Wednesday, January 2, 2008

A Busy New Year

It has been almost 2 months since my last post, but rest assured, I have been busy. Not only did the usual holiday preparations and festivities consume my time away from work, but I have been busy at work with the beginnings of migrating our library's catalog to Innovative Interfaces Inc.'s Millennium integrated library system (ILS). At Medaille, we are not using a full ILS; we use TLC's catalog and circulation products, but acquisitions is not integrated. We will be using Millennium for acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, and serials check-in. We will be starting our training at the end of January and hope to go live with the catalog and circulation early in June. In the meantime, we in technical services are busy evaluating workflows as they exist with an eye towards making positive changes to keep the library running smoothly.

Serials control is a big issue for us. We are evaluating all serial titles and updating cataloging, which has not been done regularly for some time. Also, tracking and checking-in of serial subscriptions (print and online) has now become a function of technical services, bringing all bibliographic control for serials to the technical services department.