WorkersMarch708Notes

Notes from March 7, 2008 Phone Call

7 March 2008 Conference Call
Diane R., John F., John M., Joe D., Jen W., Matt P., and Suzanne P.

1) Collection selection current status:
Harvard MCZ:
4th shipment has gone to Boston. Total of 800 items.
MCZ Publications
No Foldouts
Other publications that have given permissions: San Diego, Tulane, Kansas.
Topics as outlined on a spreadsheet from Tom G.
Herpetology and Ichthyology ; General Science serials
Up next would be Marine biology and Mollusks.


Smithsonian:
Local TSP set up but has been poorly staffed and speed connection problems.
SI Publications
No Foldouts
Other publications that have given permissions: Hymenoptera
Topics: Entomology

MBL/WHOI:
Sending Own Publications: Biological Bulletin, Oceanus
No Foldouts yet
Serial Topics: Marine Biology; Oceanography; special requests: J. Shellfish Research, General Embryological Info Service
Other serial topics (to keep numbers up): General science; Botany (marine related); Entomology
Workflow: MBL/WHOI has found doing a physical review of the serials in the stacks working well instead of pick-listing and then rejecting at the shelves.
Monographs: sending call numbers Q, QH-QL, QP, QR and SH
Some rare materials sent but limited because of small size of security storage at Boston
Over 3800 volumes serials and monographs combined have been sent to Boston to date
Had been shipping about 500 items every two weeks. No shipments are planned until foldouts can be scanned and/or copy right due diligence information can be stored in the metadata (WonderFetch operational).

NYBot:
4th shipment to NYPL – small shipments as they work out the flow. Estimated that would send about 150 items and have been sending approximately 100. Have been asked/pressured to up to 200 week.
No Foldouts and having problems with overlays and tissue paper inlays.
Monographs on : ?? and ?? and Brazilian?
Workflow problems: identifying items that pass local preservation review and meet IA’s preservation/handling review.
Possibly going to look into the reviewing titles on the shelves first instead of picklist and rejecting.

ACTION ITEM:
Units of the BHL will attempt to keep some running statistics on duties and times. Current estimate is as high as 45 minutes per book scanned (includes all administrative time and barcoding of serials)
Everyone should start trying to keep some workflow numbers for analysis. GOAL: Let administration know the staff drain in hard numbers for potential shuffling of priorities of staff and/or support for more staff. (Pep talk from Matt: Keep in mind that this is a great project over all. It will have dramatic effects down the road on other work loads being reduced, and will be a great product.)

ACTION ITEM:
Each unit of the BHL should SKIP other member’s publications. Everyone is assumed to be doing their own titles.
(Editorial - Suzanne comment: We have so many British publications and will try to skip these until we can verify that NH London is or is not doing the title/run.)


B. Bidding process for serials - status (Matt Person)
Bernard has added some functions to the Serial Bids list:
Can now add comments on Full bids
Can now return and update if run was completed
Current stats: 700 bids
Still confusion on multiple copies. Still problems searching with diacritics – especially if the title begins with diacritics.
Best search results are still on title filter only (?) Others have found that by filtering on owner group and then title filter.
Joe has found titles to scan that are not on the Bid List for MCZ. He has been bidding on other’s holdings when choosing to scan the title- MBLWHOI follows same practice.

ACTION ITEM: Matt will contact Bernard about bidding on titles that you own vs all the “duplicate” records of the one you are going to scan. Smithsonian has been bidding differently than the others. Suzanne will contact Bernard about getting a report of some sort to see what Smithsonian has a bid on to correct.

(Editorial – Suzanne comment: Should Matt talk to Bernard and Joe about an example of a title that Joe couldn’t find on the bid list but has to scan to figure out if this is a symptom of a bigger problem?) from Matt: this is OK; all it means is if you have holdings which have not made it into the mashup (eg: the title has not been locally cataloged...therefore not uploaded to mashup) then if you want to scan, bid using the BHL record which most closely relates to your title.

ACTION ITEM: BHL members should bid their own serial titles that they have scanned or will scan.

MBL/WHOI is using MARC 440/490 series titles for monographs and bidding these titles on the serials bid list.

ACTION ITEM: Other BHL units should review procedures to see if they should also be checking series statements on monographs and bidding on serial run.

C. DeDupping process for monograph - status (John Furfey)
All the information for the monographic de-duping tool (alpha version) is up on the WIKI
John F. gave a quick review of the tool to the BLC and they really liked it and will be trying it out as a separate tool. They are also interested in de-duping against the wider digitized literature on the internet. (Editorial comment from Suzanne: HA! Good luck with that!)
5 different deduping queries: OCLC number and volume, OCLC number, title and author, title and date, and title.

