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Libraries
by Ann Wolpert

Public Services
by Virginia Steel

Collection Services
by Carol Fleishauer

Administrative Services
by James Mullins

Technology Planning and Administration
by Eric Celeste

About Us > Annual Reports

MIT Libraries
Annual Report FY 2000-2001

Collection Services

Fiscal year 2001 was dominated by efforts related to implementing a new library management system, Ex Libris’ ALEPH. Significant progress in many other initiatives was also realized. Acquisition and cataloging of digital resources continued to challenge our staff, as did the management of print and other physical collections.

3rd Barton Implementation

The implementation of a new library management system is a major endeavor. This year’s processes required significant time, attention, critical thinking, and planning skill from a broad cross-section of Libraries’ staff. Almost all Collections Services staff were involved, some spending over 50% of their time in related activities. Library management systems are highly integrated. The ALEPH system will facilitate functions related to acquisition, receipt and check-in of materials, fund account management, cataloging of materials and database management, circulation of materials, and the generation of the on-line public catalog. It will enable workflow connections between these functions, as well as on-line user services based on the nearly one million bibliographic records and associated authorities records that were migrated. In addition, it will mesh with external records systems, such as those of commercial vendors of library materials, vendors of bibliographic data, MIT central accounting, and MIT student information services.

The inventory of activities listed below paints only the broadest picture of the effort required:

• Selection of system: The Information Technology Librarian was instrumental in the coordination of the vendor demonstrations during the summer months. Many staff participated in follow-up analysis of system functionality in relation to defined requirements.
• Negotiation of contract terms: A short seven-month implementation timeline after contract completion added a significant stress factor.
• Preparatory database cleanup: This included deletion of records for materials no longer held, correction of irregularities in call numbers and dates, review and deletion of orders and invoices that were no longer active, clean-up of vendor records, and resolution of data conflicts to ensure system number matching.
• System configuration: This included determination of indexing tables and logical bases, character sorting and equivalencies, basic system settings and mapping data. Mapping serials data was especially complex since it was the first time that data has been migrated.
• Data migration: The Database Management Librarian assisted the Systems Manager in monitoring the data migration processes, which required round-the-clock vigilance.
• Testing: Iterative testing of data was required after initial migration and through a series of requested revisions. Testing was complicated by system instability and downtime at critical points, as well as delays in the vendor deliverables. Financial data migration was particularly "dirty" and required intense analysis and correction. The record loader had not yet been delivered at fiscal year-end; it is expected in early FY2002 and still requires testing.
• Training: Two monograph catalogers and one serials cataloger were three of a total of five instructors responsible for teaching beginning and advanced GUI OPAC searching to over 200 staff members. Specific work-related training continues in all work units and in cross-departmental sessions such as serials check-in.

Workflow and work process definition: Due to the accelerated implementation, delays in deliverables, and complexity of analyzing data migration issues, insufficient time was available for planning effective work flow and work processes. This planning will continue during the first months of FY2002 and will be informed by a growing working knowledge of the system. However, an effort was undertaken to work with ExLibris and our major book wholesale vendor to create a suitable record loader for ordering on the vendor’s system and loading vendor bibliographic records into our Library Management System. Since our staffing level is based on this automated record loading, it was critical to be able to extend it into the new environment.

Management of Digital Information Resources

Acquisition

The Libraries continue to provide access to digital information resources at an accelerating rate. This year we were able to make significant progress in our goal of providing a critical mass of relevant and significant electronic journals. Early in the year, we purchased access to Elsevier’s Science Direct, providing 560 full text e-journals. Later in the year, we purchased access to Kluwer Online, including almost 800 titles. Other major purchases in support of the Engineering and Science community included JSTOR General Science Collection, five full-text titles from Jane’s, Access Science (the web version of McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology), an upgrade to SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts online) to allow for more simultaneous users, 24-hour access, and substructure searching, and additional user permissions for Web of Science (the ISI databases). Major purchases in support of Humanities and the Social Sciences included the Oxford English Dictionary on the Web, the Euromonitor Global Market Information Database, Women’s Resources International, 300 full-text psychology journals from ProQuest, Grove’s Dictionary of Music, Index to Current Urban Documents, cq.com (to access congressional information), and BNA Environmental Library.

Between Fiscal Years 1997 and 2001, the percent of serial titles purchased (i.e. titles which require ongoing commitment of funds such as journal subscriptions) which were electronic resources increased from .7% to 24%; the percent of serial dollars spent on electronic resources increased from 4% to 25%. At the end of FY 00, the Libraries’ provided access to 2,046 electronic journals and 210 electronic databases. At the end of FY 01, these numbers were 3,295 and 274 respectively.

