Technical Services Committee – March 23, 2023

Present: Tammie Busch (co-chair), Susan Howell (co-chair); Jodi Craiglow, Brent Eckert, George Gottschalk, Robin Mize, Lauren Noel, Renata Schneider, Jackie Zook; Andrew Belongea (correspondent); Jessica Gibson (staff), Martin Kong (staff), Jen Masciadrelli (staff), Adrienne Radzvickas (staff), Ted Schwitzner (staff)

Tammie called the meeting to order at 9:00 AM

Announcements

• 3 new I-Share libraries have all had their “kickoff” meetings and are currently in their project timelines
• CARLI’s move to the IHLS building is complete; the address is updated on the website
• Call for CARLI committee members is now live
  • Brent, Robin, Renata are rolling off the TSC this year; feel free to reapply if you’re so inclined
  • New task force on Archives Task Force
• Ex Libris has announced return of Implementing Acquisitions in Alma training series
  • Six 1-hour sessions
  • CARLI is working on an announcement to let libraries know
• The time for FY rollover is upon us; CARLI staff is looking for a time to schedule an online conversation about it

Minutes

February meeting minutes were approved as amended:

• Adrienne’s name was misspelled
• Tammie, Susan, Martin, Ted were added to attendance

Discovery Committee Report (Andrew Belongea)

Standardized NZ Local Resource Types

• Interested in hearing how people want equipment to work/be defined in their catalogs
  • Tammie: Likes the idea of having one thing in particular that you can add that’s standard across all the libraries; maybe that’s the 694
  • Lauren: Will patrons know what to look for/where to look for the item type? 694s will help that.
  • Ted: CARLI recommendation has historically been that equipment doesn’t belong in the NZ, but maybe it’s time to rethink that policy. What would it mean to have consortially-shared equipment records? It would need some sort of (invisible) controlled field.
  • Tammie: Has used “loanable technology” heading (if she remembers correctly)
• Has some questions about cataloging government documents
  • Assuming that it’s mostly controlled in the 008
  • People seem to be using the “z” category for “other” – but it’s reserved for govdocs
  • Brent: Historical practice to code state university publications as govdocs, but it was changed 5+ years ago.
  • If we implement these new NZ resource types, will it fragment the catalog?
• New indication rules for incorrect 007 codes for audio CD, audio LP, audiocassettes, Blu-ray, and DVDs
  • Ted: Rules apply to records at the commensurate level; NZ rules work for NZ records, IZ rules work for IZ records.
    • Indication rules can be used as filters to refine sets.
    • If you want to add an NZ rule to your IZ, create a new rule in your IZ and copy and paste the text.
  • Lauren: Lots of confusion around 007s – maybe that would be a good idea for a workshop?
• Why is this important?
  • If records are mis-coded, patrons won’t be able to get all the available results for their searches if they use facets.
  • It could interfere with I-Share requests, if the items aren’t the same “type” as patrons have requested.
  • It may affect FRBR/de-duping processes. (Not entirely sure)
• Andrew: If we can’t make a case for the cleanup project, we probably shouldn’t go through with the NZ resource type project, because it will fragment records across the consortium.
  • Ted: Cleanup can happen at the NZ level, but institutions need to be involved for instruction and verification

Annual Projects

• Best Practices Documentation
  • Still working on it
    • Narrowing it down just to policies and best practices
    • Challenge comes between “may” and “shall” – what’s descriptive and what’s prescriptive?
  • Robin: How often do we expect to update this?
    • Our policies should be more durable than the technology we’re using
    • Too broad and it loses usefulness, too narrow and we constantly have to be updating it
  • Jodi: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good; we’ve been in Alma for three years, and our policy still says “Union Catalog” and “Voyager.” Something is better than nothing at this point.
    • Ted: We want the guidelines to be clear; people shouldn’t miss the directives because they’re bogged down in the description
    • Jen: We do need to get it done, because the I-Share agreement references it
    • Robin: We need a foundation first, and then we can go from there
    • Jessica: A lot of this discussion can be quelled when we see the document that CARLI’s working on (release TBA)
• New Maintenance Project List
  • One of the main things that came out of last month’s discussion is that long list had been developed over 20 years in Voyager
  • What hierarchies would be helpful for determining precedence of maintenance projects?
  • Three things we need to think about:
    • Which tasks still apply in our current context/environment?
    • What actually has to be done? How can tasks be practically accomplished? (And are there certain projects that can be done at the consortium level?)
    • What should be the priorities? With limited time/staffing, what should be done first?
  • Should this be a task that carries over into next year, or should we look at tackling it this year?
    • Ted: It’s an ongoing project
    • Connect with Andrew and the discovery project – how can we combine efforts?
      • Lauren: The problems tend to be with the original OCLC records; just because it’s in the master record doesn’t mean it’s correct
    • Do we want a special meeting about this, or do we want to take it up at the next meeting?
      • Jessica: Aiming to have this rolled out by July, to catch the Alma re-indexing cycle
      • Renata: If we can find the time to have another meeting, it would be helpful – we’re working on a tight deadline
      • George: Might be good to schedule redundant workshops, so that people can attend one when they’re available
      • Ted: tentatively looking at Wednesday and Thursday next week
      • Making recordings available would also be helpful
• Connexion Survey
  • Comments & suggestions
    • Question 2: is there a possibility to expand the options there?
    • Question 3: Likert instead of only yes/no?
• Ethical Cataloging and Authority Control reports are moved to next month

Tasks Assigned

• Discovery Project
  • Ted is leading a TSC workshop on data cleanup next week (ties in with discovery project).
  • Add a discussion of how to divide duties at this meeting.
• Connexion training survey
  • Jen will send out revisions to Connexion training survey; TSC members can bench test it.
  • Tammie has written a blurb on it for CARLI communication; it’s in the box folder

Tammie adjourned the meeting at 11:06 AM.

Next Meeting: April 27, 2023 at 9:30 AM on Zoom

Respectfully submitted, Jodi Craiglow