GobiWorks

A GobiWorks Profile






Tufts University: A GobiWorks Profile


Contact: Tony Kodzis, Acquisition Manager (anthony.kodzis@tufts.edu)

Library Organization: Tufts University has a total enrollment of 8,500, with undergraduate and graduate programs and schools in three separate locations in Eastern Massachusetts. Tisch Library, located on the main Medford/Somerville campus, provides library resources and services to the university's arts, science and engineering faculty, staff, and students. The collections contain over 785,000 books, 15,000 print and electronic periodical titles, 20,000 sound recordings, 14,000 video recordings as well as microforms, government publications, archival sources, and other types of material. The Acquisitions department in Tisch Library also buys material for the Edward Ginn Library and the Music Library. Regular GOBI users: 7 (4 Acquisition staff & 3 Bibliographers)

ILS System: Innovative Interfaces Millennium

Services Profiled:
Electronic Slip Selection, GOBI Ordering, Receipt of PromptCat records for both Approval and Firm Orders.

Tufts University has been working with YBP for over 30 years. In that time their approval plan has been refined to the point where they have decided that for the few questionable titles that are sent to them on approval in error, it is easier and cheaper to keep the book than to return it. If they are unsure why a title was sent, they call their YBP Bibliographer, Jean Longfellow, and have her research it. If a profile problem is found, Jean corrects the plan so as to prevent similar shipments in the future.

With the development of GOBI2 three years ago, Tufts Acquisitions Manager Tony Kodzis saw an opportunity to streamline his department's workflow. He was trying to cope with an Acquisitions workload growing at a much faster pace than his staff FTEs were. Tufts chose not to use the Innovative Interfaces acquisitions module in Millennium for YBP orders. Instead, they use GOBI2 as their acquisitions module for all YBP business. By doing so they are relying on GOBI to accurately keep track of titles purchased, expenditures, and shipment history. Titles are loaded into their Innovative OPAC when received at the library; this way, when a patron sees a title in their OPAC, it is already available to be checked out. In addition, they avoid any matching or overlay issues that might arise from having a preliminary order record in their system which would then have to be replaced by a later cataloging record. Finally, Tony feels that GOBI's tools and reports do a better job of meeting Tuft's needs than those offered by the library's system. Some of the reports that he finds helpful are the Approval Activity Reports by Library of Congress Classification and by fund code. He likes the fact that he can compare activity for two different time periods. This makes planning for expected expenditures for the upcoming year much easier. If he needs to know how much money to reserve for automatic approval shipments for the months of July through December these reports will provide him with an answer. The reports for canceled titles, open orders by fund code, and open orders by individual are also very helpful in his planning for the upcoming year.

Collection Development and Acquisitions staff hold monthly meetings to determine how many orders will be placed, based on the number of student employees available that month and the current fiscal budget. Since student workers do 80% of the receiving and physical processing, their availability is a big factor in setting the monthly ordering budget and work pipeline.

At Tufts, Selectors may select titles using either paper or electronic slips. Selectors who choose to select from paper slips use the following workflow: They note any fund code or location changes that may be required on the paper slips and then give the slips to the Acquisitions department. The Acquisitions department files those paper selections in order chronologically by the selection date. Bibliographers who do electronic slip selection log on to GOBI each week and retrieve their electronic slips via a Slip Search. Selectors then review and select those slips that they want. The Selectors have been trained to use templates as a way to cut down on the amount of keying required and to reduce keying errors. The templates may include the correct ordering sub account and perhaps a default fund code. If fund or location changes are needed, those are keyed into the notes field on the selection screen as titles are chosen. The Acquisitions staff picks up the electronic selections weekly.

Ester Richards, the Library Order Assistant, handles most of the orders destined for YBP. She will place orders from the paper and electronic selections until she meets that monthly quota. She spends two days a week entering orders from paper slips and three days a week entering orders from electronic selections, working from the oldest selections to the newest. Since they are working with newly published material and YBP is the sole source for most of their orders, Tufts does not do any pre-order searching in their catalog for orders generated from approval notification slips. They rely on the library history that is maintained in GOBI for their duplication control. As they go through the titles in the GOBI Order Cart, if they see that a title has already been ordered or shipped, they will delete that title from the cart. Once the order is placed in GOBI, Acquisitions work is done until the books are shipped. Tufts has chosen not to enter any "on order" records into their local system. Tony feels that by showing an order record, they are in many cases causing frustration for their patrons because even though the record is in the catalog, the book is not available for circulation. He would rather add records for new acquisitions to the OPAC when the books have been received, processed and are ready to circulate.


Receiving
Once orders are placed and YBP is ready to ship the books to Tufts, YBP sends the ordering and invoicing information to OCLC as an electronic PromptCat manifest. OCLC passes those files against WorldCat to pull up the appropriate cataloging records and set Tufts' holdings. On a weekly basis Tufts retrieves the file of cataloging records from OCLC and loads them into Millennium, where they automatically create a bibliographic record, an order record and an invoice record. When books arrive at the library, they are received, the invoice records are reviewed and if approved they are paid electronically. Student then pull up the cataloging record for each title, create spine labels, and do the physical processing that is required. If there are titles for which there are no records or the record for some reason is insufficient, those books are passed along to Cataloging for further attention.

Approvals follow the same workflow for receiving and processing. The only difference is they began as an automatic shipment from YBP rather than as an order from Tufts.

For Tufts, GOBI has also made working with the multiple libraries on campus much easier. For example, due to the local history that is maintained in GOBI, Librarians in the Ginn Library or the Music Library may or may not decide to buy a book based on the decision made at Tisch Library.

Tony Kodzis feels that for Tufts, this workflow is quite efficient and cost-effective. Thanks to PrompCat and a very straight forward physical processing workflow, they have very little backlog. Books are getting out to the shelves very quickly. From the date that Tufts receives a book they allow two weeks for processing. By the end of the second week the book should be ready to be shelved. Tony Kodzis feels that for the mix of titles that they order from YBP they are getting 60% of them with a month and he is pleased with that fulfillment rate.