Getting to Know TS Librarians: Wendy Moore

1. Introduce yourself (name & position):

Wendy Moore, Acquisitions Librarian

2. Does your job title actually describe what you do? Why/why not?

Absolutely not.  While my job does include acquisitions, it expands beyond that to include working on electronic resource management, leading collection development, collaborating on budget planning, and supervising our Technical Services department (ordering, receiving, updating, cataloging, processing, ILS database maintenance, binding, withdrawing, FDLP documents, gifts).  The University recently changed its logo, so it is time for new business cards – I might use this as an opportunity to change my job title. 

3. What are you reading right now?

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Translators, Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky), because 2017 just seemed like a good time to revisit Soviet literature from the 1920’s & 1930’s.

4. If you could work in any library (either a type of library or a specific one), what would it be?  Why?

While in college I minored in art history and interned at an art museum library that was open to the public.  How I loved the Thieme-Becker!  Even my library school Master’s thesis had an art history focus.  Part of me has always thought it would be fun to be an art librarian, but I never really pursued that option.  That early experience working at the art museum with a subject specific collection with both public users and academic researchers prepared me well for working in a law library.  

Announcements from the Government Publishing Office

The Government Publishing Office's request for recommendations to modernize Title 44  has received a lot of attention recently, with multiple posts on https://freegovinfo.info/, a mention on LJ Infodocket, and most recently an article in Library journal.

Freegovinfo has endorsed the following recommendations designed to strengthen the Depository Library Program.

1. Modernize the definition of "publications"
2. Ensure Free Access
3. Ensure Privacy
4. Ensure Preservation

While the proposal to update Title 44 has been most visible, GPO has announced two initiatives that will enhance libraries' ability to facilitate public access to government information via our catalogs.

The Government Printing Office announced that they will start incorporating OCLC into their workflow for the Historic Shelflist Transcription effort. This should result in a larger portion of pre-1976 Federal documents being represented in OCLC, and therefore, more visible to the public.

GPO has also announced that starting in October 2017 the will begin making GPO cataloging records available via their github repository. This availability will replace the GPO Cataloging Data Subscription Service. A sample record set and readme file will be available October 3, 2017. The records will be available without charge.

Happy 1 billionth OCN!

On August 8, 2017, OCLC announced on the OCLC-CAT listserv that the OCLC Control Number (OCN) has reached 1 billion. The OCLC Control Number is a unique, sequentially assigned number when a new record is created or imported into WorldCat. The one billionth assigned OCN was for the record of a digitized image from Chiba University Library in Chiba, Japan.

Make sure your library system can handle the longer OCN. For more information check www.oclc.org/support/services/batchload/controlnumber/...

Ebook collection analysis

Two publications recently came across my desk: the May/June 2017 Library Technology Reports called Applying Quantitative Methods to E-Book Collections by Melissa J. Goertzen, and the June 2017 issue of Computers in Libraries called Ebooks Revisited. This suggests that as ebooks continue to be a large collection issue for libraries on various levels (platforms, pricing, patron-drive acquisition (PDA) and demand-driven acquisition (DDA), discovery records, etc.) we are reaching a point where we can more fully evaluate the long-term impact they are having on our patrons and our budgets. I was particularly interested in the Computers in Libraries article called Ebook ROI: A Longitudinal STudy of Patron-Driven Acquisition Models by Yin Zhang and Kay Downey. The authors work at Kent State University Libraries and have been using a PDA program for five years now; they were able to use this long-term data to evaluate the usefulness of short term loans, determine if PDA purchases continue to be used after the purchase is triggered, and and analyze what books from various publication years and subject areas are purchased under their PDA profile. I found this study inspiring; we have only had our DDA program for less than one year, but I hope to conduct a similar analysis after a full year of the program and regularly thereafter so we can be sure our patrons are finding the program useful.