HIT: Centralized processing (long)

["Garry Jantzen (Marshfield)" <GarryJ@COOS-BAY.K12.OR.US>]

Here are the responses. Please forgive me if you wanted credit. I was "torn"
between protecting your privacy and repeating your message (see sig.!). But
in the end figured that the only reason for getting a reply from anyone
would be to benefit the whole group. The majority seem to want centralized
processing.

Our district has centralized processing, but only for the elementary schools

because  we buy so many duplicate titles and because our secondaries usually

have the services of either two professionals or multiple paraprofessionals.

Although we order MARC records with our books, they are polished off by a
cataloguer at our central processing  so they have fewer errors before we
add
them to the Texas Library Connection system (TLC).

-----------

We have had central processing for over twenty-five years and it is
wonderful
to have the books arrive ready to put on the shelf.  The biggest problem has

been a huge delay between their arrival at central processing and their
arrival at our library.  That has chiefly been the problem of the MARC
records and the reluctance of our district cataloger to give us less then
perfect MARC records.  That problem has been more or less worked out, but if

you're happy with the records you get with the books, there should be no
problem.

This will be very unscientific because of the way I posted my Target as I
asked people to just say yes, no, etc. and asked for no other information
unless the respondents chose to send it.  Some did and I tallied up the
results I got from all the responses:

Out of 45 responses, 40 do most of their own cataloging, using vendor
produced cataloging on disks.  Five have centralized or a combination which
means that as much as possible is ordered preprocessed from vendors and the
rest is done by the cataloger(s).  Seven respondents mentioned using Mitnet
to do clean up and some said they really like it.

Of the respondents who do their own using vendor produced cataloging, at
least 10 mentioned Follet, several used Baker and Taylor and Bound to Stay
Bound.   3 said they use CIP (and Sears or LC). 2 use Bibliophile, several
use Follet's Alliance Plus and Precision One was mentioned by 2 schools.
In addition, several schools said that they use Internet cataloging sources
going to their state's on-line catalogs to check those.  Several use
Marcive and recommend it highly.

Although 4 schools said they use OCLC, 3 of those said it's a partial
contract.  Others said they don't use it at all because it's not cost
effective for schools.

Many of the respondents didn't give detailed information (I didn't ask them
to), but from what I gathered, it seemed that at least 20 respondents were
from single libraries, about 11 were small (less than 4 buildings)
districts, 5 were over 10 buildings and 5 were very large (30 buildings up
to 105).  Those were the ones doing centralized cataloging.  As far as
personnel, numbers ranged from a 1/2 time cataloger up to a staff of 8 with
a full time secretary, MLS cataloger, a supervisor of Media Processing, and
5 processing clerks (I'm assuming full time).  They also do all ordering
for 52 schools. (By the way, this school doesn't have a union catalog yet,
is working on doing that, and will continue to do cards for all schools
until they are all part of a union catalog.)

There was no clear cut answer on how much this all costs, although prices
for vendor cataloging ranged from .49 per book from Follet, up to $2.00 per
book for full centralized cataloging and processing.  One person estimated
that Marcive  cost about 27-29 cents apiece for getting the MARC records
for nonprocessed materials (she does this by using WebSelect via the
Internet and says she can get the records the next day).

Some of you asked how fast our processing system is and I can't really give
you a clear-cut answer.  We get the bulk of our books from Baker and Taylor
and they already have the labels and Mylar on them, so are shelf ready.
Then we send the one card over to the cataloger who searches Dynix for it
for a match.  If she doesn't find it there, she searches OCLC (off-line)
and then goes on-line to download the matches.  She can overlay duplicate
titles into our union catalog and attach location codes to the records.
The only step for the libraries to do then is bar wand the item into the
catalog and it's ready.  Depending on how busy the cataloger is with the
schools, this could take from a week to several weeks, although I've not
heard a lot of complaining about lag time.  Non-processed materials take
longer, but I don't keep track of how long.

Many thanks to all of the respondents!  I will use this information to
produce my report and I may be contacting some of you to verify
information.  Thanks again.

