PRESERVING THE HISTORY OF
Six
Month Report for July 1999 to December 1999
Reporting:
Cathy Mook (New Principal
Investigator)
Reporting
for the Preservation Department at the
University of Florida’s George A. Smathers Libraries
Solutions and
Sources of Hope:
The period of July 1, 1999 to December 31, 1999 was, unfortunately and quite unintentionally, a period of relative inactivity with short, periodic bursts of chaos for work on the USAIN grant here at the University of Florida. The number and type of distractions that occurred to impede the movement of materials into and out of the USAIN workflow during this period were significant. In this report, I will attempt to list some of these impediments, how we hope to work around them, detail some of the many personnel changes within the Library, highlight discussions I have had with colleagues to smooth bumps in the road, attempt to justify the delays and report figures for actual work. While I can not say that this was an especially productive period for the grant itself, it certainly was for myself and the Department. I feel every confidence that with the recently requested six month extension, the University of Florida will be able to fulfill or even exceed the original grant specifications for volumes and titles filmed.
During the first USAIN grant, the University of Florida, as representative for the entire state of Florida, was contracted to create a comprehensive bibliography of all documents pertaining to agriculture extant in the libraries, museums, archives and special collections of the state. Four University of Florida faculty members, one a Science Librarian named Vernon Kisling, spent the first grant period gathering title data, assembling it into a Pro-cite database, ranking it 1-4 and getting the bibliography approved. This list was never intended to be a ‘to be filmed from exactly where’ document. [N.B. Preservation staff had little to no involvement in this segment of the grant.] After the bibliography was approved and the filming phase of the grant was funded, the database with ranked titles was transferred to Preservation. It was immediately imported into an Access database for ease of searching and sorting.
Unfortunately there was an initial period of confusion in which the ranked list was thought to represent exactly those titles that needed filming. Much frustration occurred as ranked titles were searched in OCLC and RLIN and it was discovered that many had already been filmed. Also disheartening was the knowledge that documents published by the federal government, of which there were many on the list, were to be excluded as well. After discarding the titles that did not meet the more exacting filming criteria, only 70% remained on the list as ‘filmables’. With the narrowed list, Preservation staff began tracking down the remaining titles. Regrettably, a significant portion were not in the physical location noted on the bibliography and some were no longer extant. The frustration level with the bibliography was high.
I will not take up much more space in this document repeating information forwarded to you previously by Mr. Erich Kesse, the former Principal Investigator for this grant. Suffice it to say, the problems with the bibliography, a serious backlog in Cataloging, and the tremendous amounts of time spent working on the United States Newspaper Project grant combined to keep progress on USAIN at a relatively slow pace during the July 1, 1998 to June 30, 1999 period.
The first two months of this period were no better than the previous twelve. To be honest, things actually got a little worse. Two huge changes had been brewing in the Library that would have a direct impact on Preservation throughout the Summer of 1999. One change involved a physical reorganization and the other an organizational restructuring of the Department. First, on July 1, a major Personnel shuffle took place within Preservation. The Head of the Department for 10 years, Erich Kesse, and the digital portion of the Reprographics Unit, split off from Preservation and became an entirely new Department, the Digital Library Center (DLC). Mr. Kesse had been advocating the creation of such a Unit for years. Instead of conducting a national search for a new Head of the Department, it was decided that Cathy Mook, the Head of the Binding Unit for one year, would be promoted into the Department Head position. A vacant budget line, Head of the [now analog only] Reprographics Unit, was also shifted to the DLC. That left only two people but three people’s worth of work in the Reprographics Unit. The duties of the now lost management position were split between the two remaining staff members and each was given a $1,000 raise.
The other significant event that occurred during the July/August 1999 period was the construction of a used bookstore in what had been the Preservation Department front office. It was determined that our front hall/lobby/administrative office space would be more beneficial to the library if it contained a business instead. The bookstore cost us 500 square feet of space and threw absolutely everyone and everything in the Department into utter turmoil for literally months. The constant hammering, nailing and sawing, the workmen yelling back and forth across the newly built walls, the smell of saw dust, paint and cleaning fumes making several staff members ill and the loss of our main door really put a damper on Preservation work of any kind. It was not a happy time for us.
