If you missed the Core Technical Services Workflow Efficiency Interest Group (TSWEIG) meeting at the 2024 ALA Core IG Week or you just didn't get enough, a link to the program recording is below and slides from the program are attached. Enjoy!
Watch the recording
In the weeds with weeding: customizing a library-wide deselection workflow
Deselection is a tricky procedure that involves multiple units and people across the library. Subject Librarians who do the work of deselection employ different weeding procedures based on their preferences and working styles. It can be difficult to coordinate deselection timelines and workflows around individual librarians' weeding cycles. We saw an opportunity to centralize the information in weeding lists to facilitate more effective workflows for Circulation and Cataloging. Western Carolina University's Collection Strategist and Cataloging and Metadata Librarian created a "weeding tracker" spreadsheet to help streamline the weeding process. The weeding tracker method maintains flexibility for Subject Librarians' unique deselection preferences while standardizing the overall procedure to enable efficiency in Technical Services workflows. Developing a coordinated method for weeding procedures required reviewing and incorporating specific information about the different approaches to deselection; consulting with colleagues in Access Services, Cataloging, and Research and Instruction; and obtaining ongoing buy-in and approval from everyone who is affected by the workflow. Librarians will share their process and some of the problems they encountered, such as the niceties of excluding retention commitments and including volume numbers in list exports, as well as trialing and rejecting a new withdrawal procedure in Cataloging. The presenters will also touch on the initial results of the piloted workflow and share future recommendations. Attendees will come away with new ideas about how to adapt and streamline their own current processes for deselection using existing tools.
Presenters: Ali Norvell, Collection Strategist and Resource Access Librarian and Rebecca Saunders, Cataloging and Metadata Librarian, Western Carolina University.
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A little innovation with a huge national impact
The 072 MARC tag, otherwise known as a Subject Category Code (LC) or Broad Descriptors (NLS), has been used by the National Library Service to first and foremost build a genre/subject bridge between the NLS Catalog and NLS BARD database. In recent years NLS started to publicize and expand the Broad Descriptors code list and utilization in MARC records. The little-known codes become an important key in the process of a patron's book auto-select and become an effective and extremely efficient support tool to optimize NLS Catalog search and discovery. This presentation will describe how in just a couple of years 072 tag became one of the most interesting and helpful coded MARC tags that can relate and collaborate with searches across different MARC and non-MARC databases, how it can simplify on-demand patron search in regional libraries across the United States, and how it directly relates to readers and librarians high demand interests and topics. How the 4-letter codes filled the space between Library of Congress Subject Headings and Local Public Libraries themes and reader's direct interest genres and how the 072 MARC tag can potentially consolidate three aspects of the library's search and discovery: vocabulary control and standardization, local demand, and reader preference will also be discussed.
Presenter: Anita Kazmierczak, National Library Service for Blind and Print-Disabled, Library of Congress
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Using AI to improve technical services workflows
This presentation will discuss how the National Library of Medicine is beginning to use AI to improve workflows in Technical Services. Two main projects will be discussed. First, the presenter will show how ChatGPT can be used to properly format the MARC 505 field for CIP records, even when the data from the publisher is a little messy. Next, the presenter will demonstrate how ChatGPT can be used to generate python script to programmatically select the best OCLC record books when processing a large vendor order.
Presenter: Alvin Stockdale, Senior Serials Specialist, Metadata Management Program, National Library of Medicine
Tammie and Caroline
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Tammie Busch
Catalog & Metadata Librarian
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
She/Her/Hers
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