------

This whole issue depends on your professional and support staff.  We have
centralized ordering and processing, as well as a union catalog.  I would be
happy to speak with you some time, as this matter is difficult to summarize
in a few choice sentences.  Feel free to call me.  We are on Mountain Time,
and I am here from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

-----

Garry, we have centralized processing in our district and I love it.  This
is our second year and mistakes have been made but we are learning.  Some
things I think are important are:
Be sure you have enough help in your processing department.
Decide on cataloging procedures and make them consistent throughout the
district.
Let each school be responsible for their own ordering.
If you would like more information, I think you could email Ted Derrick at
derrickt@parkhill.k12.mo.us <mailto:derrickt@parkhill.k12.mo.us>  and ask
for his input.  He is our district librarian in charge of Centralized
Processing.

-------------------

Our district with 2 high schools, 3 junior highs, and 14 elementaries had
centralized processing.  It was great until:

1.our department chair was ineffective and position eliminated
2.two secretaries were moved to a room with no supervision and had no
professional as their supervisor
3. one secretary was not effective or accurate, complaints from librarians
to administrators only facilitated the elimination of the processing center

Make sure there is a processing center with a professional librarian who has
control of the  secretaries who do the legwork.  The center can save time
and money.  Librarians are free to work with students, faculty and
curriculum.  Processing center can combine orders from a large district to
obtain volume discounts, especially for encyclopedia sets.

Good luck.  We had central processing for twenty years.  It was only as good
as our department and administrators allowed.

The administrators think that a WAN with the capability for us to do book
orders and a clerk in every building (yet to be seen) will take the place.
??  I still don't know where we will get the time.

--------------------

We have centralized processing and think that it is great.  We have a
staff of 3.5 people including a paraprofessional cataloguer.  We have a
profession who comes in periodically to do original cataloguing.  All of
our books come to the buildings shelf ready.

Several years ago the superintendent wanted to do away with it saying that
we should get preprocessed materials but principals were against any more
jobs that would take library media specialists away from students and
teachers.  Michele

--------------------------

We have central processing.  There are times I love it and times I hate it.
I've done it both ways.

We have 33 elementary school in our district.  The ordering process has been
done on pink multi-copy slips that had to be typed.  When the books arrived
we could use the catalogued item as is or we could change the Dewey number
etc. as our library wanted it.

We have now automated and have a union catalog.  We are now trying to use a
spread sheet for ordering.  That is a good thing.  But the cataloguing codes
are causing a problem when we still use the pink slips on the preview
materials.  Each school has different sections, i.e.,  Primer,  Easy
non-fiction,  which my library does not have.  When we order on the pink
slips after someone has entered the code for primer we have to write a new
slip or wait till the book comes in and file a change request form.  All has
to be done by hand.

I'm hoping soon we will get rid of the pink slips altogether and I think it
will work better.

There are times when I miss being able to do the work myself.  I think I
could get the books out faster doing it myself.  (I order books in the fall
and don't receive them until spring.) Finding the time between teaching to
do the work would be difficult.

Sorry for rambling, hope this help

---------------------------

    We couldn't live without our central processing (we call it the LPC,
Library
Processing Center).  Our district Library Supervisor has a staff of four
full
time ladies that work for her and do all of our ordering, receiving,
checking on
the shipments, sending books to the bindery, cataloging any books that come
without processing, etc.  They send us boxes of books and a floppy disk to
upload the MARC records to our system.  We take the books out of the box,
check
to make sure the sensor rings the security system, and then put the books on
the
shelf. it's heaven.  Each librarian in the district selects books for their
own
library.  We simply send the order cards to the LPC.  They put together each
order, combining wherever possible to increase our discounts (which adds up
substantially).  We love it.  The librarians really get to spend time with
students.  If you need more details just let me know

-----------------------------

We have it and for the most part love it.  Our district has 13 agencies and
it's wonderful to have centralized processing.  We interlibrary loan
materials using school mail (books and videos) and are able to do so fairly
harmoniously.

-----------------------

We have been doing this since 1967.  My predecessor set up the "system" and
it works well.  It was an easy transition to an automated system in 1995.
We have a centralized collection for professional materials, book sets of
novels for elem., audiobooks for the secondary because of cost, large video
collection.  Yes, you cannot do unique "stuff" for a single building, but
when a change is needed to impact all, it can be done by a single key
stroke.