The Cataloging portion of the USAIN workflow continued to move along slowly during this period. As noted in Erich Kesse's earlier report, the staff in Resource Services felt that the skills required were greater than those budgeted for in the grant, so they chose to try to do it with existing departmental staff. Then unfortunately with staff shortages, USAIN cataloging goals suffered. Also, it was during this period that the Head of the Serials Unit, Cecelia Botero, left to take a position at the Health Science Center Library. With her departure, the chance of getting anything through the Serials cataloging workflow ground to a complete halt. Monographic cataloging continued to make progress. Another 250 to 300 monographs, theses and pamphlets made it through the AACR2 upgrade process and were brought back down to Preservation for inclusion in our filming queue.
By September, most of the work on the bookstore was completed. Since we had just reorganized almost the entire Department, we thought it would only be right to take time to look at the Camera Room. We have 2 cameras in house, one that is heavily used (Camera One) and one that receives relatively infrequent use (Camera Two). A new wall was built to better insulate the light from Camera 1 from reflecting onto Camera 2’s table and vice versa. The table top for Camera 2 was rebuilt and a step test, sans book cradle, was performed. Everything checked out nicely.
During this time, as the chaos from the move began to lessen and the shock of having someone besides Erich in charge started to abate, the new Head of the Reprographics Unit (Nelda Schwartz, who had added Unit Head to her previously charged duties as Coordinator of the Brittle Books Program) and I began to talk about the project. She explained to me the difficulties with the bibliography and got me up to speed on where we were with the collection of volumes. We also talked extensively about what our options might be regarding the backlog in Cataloging. Discussions centered on our ability to get any serials cataloged and what we would do if we never got anything back from the Serials Unit.
Another impediment to real forward progress on the USAIN grant was crunch to complete the United States Newspaper Project grant. That grant closed on December 31, 1999 and there was a rather significant portion of the work left to accomplish before that date.
Actual USAIN filming finally began in late November. It was soon determined that the best results would be obtained using a book cradle. (We are trying not to disbind many of the books, since some selectors are reluctant to remove physical item from shelves. However, due to copyright considerations, we will be attempting to dissuade them from keeping the paper copy at the end of the project.). Unfortunately, Camera 2 and the book cradle do not seem to be compatible and first four reels filmed (a total of 39 titles) needed to be completely reshot. Then, just as a rhythm got established, both student filmers left for Christmas break. Basically, December was a complete loss for USAIN. The decision was made to switch USAIN filming to Camera 1 and move the regular newspaper queue onto Camera 2 early in January. This should improve efficiency and throughput on the USAIN project immeasurably.
There was very good news on the Cataloging front in December. An excellent candidate for the Serials cataloger position was identified. She was interviewed, offered the position and accepted. Her first day will be February 14, 2000. We are most excited! Monographic cataloging continues.
As it stands January 30, there are 492 titles (in 523 volumes) selected, fully cataloged, shelved in Preservation and being filmed. The two student filmers from Winter 1999 have returned and are geared up to film on Camera 1 using the book cradle. Between the two of them, they are filming @30 hours a week. Since their return, they have filmed twelve reels of film, 53 monographs in 54 volumes, 22 theses in 22 volumes and 49 pamphlets in 49 volumes. (This data is repeated, in table form, in the Report of Completed Filming) As mentioned above, serials cataloging is still bottlenecked until the position begins, so consequently, zero serials have been filmed. The first eight reels are back from processing and are back at our micrographics vendor for duplication. The last four were sent out for initial processing on the 27th of January. Nothing has, as of yet, been shipped to NAL. We received the shipping procedure documentation from Dan Lech at NAL in October and plan on following them explicitly.
Another 130 titles (in 130 volumes) have been cataloged and are waiting for data entry into our brand new in-house filming database (LAZARUS). Until the pertinent information for each title/volume has been entered into LAZARUS, an eye-legible target can not be produced. LAZARUS is scheduled for continuous upgrades and we expect that eye-legible targets will be produced by mid-February.
There are 490 single volume titles (monographs, theses and pamphlets) in the Monographic cataloging Unit. The same 6 titles (in @100 volumes) that have been in Serials cataloging since July 1999 are still in Serials cataloging. However, there is a definite ray of light at the end of the Serials tunnel. Two new full time staff members have been hired in Serials, one for USAIN exclusively, within the last 5 weeks. (Please see Solutions and Sources of Hope section below for more details.)