MBL/WHOI is using the tool to help de-dup own holdings. Current workflow is to submit a list of items picked from the shelves to the deduping tool (date_plan.xls). Duplicates are then removed from the cart and the cart shipped to Boston. Once returned, the rejected volumes are removed from the list, the "plan" list is removed from the deduping tool, and the final list of items actually scanned is uploaded.

ACTION ITEM: BHL members should all begin to play with the tool. Smithsonian has done some testing but should put up some real data. Joe should begin to use the tool since his topics seem to have potential for some light duplications.John M. should begin to use the tool for potential overlap but also to get familiar for helping the botany libraries of BHL. John F. has already put up the titles from Illinois.

ACTION ITEM: Early to mid week next week a phone call on Monographic De Duping tool and WonderFetch. Suzanne will send out a message and begin the doodle scheduling.

ACTION ITEM: Suzanne will contact MoBot for contact name and to find out if they can get data of already scanned items into the monographic dedup and to the serial bid list.

Editorial – Suzanne Comment: Are we going to keep the monographic deduping tool filled with items we have already scanned to prevent rescanning?
Editorial – John F. Comment: The tool gives you the option to delete any of your picklists, but I think it makes the most sense to leave them all there to prevent rescanning.

D. Outside requests for scanning - Who handles (Journal titles Tom Garnett gets approval is an example) (Suzanne)

ACTION ITEM: Suzanne will get in contact with Tom G. about what he needs and how he envisions the work being done.

E. Outside suppliers of scans - who de dups and/or bids (Illinois request that came in) (Suzanne)
Illinois fire ant list has been added to the monographic deduping list.
Serial status is unclear.
There currently is no process or procedure in place or a contact person. JStor talk is going on and that could have a large impact on our serial pull lists.

ACTION ITEM: Suzanne will contact Tom G. about the amount of these coming in and assess work load to figure out who should be point person for these items being added to our deduping processes and workflow. Workload will need to be assessed.

3) General Workflow
A. Foldouts - where are we on testing/ who (Round Robin)
Joe heard that the Boston center can start sending. The machine assembled and ready to test. Connie talked with Robert Miller (IA) and the information regarding the foldouts:
18 by 24" largest it can take at requested dpi. Scanning foldout closed, open and other side close. 4 to 5 minutes per fold out. 2 dollars per fold out.

Diane heard that the Boston center was going to test on Harvard first and then two weeks MBL can start sending. Joe reported that there was a bit of a misunderstanding between Boston and IA and foldouts they sent were rejected and sent back instead of held for the machine. Harvard won’t be sending more titles until another two weeks. MBL has titles ready to go.

ACTION ITEM: If Boston Center is ready to test, Harvard could courier items there and MBL could do a special shipment.

New York has no news on foldouts.

Smithsonian has parts of a foldout machine but missing some major equipment. Not sure if LC has a foldout machine up and running.

B. Return quality control and statistics counting (Jen Walton)

Diane and Jen reported that they have had some issues with the quality review. During the recent weeks, MBL/WHOI has conducted a limited review of the materials that they have sent to date. They divided up the formats to different people to review. Random 4.5 % of returned items. They began to identify different problems and will be having a discussion with Robert Miller on Tuesday, March 11th.
85% okay. Created a list of problems. Majority of problems relate to conversion to .pdf format and missing files.

ACTION ITEM: Diane and Jen will post to the Wiki the types of problems they have found. BHL members will begin to do some quality review and see if similar problems are happening to their material. GOAL: To point out to IA problems that are BHL wide/ various scanning center wide – and not let IA focus on one member as a problem.

Especially disturbing were:
PDFs had blank pages and text cut
Margins issues
Blurry images
Light flashes or spots
Hands and fingers found
Metadata on wrong books
100 books: call up URL just see ftp and metadata and marc xml but no book to view
Rejected books with missing pages and were put up anyway.

Workflow for Quality Control: Not every page and every item checked. PDF blank pages usually appeared in the first few pages.

John M. reminded everyone that they could subscribe to their institutions uploads through RSS.

Hold 'til next time:
1) Monograph DeDuping
2) WonderFetch (Keri Thompson)
(data passing from library supplier to IA about holdings and copyright information)
A. Testing and implementing.
B. Who / what / and status
3) Shipping Best Practices