-----------------------

In our district, each school maintains its own catalog; we do not have a
union catalog as a public library would have (where all copies of a book
appear regardless of which branch holds the copy).  All schools have the
same library management software, CASPR Library World.

Here's basically what happens:
1.  The librarian selects books from one of our approved vendors using their
print or CD-ROM catalog.  (We currently have three jobbers who have met the
district's bid requirements, although that is about to change.)
OR
The librarian selects books from another source and fills out the proper
paperwork.
2.  The librarian sends the list with a budget code (or other source of
funding) and a "do not exceed" amount to our Library Media Services
Technical Operations Office.
3.  Technical Operations places the order through our Purchasing Department.
Books are ordered pre-processed, so they arrive already cataloged.
4.  Technical Operations receives the order, checks it, and makes sure it is
paid for.  Then they send it to the school.
5.  For books that are ordered without processing, we have a cataloger who
does all original cataloging.  She also has access to Bibliofile and
LaserCat.
6.  Individual librarians may come to our department and use LaserCat to
catalog books they have received from other sources (such as book fairs,
donations, etc.)

------------------------------

Garry...We considered it economical to use centralized processing when we
had 3 schools; more so as number of schools increased.  When LMSs
duplicate effort it is costly.  Better to pay a clerk for actual inputting
and have one LMS doing the cataloging and classification.   When you use a
union catalog you need to have consistency.   In a current system
individual schools adapt their computerized collections to indicate REF
anyway.  In the elementaries that put easy classified into a section near
the easy fiction we simply add an * in front of the call number in the
catalog and put a green dot on the book to indicate where it is shelved.
Everything comes from centralized processing ready to shelve and a disc
adds the cataloging to the computer.  It is just that tiny bit of
customizing that is done at each school.

--------------------------------

Garry,
If you can accomplish this, can I come and work for you?  I LOVE to catalog
and feel that centralized ordering, processing, etc. can only be more
efficient than each of us doing that.  Just the savings in time would be
tremendous.

_________________________________

Hi Garry -- I, too, am in the process of seriously considering the whole BOW
for
our schools. The situation is that my assistant and I will catalog and to
most
of the processing for the 5 schools in our district. (Previously, the ESD
had
provided this service, but has since left us high and dry.)
    What kind of hard and software will you be using? More important, what
kind
of personnel changes will be made to accommodate your increased work load?
We get
a big zero increase in FTE. So we're going from doing something we've never
done, to doing it for 5 schools. What about all the extra space you'll need
for
materials as they go through the processing?
    These are all questions I have been considering. Please respond and tell
me
what's been going on in your mind.

-----------------------------------


Jefferson County Public Schools (Louisville, KY) is a district of 150+
schools. We have had centralized processing through our Library Media
Services Department for many years.  It saves our library media specialists
many hours of work and headaches and allows them to serve their students and
staffs better.  Feel free to e-mail specific questions concerning this.

-----------------------------------

We have a centralized Media Services and do what you are proposing.
Schools submit their orders and do nothing more until the books arrive,
shelf ready.  This way, the majority of the time in the school libraries
is spent working with students and staff.

I do this in my k-12 school....we have central processing in the upper
school...all ordering and processing happens up here and gets sent out
to the appropriate library or resource center (we have 5 areas).  I
find it more efficient.  we use on line copy cataloging and of course
are able to do original ...we're a one professional library with two
full time clerks, a part time (3/4) story telling librarian in the
lower school and a 10 hr. per week clerk and a volunteer.

the clerk does the book processing.  the volunteer does distribution of
new materials listings among other things.

--------------------------

from

Garry Jantzen, Librarian N7SBG
Marshfield High School
Coos Bay, OR 97420-0102
garryj@coos-bay.k12.or.us (It's all in the mind you know)

http://www.marshfield.coos-bay.k12.or.us/library/ For links to reliable,
valid information!

(Before you copy, forward or re-use this message, please ask me for
permission. Any other use is in violation of the implied copyright.)

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