Section III:
Broadening research Opportunities
Enhancing Access to Collections
The Inventory Project
Our major achievement in this category was the completion of the Inventory Project (see
"The Inventory Project," above, under Theme I: On Brooklyn's Green Fields: A Year in
Temporary Quarters).
Ordering Books "Shelf-Ready"
The Cataloging unit continued to order books "shelf ready" from Coutts, our principal
vendor for new English-language monographs. (These books arrive with labels, date-due
slips, and security strips.) While Coutts catalogs the books, there has been no progress in
having them also transfer the item record information to CUNY+. This means that our
Acquisitions staff not only select the catalog record, but also input all the codes and link
the item record as well. This is unlikely to change, even when we are using the Aleph
System.
A new contract with Coutts added performance goals. Sally Bowdoin, head of Serials at
Brooklyn, served on the CUNY-wide task force that chose Coutts as our vendor. Under the
new contract, if materials are not delivered within an acceptable time frame libraries
receive additional discounts. Beginning this year, central office staff cataloged new books
for which Coutts could not provide a record; 227 such titles were completed. In
2000/2001 the University's staff began cataloging our gift materials as well.
Brooklyn uses a variety of suppliers for special materials (foreign language, music), or
whenever more substantive discounts or rapid service are available. We make good use of
our account at the Strand Book Store whose owner Fred Bass is a Brooklyn College
graduate. The subject specialists visit the Strand periodically, order from its lists, and
order weekly selections featured in the New York Times Book Review.
A New Integrated Library System
This year the University selected a new integrated library system to replace the old
mainframe NOTIS software that is the platform for CUNY+. The new system, Ex Libris
by Aleph http://www.exlibris-usa.com, was approved by the CUNY Trustees and an
implementation committee of five persons has been appointed, including Sally Bowdoin
from Brooklyn College. Sally's expertise lies in cataloging and serials. The system will be
implemented in January 2002, just as we move into the new Library.
While Brooklyn has the "cleanest" catalog in CUNY (thanks to the Inventory Project)
, there is still much to do to prepare for the Ex Libris implementation. Associate Librarian
for Technical Services Judith Wild served on a task force to look into the matter of the
bibliographic display in Aleph. The issue: should each title be represented by a single
bibliographic record for all of CUNY, or should the display include each institution's
complete cataloging record? A compromise was reached, and both views will be available.
Classifying the Entire Circulating Collection
in the Library of Congress System
When we moved into temporary quarters, the Library still had a few thousand volumes
classified in the Dewey Decimal system. In preparation for our move back to the Once and
Future Library where we will have a single shelving sequence, the bibliographers reviewed
all the remaining Deweys (there is a wealth of valuable material there) and the cataloging
staff began reclassifying them into the Library of Congress system.
Associate Librarian for Collection Development Susan Vaughn expressed great pleasure in
the quality of the materials still classed in Dewey. She found homes in other CUNY
collections for titles no longer appropriate to our Library (Brooklyn collected many annual
reports of city and state agencies from the 1930s through the 1960s: these have gone to
John Jay or Baruch where they fit nicely into these institutions' Public Administration
programs).
A grant from the Metropolitan New York Reference and Research Library Agency
(METRO) for $5,042 allowed us to convert 3,939 catalog records for old Dewey
materials to machine readable form. At the same time, staff reclassed them into the
Library of Congress system. Associate Librarian for Technical Services Judith Wild wrote
this winning proposal.
The Robert L. Hess Collection
Part-time cataloger Robert Chipok made a major dent in the rare religious materials in
ancient languages that are part of the Hess Collection. An experienced cataloger with
proficiency in Latin, Greek, and other early languages, Bob is presently completing a PhD
in classics at New York University.
