Kent State University Libraries Research Articles

Integrating Enhance and NACO Work into Pre-Professional Experiences: A Successful Strategy for All

In a time where both library budgets and personnel are shrinking, pre-professionals can contribute and improve cataloging in the OCLC WorldCat database, provided they are well trained and supervised. Thus their contributions benefit everyone, not just local catalog users. They may also be fully integrated into the OCLC Regular Enhance program and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) workflows. This article focuses on how pre-professionals are managed in technical services at Kent State University Libraries. The article includes contributions from the perspective of management, expert cataloger-trainers, and a graduate student, and aims to provide professional catalogers with the tools to successfully establish programs for pre-professionals.

Morphing metadata: maximizing access to electronic theses and dissertations

PurposeThis paper aims to describe work at Kent State University Libraries and Media Services to promote and devise electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) storage at OhioLINK's ETD Center, to find efficient methods to represent these unique scholarly materials within the library's catalog, and to foster the establishment of state‐wide library catalog standards for ETDs.Design/methodology/approachA semi‐automated process has been devised that extracts student‐supplied metadata already available in the OhioLINK ETD Center to provide almost instantaneous access to unique resources through the library catalog. A Perl program uses the OAI‐PMH protocol to extract metadata, modifies and enhances the data, and inserts it into the Innovative Interfaces, Inc. catalog. Significant effort was made to map the data from ETD‐MS to MARC. Catalogers retrieve records for completion and contribute full bibliographic records to OCLC WorldCat in addition to the local and consortium catalogs.FindingsThe process successfully produces a provisional bibliographic record that is useful immediately for resource discovery and that can serve as the basis for full cataloging.Practical implicationsThis research provides libraries with a method they can adapt locally to provide provisional level access, full level access, or both, to unique scholarly research.Originality/valueThis research broke new ground regarding the use of a software agent to repurpose metadata in library catalogs. It also impacted national cataloging standards for ETDs.

Building a local CMS at Kent State

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the creation of a content management system (CMS) for the Kent State University Libraries & Media Services web site. It describes the requirements for the site and for the CMS, the CMS architecture and components.Design/methodology/approach – This paper describes the genesis and architecture of a locally‐written CMS that is strongly focused on metadata.Findings – A review of local, library‐specific needs combined with a review of the product universe resulted in the decision to write a local CMS.Practical implications – Includes enumerated goals and requirements for a database‐driven and metadata‐focused web site.Originality/value – Describes the creation of tools for data management in a locally‐written CMS.

Library-vendor collaboration for re-engineering workflow: the Kent State experience

Kent State University Libraries and Media Services took advantage of a change in book vendors to re-engineer the acquisitions and cataloging workflow. The process that was ultimately designed is highly integrated and takes advantage of automated efficiencies from both Yankee Book Peddler and OCLC PromptCat. The library has also created a working environment for staff that simultaneously maximizes decision-making while minimizing routine and repetitive tasks. In addition, the library is realizing significant cost savings from the new workflow. A description of the new workflow is provided.

Kent State University's Electronic Reserves Experience

ABSTRACT In late 1996, Kent State University Libraries began to research electronic reserves software in order to conduct a pilot project. The software chosen was ERes 2.0, developed at Santa Clara University by Philip Kesten and Slaven Zivkovic. This article describes how and why ERes was chosen and how the system was adapted for use at Kent State University. The integration with the OPAC and full-text databases, as well as the pitfalls encountered during the pilot project is detailed. Also described is the experience of learning to scan print documents efficiently.

Assessing an academic library liaison programme

Liaison programmes have been in existence in academic libraries for a number of years. A liaison programme is a co‐operative agreement between the library and academic units to foster better communication, improve services and enhance collection development. In order for it to be operated effectively such a programme needs to be assessed on an ongoing basis. Reports the findings of an assessment survey which was conducted in the spring of 1992 at Kent State University Libraries and Media Services, Kent, Ohio. The assessment of this programme offers some guidelines for assessing similar programmes at other institutions.

BCL3 and notis: An automated collection analysis project

The availability of the third edition of Books for College Libraries in machine-readable format opens up new possibilities for using computer technology for collection analysis, particularly if a library's holdings are also in machine-readable format. Preliminary results from a collection analysis project at the Kent State University Libraries are presented. The project features a database created from the Books for College Libraries file that includes local subject categories and holdings status. Initial automated matching of records from the database against the Libraries' holdings was performed by a microcomputer workstation wired to the online catalog. Nonmatching records are being searched manually as a follow-up.

OCLC'S SERIALS CONTROL SUBSYSTEM

This paper describes the implementation and use of OCLC's Serials Control Subsystem in the Kent State University Libraries. An enhancement of the public services given for serials was the primary reason for adopting the system. Benefits for technical services were recognized as being seueral years away. Although all aspects of the Serials Control Subsystem are not yet available, initial problems were overcome to this library's satisfaction.