Present:  Susan Brady, Cynthia Crooker, Jo-Anne Giamattei, Nancy Godleski, George Miles, Ann Okerson, Kimberly Parker, Sue Roberts, Marcia Romanansky, Andy Shimp, Rochelle Smith, Paul Stuehrenberg, David Walls, Will Wheeler (Chair)

Absent:  Tanja Lorkovic, Fred Martz, Laura Orr, Martha Smalley, David Stern, Chris Weideman

I. Announcements, Questions, Future Agenda Items

A. Stephanie Schmitt has joined the Law library's Technical Services Division as manager of Serials Services.  Her office is located at 011C on level 2; her new phone number is 432-7440.

B. The Staff Training & Organizational Development group (STOD) will hold a learning fair for all library staff on May 24th, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the SML Lecture Hall.  The theme is "Continuous Learning; the Key to Opening all Doors."  The aim is to make library staff aware of the many training opportunities available to them, including the tuition reimbursement program, Learning Center courses, Orbis training and other STOD sponsored workshops, ITS programs, the Staff Resource Library, use of the SCML facility, and demonstrations of the Each One/Teach One data base, Professional Mentor, and much, much more. There will be refreshments, and nifty prizes.

C. Kluwer e-journals.  Kimberly Parker announced that the Library will be trialing the Kluwer electronic journals package.

D. Access training for LSF selection.  Will Wheeler announced that Access training will be scheduled once the LSF files have been run for selectors.  An announcement about dates and times will be made soon.  Six classes will be offered, with a maximum of 12 enrolled per class.

E. Delayed LSF selection from last year.  Ann Okerson noted that about 55,000 titles in about a dozen or so files are still outstanding.  If possible, these need to be completed before the new runs are scheduled (those runs will begin in early April).  Also, the LSF staff are eager for more titles to process into the facility.  CDC members asked if the files from last year could be rolled into the new runs or completed this coming summer.  Ann replied that Systems will be running about 360 new files, over 4-6 weeks.  It is not at all easy to roll the uncompleted files into the new runs.  Will asked that selectors who can identify filters that they would like to learn more about, should send him a note.  The LSF staff will create a web page identifying various possible filters.

F. Will Wheeler announced possible future agenda items for the meeting on April 12th as follows:

1. Disappearing government document web pages, from Sandy Peterson.

2. Large CD-ROM sets from foreign countries.

3. Invite Tobin Nellhaus to talk about multimedia initiatives.

G. Blackwell's freight charges.  Marcia Romanansky distributed a copy of a letter regarding Blackwell's freight charges that she sent recently to Dan Halloran, the CEO.  Earlier this year, Blackwell’s announced a freight charge of 1.5% on net sales, the charge to start effective March 1st.  Marcia made a counter-offer based on a price per book.  That offer was negotiated between her and Dan and a per-book agreement was reached.  The charge will apply as of 1 May 2001.  Marcia noted that the Library needs to recover any shipping charges that were charged as of March 1st, the original implementation date.  She asked that selectors gather March and April invoices that reflect shipping charges, so that we may receive our credit.  Note that RUSH items always incur shipping charges, and no credit will be given for these.  Please direct any questions to Marcia or Janet Prochownik in Acquisitions Fiscal Support.

H. Title Source II.  Kimberly Parker has requested for an extension of the trial period for Title Source II.  Marcia distributed a searching tip sheet and the URL for this trial.  She will provide a demo at a future CDC meeting; she will also gladly demonstrate the product in her office for any selectors who are interested.  Kimberly noted that there is some discussion about offering Title Source II to all Yale readers, using an anonymous login.  Title Source II can serve as a greatly expanded Books In Print.  Users of the file can view tables of contents, Choice book reviews, and much more.  Title Source II is a product developed by Baker & Taylor.  Selectors can get similar information from Blackwell's Collection Manager, but not in such detail.

II. Interface Forum (held by CoDGeR)

Will Wheeler said that the final results from the forum will be available at the next CDC meeting.  They will also be posted to the CDC web site.  A couple of years ago, the Library was able to identify Ovid as its preferred interface; now the options and trade-offs have become much more diverse and Ovid is not the leader it once was.

