The Library has moved away from the principle of unique classifications. At the moment in practice this means that we will accept the cutter that comes with the record. It will be possible for more than one item to have the same classification and items by the same author to be separated. We currently have a lot of local practices where we change the classification. We will review local call number practices this year to see in which subjects we can accept those that come with the record, however there will be exceptions for certain collections and we would fix call numbers that are obviously wrong. Cheers, Anne

With regret I have to announce that Alison has resigned from her position and will not be returning to work. Alison has been on LWOP for the last six months. We will miss her. I am working on ideas for replacement but no decisions have yet been made.

Cheers
Anne

The new interloans VDX software will go live for Library staff on 21 February if NLNZ manage to fix a few problems at their site. Hopefully user acces will go live shortly after this date.

Please take the time to do some testing from a user perspective and let us know what should be changed.

Login to https://canterbury.vdxhost.com/zportal/ and use login cantpg password cantpg. Send comments to interloans@libr.canterbury.ac.nz.

Cheers, Anne

Many earthquake resources expire on 28 Feb. Our preference is to remove these resources before they expire and before the beginning of term as there are so many to delete it will slow Horizon down. Horizon will then need to be reindexed and the space recovered which is best done in a weekend. We need a MARC load from Serials Solutions and the catalogue records removed from MultiSearch. An OSMOSIS load also needs to be fitted in. This is a long winded explaination of why we will start removing the earthquake resources from the catalogue next week. Records for databases and some packages of well used ebooks such as Palgrave will remain a little longer in the catalogue. MultiSearch access will remain where the package is indexed by Serials Solutions until a couple of days before the expiry date. Datasets will consider purchasing some of the higher used and recommended resourses, but in practice this will be constrained by the budget. Use it now as it is about to go. Cheers Anne

LSS are considering moving away from unique call numbers and accepting the LC or Dewey classification that comes with the record without additional editing. An increasing proportion of our collection is electronic or held in storage so the idea of browsing the collection by call number no longer gives a true picture of what we actually hold. UC has had a practice of changing the classification to ensure like material is shelved together, particularly in areas like literature. This would no longer happen. Some basic quality control would continue to ensure classifications met an acceptable standard, for example classifications obviously wrong such as Chemistry classified in Computer Science would be corrected. There would inevitably be duplicate numbers and we may get things like different editions in different places. However accepting the classification provided would speed up processing times and would allow us to move to shelf ready processing. It would also allow LSS to devote more time to the management of electronic resources, which is where over 80% of our collections budget is now going. While this decision is likely to go ahead, I am interested in peoples comments for and against this practice as there may be implications we have not thought about. Cheers, Anne

I will try to do a regular update on Library Support Services (LSS)

Orders
LSS is rapidly catching up with the order backlog which should be clear next week. Please send through requests for order to acquisitions@libr.canterbury.ac.nz (Collections@libr also works). Use this form https://webapps.libr.canterbury.ac.nz/webdb/subscription_req.php for requests for new subscriptions. A number of Liaison Librarians have been asking about the targets for the monographs, this will be available very soon and is similar to 2010. A communication to LLOs will be sent out next week. We should be aiming to have 40% of the monograph budget committed by the end of March and we will be asking LLs to work with those who are having problems achieving this target.

Weeding and clean up of records
There are a huge number of changes to the Horizon records happening at the moment. This includes material being weeded, moved to storage, coming back from Crown or identified as problems in the RFID project. LSS are doing our best to keep on top of this as well as all the other resources stuff that needs to be done for the start of term.

RFID tags
We will stop tattle taping material for EPS and Central tomorrow as these libraries will go live with RFID before term. Law material will continue to be tattled until Easter. Every branch will have an RFID staff workstation so they can handle this material. Barcoding will continue for at least a year for all new material.

Earthquake resources
Most of the earthquake resources will expire at the end of February. We will need to start removing access before this to avoid frustrating users as it takes awhile for the records to update in various places. Decisions about continuing resources will depend on use and coverage. There is not a lot of money to play with. Comments for or against any particular resource should be sent to collections @libr where Tim will deal with it, as we are very interested in feedback. The decisions will go through the Datasets group and will be compared with everything else that has been recommended.