Managing this growing array of electronic resources requires additional staff time. This year we shifted a part-time position into the Digital Resources Unit to support activities related to the licensing of these products as well as problem resolution. There is an increasing need to monitor and resolve access problems, which may be related to the provider’s server, to IP filtering, or to something as mundane as an unresolved renewal problem. We reached a threshold this year, due to our growing list of supported products, where resolving access problems is as time-consuming as efforts related to licensing new products.

Cataloging

ERESCAT, an ad hoc group of staff from Collection Services as well as the Web Manager from Public Services, was created to grapple with policy issues related to extending limited cataloging staff resources to covering digital products as well as traditional information resources. An interim report will be shared within the Libraries during the summer months. The report recognizes the current necessity of continuing to maintain both Barton and Vera as tools to manage and provide access to digital resources. It defines the unique characteristics of digital resources that impact cataloging decisions, and the factors influencing whether a digital product will be included in Barton. It recognizes the current period as one of experimentation, during which the cataloging staff will aggressively pursue pragmatic strategies for cataloging e-resources on a product-by-product basis, as well as for managing and deleting records.

Several experimental efforts were undertaken during this year. For one product, Books 24 x 7, records provided by the vendor were loaded into our catalog. This required resolution of a few electronic data problems as well as creating a special loader script. For another product, the publications of the Association of Computing Machinery, staff utilized OCLC’s CORC metadata harvesting software to create brief records for all of the conference proceedings. In addition, we have subscribed to OCLC’s Bibliographic Notification Service so that we will receive full MARC records as they become available in the OCLC database. In the case of the IEEE Explore package of resources, we have undertaken a cooperative cataloging initiative with the University of California, San Diego. Within this agreement, MIT will contribute cataloging records for the IEE colloquia publications, and the records will be incorporated into the OCLC WorldCat Collection Set for use by other libraries. These flexible alternatives to traditional cataloging models are a credit to the creativity of catalog department managers and staff and signal a cultural shift that will increase success in providing effective bibliographic access in an environment of rapid change.

Provision of title level access to the contents of "aggregator databases", collections of information resources that do not have stable content, is still a challenge. At the end of the year, Serials Solutions, the best option to date, was purchased to provide access to approximately 8,000 fulltext titles in this category via Vera.

Preservation

One of the major unresolved issues related to electronic information resources is their preservation for use by future generations of scholars. D-Space, the joint MIT Libraries/Hewlett Packard initiative, will have an impact in this area. In addition, this year the Libraries presented a proposal to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to plan for a multi-year project to archive "dynamic e-journals", scholarly web sites such as the MIT Press’ Cognet. These sites represent the leading edge of changes in publishing no longer bound to conventions needed in the print environment. It is important to find a way to make these more fully realized e-journals available to future scholars. In January, the Mellon Foundation announced that it would fund this planning project, and in April, a Project Planner was hired. We expect to submit a proposal to Mellon in early calendar year 2002 for a multi-year implementation project.

MANAGEMENT OF PRINT INFORMATION RESOURCES

During this year of extremely intense systems planning and accelerated activity related to the management of digital information resources, considerable effort was also directed toward the management of our traditional library collections.

Collections Housing

In our continuing efforts to reduce the need to send collections to off-site storage, the spring months were devoted to planning for a CRSP funded compact shelving installation in the basement of Building 14. Engineering studies carried out as part of the Shepley Bulfinch feasibility study of Building 14 indicated which area of the basement has sufficient floor loading capacity for this installation. Early in the calendar year, the Institute assigned a project manager, and contracts for the work were awarded to Acme Office Systems and William B. Meyer, Inc., Library Relocation Division. With a goal of using this opportunity to improve the usability of collections throughout Building 14, a working group consisting of public services and collections staff was convened to plan collections arrangement. We plan to move all bound journals and bound theses from the Science Library to the basement, and to move all books classed in Q from the basement to the Science Library. Because of the juxtaposition of compact shelving with stationery shelving, it is necessary to rearrange the entire basement collection at the end of the project. The group has planned an arrangement that will improve the usability of the collections and provide adequate growth in each area. The collections and shelving will also be cleaned. The project began immediately after final exams in May. Journals from the compact shelving area were moved to the Humanities and Science reading rooms for the construction period.

The compact shelving planning group decided to try to move any materials that we would want to move from Hayden Basement to storage in the foreseeable future at this time, so that when the collections are rearranged they will be stable enough not to require significant shifts for several years. Staff spent many hours preparing volumes for moves to the Retrospective Collection and the Harvard Depository. Approximately 21,000 volumes will have been moved before the collections are rearranged. It will take at least six months to arrange and shelve these materials in the RSC; we anticipate being able to provide less than the usual level of service in the interim period.