Andy Shimp asked whether we can trust the results of these recent evaluations.  Did evaluators tend to rate more highly the interface that they use most often?  Kimberly observed that the grading features were intended to normalize for bias, but of course that is very hard to achieve.

III. Pamphlets Task Force (George Miles)

George Miles offered an interim report for the Pamphlets Task Force, which is chaired by Martha Smalley from Divinity.  All the members (who include George Miles, Toby Appel, Martha Conway, Jo-Anne Giammattei, Tom Hyry, Tanja Lorkovic, Sue Roberts, and David Walls) have had considerable experience with pamphlets.  The Task Force is trying to develop a better understanding of the pamphlets in the library collection, particularly with regard to their bibliographic access, security, and preservation.

The Task Force identified two key issues:
 

A. Uncataloged Backlogs. Processing. There is a considerable pamphlet processing backlog that accumulated more than a decade ago, although the backlog is smaller than it was a few years ago.  Several years ago, At one time, the library organized a project to reduce the backlog, made pamphlets a priority, and several thousand were processed.  Since then, little or no progress has been made in further reducing the backlog which is the materials have accumulated, to an estimated to include 5,000+ pieces.  There are additional backlogs in at least some of the area collections.  Current acquisition and cataloging practices treat For purposes of acquisitions and cataloging pamphlets are treated as monographs.  Newly ordered and received pamphlets without cataloging copy are added to the frontlog.  Additionally, the area collections have pamphlet backlogs.  The task force notes Note that pamphlets in staff backlog areas are not a security risk, since they are not handled or used, but few if any of these pamphlets have accession records so they remain virtually unknown and inaccessible to our patrons. On the other hand, the fact that they cannot easily be found or used is a significant disadvantage.

B. Condition of pamphlets in the open stacks.  The pamphlets in the stacks are often poorly identified and housed.  To assess the condition of pamphlets in the stacks, the group conducted a mini-survey by looking at several ranges in every class at Sterling and Mudd libraries.  They discovered that the worst problems are in the Old Yale classes where pamphlets are frequently stored in deteriorating boxes or acidic envelopes without adequate physical protection or security.  Pamphlets and broadsides were often torn or otherwise damaged.  Many of the pieces in the containers are poorly described in our catalog and items described in the catalog could not be found in the containers.  In other cases, pamphlets were misfiled in the wrong containers.  Although the task force did not identify any formal policy change, it does appear as if the library's treatment of pamphlets changed about the same time as it instituted LC classification so that there are many fewer issues with pamphlets in LC classes.  The chief exception to this is LC Class Q - which seems to have been created by the direct conversion of an Old Yale Class Q.  Members of the group walked the stacks and counted containers (many pamphlets are in envelopes).  Each member spot-checked their section for preservation/security or bibliographic problem, which turn out to be legion and of many sorts (poor bibliographic records, lacking records, missing pamphlets, poorly batched pamphlets, poor physical condition, and so on).

Several CDC members who are not in the Sterling Library noted that they also have pamphlet collections in their stacks, and that these collections suffer from similar problems as do those in SML and Mudd.

IV. Replacements  (Marcia Romanasky and Will Wheeler)

Marcia Romanansky reported that as of last Friday, 116 replacement titles ordered from ALibris had been processed.  She is expecting another shipment this week.  Receiving replacements involves a slightly different process from the receiving of firm-ordered books.  Members inquired whether condition is a problem for replacement books.  Marcia has suggested to staff that if an item looks like it would look if it had been on our shelves for 10 years of normal wear and tear, we ought to accept it.

The first batch of titles ordered from ALibris are an extract from the total lost/missing books listing created from Orbis by Library Systems.  All titles ordered in the first test round are missing from Sterling Library.  Future orders will extend beyond the Sterling collections to Sciences, Divinity, and others.  For the current fiscal year, Ann Okerson created a replacements budget of $30,000.  She observed that the CDC should decide how much collections money ought to be dedicated to replacements in the next fiscal year.  The decision about allocation is, in effect, a policy decision – CDC will help to determine just what the level of activity and priority for replacements will be.  Marcia Romananky reported that she has instructed ALibris to ship available books priced up to $125 each.