 5pm Tusesday 14th July 2009 the details of any stacks that are presenting problems. Many thanks. Cynthia.

Please do not store items on top of the architectural drawings cabinets in the Law Basement. Macmillan Brown Library staff need to have the tops of the cabinets clear so that they can take drawings in and out and sort through folders, which is impossible to do in the drawers themselves. They also need the tops clear so they can store there drawings waiting to be reshelved into their drawers. They can only transport the drawings to and fro in fine weather and want to be able to transfer the large backlog they have awaiting reshelving in one hit and then return them to their drawers even if the weather is awful and as time permits. Many thanks. Cynthia.

LLOs have been invited to a meeting on Collections-related topics – Serials review, E-cast, and Elsevier e-books offer. Information Librarians are welcome to attend if they wish. Cynthia.