Fiscal Year 2001 was the last year in a three-year project to accelerate moves of materials to storage in order to provide adequate on-site shelving for growing collections. Our goal for this year was to move 20,000 volumes from Barker Engineering Library. Over 17,000 volumes were moved before we had to temporarily suspend these moves in order to carry out the large Hayden basement moves. In addition, however over 40,000 other volumes were moved to storage from various locations in the library system, significantly surpassing our required standard of annually removing volumes equal to new acquisitions (45,000-50,000 volumes per year).

Significant Achievements Related to Improving Bibliographic Access

Dewey Decimal Collection

This was the third year of a five-year project to provide bibliographic access to the Dewey Decimal Collection, housed in the RSC. An additional 12,000 monograph titles (for a total to date of approximately 37,000 titles) were cataloged this year through contractual arrangement with OCLC. In addition, serials cataloging staff continued to provide in-house cataloging for serial and journal titles from the same DDC areas.

Rare Books

A staff shift in Bibliographic Access Services at the end of last year resulted in the reassignment of a cataloger to rare books cataloging. This individual attended two week-long classes at the Rare Book School of the University of Virginia and began to catalog materials from the Rotch Limited Access collection. An ad hoc group of cataloging, preservation, and archives staff was convened to recommend handling, marking, security and cataloging procedures. A report was approved by Steering Committee at the end of the year, and the cataloging of the rare book collections will begin in July 2001. The large collection formerly referred to as Rare is being renamed as two collections: MIT Founders Collection and MIT Legacy Collection. Survey data related to physical condition of volumes cataloged will be entered into a database for future reference.

Maps

In an effort to expand capacity to catalog maps, staff in the Copy Based Cataloging unit were trained to catalog maps with available cataloging copy. Lindgren Library’s remaining uncataloged maps were cataloged, with the exception of non-Roman language materials. Still needing cataloging is a large map collection in the Rotch Library.

MIT Theses

Review of processes to expedite supply of theses to Document Services customers resulted in identification and elimination of redundant efforts in the entire workflow chain. In order to be able to respond effectively to submission of electronic-only theses, Passport macros were created that streamline cataloging processes.

Table of Contents

We contracted with Blackwell North America to receive upgrades for Barton records from their Table of Contents Enrichment Service. This will provide a deeper level of access to our book collections.

Significant Achievements Related to Acquisitions

Acquisitions staff were happy to welcome a new Financial Administrator and Assistant Director for Administrative Services after several months of interim arrangements. After years of "desire," the Libraries and central accounting implemented a data feed of payment information, which will result in faster payment of invoices and closer synchronization of MIT payment information and the Libraries’ system (now ALEPH) payment information. Significant effort went into completing all year end ordering, receiving, and invoicing on Geac Advance before the end of the fiscal year, which was accelerated by the closing down of the Geac system.

The Head of Serials Acquisitions gave a well-attended and well-received presentation of the Federal Depository Library Program for distribution of government documents. The Dewey Library committed to a six-month time frame for completing its review of documents item selections, which will feed into our efforts to complete cataloging of government document serials.
The Head of Serials Acquisitions and two processing supervisors presented a claiming workshop for all check in and claiming staff.

Gifts-in-kind contributed about 10% of our monograph acquisitions and included a few very special additions to the collections: Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, illustrated by Barry Moser, Wenyuange siku quanshu dianzi ban, a complete library of four branches of literature on CD-Rom, and an epic Irish poem, The Tain, by Thomas Kinsella, translated into Spanish, which was delivered in person by the Mexican consulate.

Significant Achievements Related to Preservation and Collections Management

In December, the Libraries learned of a gift from an anonymous donor for the purpose of establishing a Preservation Center. In January, the Libraries submitted a successful CRSP proposal for a space change to accommodate this center. An architect and a project planner have been assigned, and the work will begin in January of 2002.

The Retrospective Collection staff prepared a proposal for A New Service Model for the Retrospective Collection. It was reviewed by Steering Committee in January and implementation planning is now underway to fulfill the following goals: develop an article delivery service, implement a notification service related to status of requests, limit the hours the RSC is open to the public, require a referral letter for non-MIT users, permit direct user access to the stacks only under limited conditions, develop a communications plan, and prepare a list of action items for facility improvements. A part-time position was moved from Serials and Acquisitions Services to the RSC to provide staffing for the document delivery initiative.

Summary

The staff responded to the many demands and uncertainties of this year with tremendous energy, commitment, and intelligence. The MIT Libraries, including Collection Services, have always been blessed with highly capable staff members. This year demonstrated a melding into a highly capable organization.

—Carol Fleishauer