Cornell University Library
ALCTS Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries
ALA Annual Report, June 2015
Thanks to my colleagues Gary Branch, Adam Chandler, Jesse Koennecke, Xin Li, and Chew
Chiat Naun for their contributions to this report (Jim LeBlanc).
2CUL Technical Services Initiative (TSI)
Rechristened from its original name and goal (i.e. Technical Services Integration), TSI is now in
its third and final grant-funded year. The biggest driver for the initiative at this point are shared
investigations of new systems: the Intota ERM as a replacement for ProQuest’s 360 Resource
Manager and a new ILS for both institutions in June 2017. While we are not engaged in any
other big-ticket projects at this time, we are realizing subtle but enduring benefits from the
collaborative ethos created during our unsuccessful attempt to integrate the two operations. We
are hoping to build on the working group structure that is still in place (and in some cases still
active) to cooperate on the technical services aspect of new system testing and implementation.
Acquisitions / Licensing




WorldCat Selection replacement - Began work with Coutts/Proquest to replace some
WorldCat selection functionality with a combination of existing Oasis functionality,
approval plan updates, and future enhancements around selection support. This work is
expected to continue through early 2016 in anticipation of a May 31 end date for OCLC's
WorldCat Selection.
Approval Plan changes - As part of our project to replace WorldCat Selection, we are
shifting our primary approval plan from YBP to Coutts/Proquest. The changeover is
scheduled to coincide with our July 1 new fiscal year.
E-Resource interface branding - E-Resource staff are working with Library
Communications and Assessment staff to develop clearer standards and tools for
consistent branding of licensed e-resource interfaces.
E-Resources troubleshooting as a direct user service – We are looking into ways to better
track and count troubleshooting transactions as a direct user service, possibly through
Cornell’s Count-It system – software designed primarily for reference, instruction, and
outreach transactions. Two Cornellians, along with librarians from the University of
Kansas and the University of Missouri—Kansas City, co-authored a recently published
study in which this idea of e-resources troubleshooting as a hybrid tech services/public
services task is explored throughout. The article, “Tools, Techniques, and Training:
2

Results of an E-Resources Troubleshooting Survey,” by Angela Rathmel, Liisa Mobley,
Buddy Pennington, and Adam Chandler, appears in the Journal of Electronic Resources
Librarianship, v. 27:2 (2015), pp. 88-107.
2CUL joint purchases – Cornell and Columbia continued to negotiate e-resource
licensing jointly. An agreement for the Springer Book Archive is currently in process.
Automated Technical Services
Some highlights from the past six months include:
 Working toward a maintenance plan for the Faceted Application of Subject Terminology
(FAST) headings in our catalog including changes in the textual phrases being used and
addition of genre headings to our catalog;
 Automating a process to add FAST headings to those remaining bibliographic records
that lack FAST subjects;
 Automating a process to check OCLC master numbers in our records and correcting them
as merges happen in OCLC;
 Continuing to replace codes in ebook packages with codes for item level license
information;
 Planning an in-house load of the 3 million RDA phase 3B authority records this fall;
 Developed a script to automate the process of adding MARC 876 holdings data to bound
with titles and the creation of “empty” (no barcode number) item records to aid Access
Services with patron requests;
 Developed a script to compare brief local records for uncataloged material to OCLC
records and replace our preliminary records with full records. Thus, we are reducing our
original catalogers’ working backlogs with the future plans of using the techniques
developed to enhance vendor supplied ebook records;
 Planning to utilize returned OCLC Worldshare records of our holdings to further enhance
our local records;
 Four staff members associated with our batch processing operations are enrolled in the
six-course Library Juice Certificate in XML and RDF-Based Systems
(http://libraryjuiceacademy.com/certificate-xml-rdf.php). These one-month courses seem
to strike a nice balance and are helpful in providing a coherent body of knowledge to
study;
 Developing a formal method to continuously improve the accuracy of our automated
acquisitions vendor selection record processing.
Cataloging / Metadata Services
3
Library Technical Services (LTS) staff have been working closely with the Cornell Discovery
and Access team to implement FAST faceting and authority browse functionality in Blacklight.
Production release of these features is imminent at time of writing. We are working with OCLC
Research on maintenance routines for our FAST data. Further areas we are currently exploring
include potential approaches for populating genre/form data and leveraging OCLC work IDs in
discovery.
The Linked Data for Libraries (LD4L) project has been the catalyst for a good deal of activity
within LTS since we joined the project a year ago. LTS staff have continued to participate in the
LD4L ontology group. A recent focus has been on proposing refinements to the BIBFRAME
model. Members of LTS have also been advocating within the library community for practices
that will better support linked data objectives, an example being the recent discussion paper on
URIs in MARC. We are currently working with library IT colleagues to set up a Vitro instance
for a planned native linked data cataloging project. We continue to hold regular discussion
sessions with Columbia cataloging and metadata colleagues on linked data issues. Within LTS
we held a BIBFRAME Week for our staff, and a RIMMF workshop is planned for later in the
summer.
Our web archiving program continues to grow. Collecting areas include both Cornell-related
sites as well as Special Collection records management areas in addition to three topical
collections: Digital Art, Hydraulic Fracturing and Climate Change. In an effort to further
institutionalize the web archiving program, we have started to formalize distribution of
responsibilities across more staff, including coordination, quality assurance and metadata
creation.
Our efforts in research data management are currently focused on education and outreach
regarding funding agency responses to the mandate for public access to research results, and on
developing an online format for consultations. Cornell is continuing to support researchers in the
use of Electronic Laboratory Notebooks, and is now able to voice specific user and
administrative ELN needs via our participation in the Internet2 advisory board for LabArchives.
Staffing
Cornell recently implemented another round of budget cuts, resulting in the loss of nearly three
FTE across all three departments in LTS. In addition, a veteran member of our staff, William
(Bill) Kara retired this spring after 30 years of service to the Cornell University Library. Bill
was instrumental in building Cornell’s e-resources acquisitions and management operation and
possessed a rich institutional memory and priceless experience in vendor relations and working
4
with selectors. With the budget cuts and Bill’s retirement, we implemented a modest divisional
reorg.
Given the idiosyncratic nature of operating budget adjustments, we have at the same time
secured funding for an additional Metadata Librarian. This new position will focus on metadata
maintenance activities, primarily the integration of metadata between systems and extending
relationships between resources, and includes remediation and enhancement of both MARC and
non-MARC data. At the timing of writing, we are also seeking approval for a two-year Web
Archiving and Emerging Formats Librarian position to support the web archiving goals
described above, as well as to develop workflows and services in emerging areas of acquisitions
and e-resource management, such as streaming media, software, and data sets.