Obviously, more physical volumes remain to be gathered, cataloged, queued and filmed before we achieve the volume count found in the original grant specifications of 1749 volumes from 573 titles. So far, we have gathered 1118 titles (492 + 130 + 490 + 6=1118), but only gathered 1243 physical volumes. (523 + 130 + 490 + @100=1243). We are still short 506 volumes (1749-1243=506) For a fuller discussion of how I plan to get us to the point of completion, please read on.
So, what solutions and sources of hope am I referring to for the Year 2000? I implied in the opening paragraph of this report that I felt every confidence in our ability to complete, or even exceed, the original grant specifications. Given the rather gloomy report written so far, you might be questioning my sanity. However, in the last 6 weeks, many positive events have taken place. Many of these events begin to address or even solve the multitudinous problems listed above. An example of an event that really helped UF get a handle on some of the issues we are grappling with right now was a meeting I attended with the other USAIN primary investigators from California, Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin and Alabama at ALA Midwinter in San Antonio. I also went to lunch with Sue Kellerman, my good friend and the PI from Pennsylvania. It was particularly helpful and beneficial to hear the others discuss and analyze the issues and concerns that they and been facing for all these months. I don’t feel so alone anymore.
Another extremely
positive development was the hiring of two new full time people who are really
going to make a difference in the Serials cataloging bottleneck area.
The first is the cataloger mentioned in the November-December 1999
section. The other new employee is
a temporary (January-December 2000) full time serials AND monographs cataloger
named Susan Constantineau. She will also supervise students searching OCL/RLIN and
interlibrary borrowing from other institutions with holdings of Florida
agricultural titles. She has a serials
cataloging background at Dartmouth and was also the temporary cataloger for the
USNP grant.
The enormous amounts of time spent on searching, gathering and cataloging, as with most NEH preservation grants, is turning out to be factor for us here at the University of Florida. Therefore, we have requested and have been told to expect a six month no-cost extension to be granted. This will allow us to continue filming, processing, duplication, and shipping up thorough December 2000. Other solutions for problems encountered in the previous period have also been solved recently. Since the bibliography was not a ‘to be filmed from exactly where’ list, we have been scrambling to acquire additional titles/volumes. I spoke extensively with Dan Lech, from the National Agriculture Library, at ALA Midwinter. He indicated that he would be able to provide us with many titles from the collections at NAL. He and I have been emailing regularly since our returns to formulate plans for the transfer of titles from DC to Gainesville. Another issue that had been plaguing us was the 1945 publication cut off date for filming. We have many, many serials that were on the list but extended past the 1945 cut off. After speaking with Wally Olsen at Cornell in early January, I learned that there is a certain level of flexibility in that cut off date. At this time, we are unable to accurately estimate how many more volumes this will add to the total volume count, but I am confident that it will allow us to reach or modestly exceed our original projections.
Another solution and source of hope is the completion of the USNP grant. With the ending of that grant, USAIN has definitely become our number one priority. This is the first grant for which I am the Principal Investigator and it is my intention to see this grant through to a successful conclusion.
Alas, life here in USAIN land is still not perfect. Last week the curator of the Florida History section of Special Collections rolled down 23 serials titles from his collection. We had given him a list of 35 titles that according to the original bibliography resided in Special Collection. He could not find the missing 12 titles. Sigh.
An issue that I have not addressed anywhere else in this report is funding. In many reports on grants, funding and dealing with fiscal issues takes up a significant portion of the narrative. However, we have had the good fortune to have ample funding. Our reliance on minimum wage but highly trained student filmers who receive no benefits, our years of in-house filming experience and our low cost local film vendor have all combined to allow us to produce a high quality product for a relatively low per-image fee. I feel confident that with the six month extension, we will expend the full amount allocated to us in the initial grant specifications.
In conclusion, I would like to say that the entire staff of the University of Florida Libraries, including the Preservation Department and especially myself, is very excited to have reached this stage in USAIN production. We are filming every day, Cataloging has made leaps and bounds Personnel wise, many of the difficulties stemming from the bibliography have been solved and our time within the Department has been freed up due to the termination of the USNP grant. With Dan Lech at NAL sending us volumes and internal UF students searching OCLC and RLIN and ILL’ing titles from other libraries, I do indeed feel confident in our ability to gather, catalog, collate and film enough titles and volumes to meet and/or exceed our original grant specifications. I think we are finally on the right track and I hope that you agree.
Respectfully Submitted,
Cathy Mook
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