PRESERVING THE HISTORY OF U. S. AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LIFE

AN N.E.H. FUNDED GRANT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Quarterly report

July to September 2000

October 12th, 2000

Mary Ochs
Head of Collection Development
USAIN/NEH Preservation Project Director
Joy Paulson
Preservation Librarian
Mann Library
Cornell University

Dear Mary and Joy,  

Below, please find the July to September 2000 quarterly report for the University of Florida's participation in the USAIN grant.  As the Principal Investigator, I am happy to announce significant continuing progress towards successful completion of all aspects of the grant.  I also feel fairly confident that all project related filming will be completed by the grant end date of December 31, 2000.  However, some of the final mop up tasks such as shipping master reels to storage and cataloging the end product can run on for a significant number of weeks.  Having discussed the ramifications of this situation with my staff and supervisor, we have decided that instead of requesting yet another no cost extension,  the University of Florida will fund the staff time necessary to finish up these last details.  

Gathering:

Our attempts to ILL monographs and serials continue to meet with mixed success.  We are receiving a higher percentage of monographs than serials but circulation policies at many lending institutions prohibit circulating any materials that fall within the date ranges specified by the grant.   If the library is willing to make us a photocopy of the restricted access title, and the quality of the copy is acceptable to our microfilm technician, we film the Xerox.  We were able to find a large stash of one needed serial title at the University of Florida agricultural experiment station in Lake Alfred, two and a half hours south of Gainesville.  We have had much better luck getting documents from the National Agriculture Library.  Dan Lech, head of the Document Delivery Service at NAL, worked with his selectors, to allow certain Florida related documents from the NAL collection to be permanently transferred to the University of Florida. Since the NAL receives a positive service copy of all reels created under the USAIN grant, both UF and the NAL benefit greatly from this arrangement. 

Cataloging:

Jack Fisher, the temporary summer cataloger, and Susan Constantineau, the full time cataloger, had a busy quarter.  Their statistics can be found on the September Cataloging report.  Jack was assigned to monographs and dissertations/theses, allowing Susan to concentrate on the more difficult serial titles.  Susan and Naomi Young, head of the Serials Cataloging Unit, have been enjoying the intricacies of serial title changes within the Florida Department of Agriculture Bulletin Series, their Annual Reports, their Circulars, etc..  Jack was a valuable addition and we were sorry to see him leave the grant to take a full time position within the Libraries in late August.  

Filming:

Filming on the grant really hit its stride this quarter, even with a slow August due to the break between summer and fall semesters. While the title and volumes counts look low at first glance,  the number of reels produced shows the real story. Production in July (35 reels) and September (33 reels) was prodigious.  Please see the September Filming Report for exact details.  We currently have 3 students filmers on the camera, for a total of 29 hours a week of filming. As indicated on the statistics sheet, the majority of the volumes being filmed during the quarter were serials.  Many of these serials had thick issues published each month, resulting in a low volume count but a large number of reels produced.  (Please note: In our in-house filming operation, we film as many images per reel as allowed by the 1992 RLG microfilming specifications.)

The facts laid out in the table above lead me to question if tracking only titles and volumes accurately reflects the amount of time/energy/effort spent microfilming on a given grant.  Might there be an officially sanctioned  method of tracking the number of exposures (exposures being an even better tracking methodology then pure reel count)  generated over all?  Tracking exposures would obviously not take the place of tracking titles and volumes, but would simply compliment and enhance those figures.

Budget:

In August, Nelda Schwartz and I  analyzed spending on the grant up to this point and determined that approximately $15,000 of the money initially granted to UF would not be needed.  We could fulfill our title and volume filming goals with $85,480.25, rather than $100,565.00. I worked with Mary Ochs and institutional administrators to revise the contract between Cornell and UF and the contract was officially amended to reflect this lower figure on September 26th.  

Thanks for allowing me this opportunity to update you on our work.  If you have any further questions, comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at cathy@mail.uflib.ufl.edu or call 352-392-6962.

Sincerely,

Cathy 

Cathleen L. Mook
Head, Preservation Department
Primary Investigator, USAIN grant

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