Short catalogue records
The backlog of material to be originally catalogued in the warehouse and other places will be given short catalogue records. If they are issued, then records will be upgraded. This will allow these items to at least be accessible.

Interloans and VDX
We are trialing the new VDX software for interloans at the moment. This will go live soon but there is no precise date as we need a payments gateway to be added to Te Puna interloans. The interface is still being changed but if you would like to have a look at the test version from a user perspective login to https://canterbury.vdxhost.com/zportal/ and use login cantpg password cantpg. Send comments to interloans@libr.canterbury.ac.nz.

National Store
This is slowly progressing. Sue McKnight is at a CONZUL meeting today to discuss the report going to TEC on the National Store. In principle UC is in agreement with this happening. Initially this will just be Serials.

Serials
Staff have been busy with the usual large mail at Christmas, end of year invoices and the cleanup after we moved our SWETS subscriptions to Ebsco for 2011. A lot of subscriptions moved to electronic at the end of the year and we will be reviewing the remainder of the print subscriptions for further opportunities to go electronic. There will also be a review of the donations to make sure they are still required and if so are they available electronically. Moving to electronic can create a lot of work if a series has been individually catalogued

Processing
There are a number of different practices for processing or handling of new material for each branch. Now that there is one team of people in LSS handling all material, this is getting very confusing. We will be talking branches about simplifying this.

We are reviewing all our practices to make sure they are consistent across LSS, and at the same time finding lots of little things to improve.

Cheers

Anne

There have been a few problems today with the keyword indexes. We will reindex tonight when the Library closes at 9.00pm.
Cheers, Anne

This project is still progressing despite everything else that is happening. All the UC configuration files for VDX were returned to OCLC on Friday within deadline. National Library is happy to put a payment gateway for charging between libraries in place but due to lack of resources they have contracted OCLC to do this. David Reid at NLNZ is currently working on the Voyager upgrade and then is going on 5 weeks leave from beginning of December so there is no one at NLNZ to do the testing or approve go-live. This is going to hold up the interloans project as we cannot go live without it. It is now estimated that go-live will probably be late January at the earliest. We had a teleconference with OCLC and Dan Hawke from ICTS on authentication and patron load yesterday. UC will try to use Shibboleth in the first instance rather than a patron load but this will depend on whether all the fields can be translated correctly. OCLC is not a member of AAF (the Australia Access Federation), which could be a problem. Our contract to join LCoNZ is still with their lawyers, but things are progressing in anticipation of the contract being signed. We still expect that interloans staff will be able to test VDX sometime in December. Cheers, Anne

The interloans self service project is progressing. This week Canterbury, AUT, Otago and Waikato interloans staff have had a configuration workshop on the setup of the new system, and staff are now working on the configuration forms.

The Library has decided to have LCoNZ provide VDX via OCLC for self service interloans. Interloans staff are already familiar with an earlier version of this software used by Te Puna and Libraries Australia. Auckland University has used VDX for some time.

The timeline for implementation is still a little unclear as all the LCoNZ libraries have to complete their configuration details, but our users should be able to use the system from mid January at the latest. Testing will happen in December, Stage 1 will be a basic installation for the first term, and Stage 2 will extend the functionality including integration into Horizon using NCIP. In Stage 2 we will also investigate using this software for distance requests.

Users will search MultiSearch first, then click on interloans link in Article Linker which will use openURL to transfer the data into the VDX form. This will speed up requesting for both users and library staff, and hopefully reduce the number of requests for items that we hold. There are some alternative methods as well. There will be documentation and training for users closer to the time.

Cheers, Anne

Please send all requests for support to the Library IT email rather than to individuals. The job can then be assigned to who ever is available as staff are coming and going at the moment, and can easily be followed up if something unexpected happens. Thanks, Anne