**Ohio State University Libraries**

**January 2007**

**ALA Midwinter Round Robin**

**ALCTS Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries Group**

# Renovation of Thompson (Main) Library Begins

By the first week of November, all personnel (about 150) and collections
(over 1 million general collections plus reference, microforms, maps,
and several special collections) were moved out of the Thompson Library.
The majority of personnel\--including those in Technical Services\--and
collections were relocated to a "swing space" facility several miles
away. Circulation, research and reference services, and administrative
services retained a presence on central campus by moving into another
library facility. The construction fence went up around the Thompson
Library at the end of December, marking the official beginning of the
long-awaited major renovation that is supposed to be completed by May
2009.

Technical Services personnel in all departments worked very hard to
process as many materials as possible before the move, often dealing
with the "dregs" of catalog maintenance and retrocon projects. They also
provided support for the transfer of thousands of volumes from the
Science and Engineering Library (SEL) to the OSU Book Depository to make
room for more user services and study space to compensate for the
closure of the Thompson Library. These efforts were complicated by
severe problems that resulted from replacement of the server running the
library catalog in mid September and persisted for about 6 weeks.
Nevertheless, the push to process materials in SEL, in special
collections, and in selectors' offices, and in Technical Services areas
before the move helped to keep OSU among the top ten contributors of
original records to OCLC.

**[Acquisition Activities]{.underline}**

Agreements were worked out for new gathering plans for modern Greek and
Byzantine Studies and for Korean imprints.

Accommodation of the ISBN-13 and the switch to EDIFACT were accomplished
by the year's end.

**[Cataloging Activities]{.underline}**

The OSU Libraries' Cataloging Dept. just worked out an agreement to
catalog 4000 titles for OSU's Moritz Law Library on a cost recovery
basis. This project also will serve as a pilot for potential cooperative
arrangements with other institutions.

Relative to LC's series decision, Magda El-Sherbini, head of Cataloging,
is leading the development of a survey to be sent to users of OSU's
catalog to assess the extent to which they search for series and how
they search (e.g. keyword, title, etc.).

**[New Responsibilities and Opportunities for Technical
Services]{.underline}**

The Scholarly Resources Integration Dept. entered library faculty CV
data into OSU:Pro, the developing campus expertise system, so that
faculty could produce their 2007 CVs from the system with only minimal
updating. SRI personnel continue to work closely with the system
developers to get the necessary modifications accomplished to allow
library faculty to produce their entire required annual reports from the
system. The library is a pilot site for this use of OSU:Pro.

Trisha Davis, Rights Management Coordinator and head of the Serials and
Electronic Resources Dept., assumed responsibility for e-reserves
operations as well. Trisha's licensing and copyright expertise and
availability of staff in her department to work on rights management
issues matched up well with the need to assess and manage copyright
issues related to e-reserves. The e-reserves staff who had been
reporting to the head of Circulation were transferred to Trisha's
department organizationally but continued to work from their office in
the Science and Engineering Library where they can interact more easily
with campus faculty. Trisha and her staff who have offices in the swing
space facility now regularly also spend time in the e-reserves office on
central campus.

Trisha initiated reviews of print reserve and e-reserve requests to
determine how many items are already available as library e-resources.
Her staff calculated that, of the 1,415 articles on e-reserve fall
quarter, the library owned or owned electronic access to 1,091 (77%) of
the requested materials, with 277 (20%) available via electronic
content. In terms of copyright issues, only 60 (4%) had copyright
concerns that required further attention.

Trisha and her staff also worked with administrators of the campus
course management system (Desire2Learn, called "Carmen" at OSU) to start
adding e-reserves to Carmen course shells. This project was to be a
pilot during fall quarter but had to expand quickly when serious
problems with the library catalog prevented it from being used to
support reserves satisfactorily, as had been the case to that point.

Copyright and e-reserves presentations are being provided to a number of
groups on campus to raise awareness of copyright issues and support
available from the library. This type of outreach represents a new role
for Technical Services personnel in the Serials and Electronic Resources
Dept. Author's rights workshops also are being conducted, and Trisha was
invited to attend the September meeting of the new ARL Campus Copyright
Educator's Committee. The work of this committee and other interested
parties will result in a new ARL brochure and website focused on
author's rights information campaigns on ARL campuses.