Government Publications Internal Blog

Government Publications Internal Blog

Government Publications staff meeting April 27, 2006

Agenda items
SARS On hold until we hear what cataloging is doing
Burning CDs – see below
Student work
Shelving is a priority now, with 2 students gone and the end of the semester coming.
Discard lists also need to be done. Students can alternate between shelving and discard lists.

No word on approval of Sheila’s position

Tim send out a call for program proposals for the Five State Government Documents Conference being held here in August. Frank replied that he will be helping and/or doing a presentation. All staff will be participating in arrangements.

Martha Jo has about 40 boxes to be moved from Business. We’ll store them in McGov for now.


2. Burning CDs
Jennie gave us a demonstration of how to burn CD’s on the stand-alone computers, particularly from Geolytics. The directions will be on the home page of those computers.

DOE Information Bridge Coverage

DOE Information Bridge

The introductory screen for the DOE Information Bridge says that the documents are primarily from 1994 forward and that legacy documents are added as they are digitized. This doesn’t really give you a very good idea of how many pre-1994 documents can be found in the Information Bridge, so I decided to check it out. There are 17,968 documents from 1939 to 1993. There is one says it is from 1924, but it is a typo and is really from 1994.

1939-50 395
1951-60 1081
1961-70 1585
1971-80 2634
1981-85 1821
1986-90 1643
1990-93 8809
1994-95 26,368
1996-00 50,255
2001-05 30,516
2006 566

So as you can see there are a lot of pre-1994 reports from AEC, ERDA, and DOE. Remember also that DOE adds energy related reports from other government agencies. Try doing a search on Colorado Geological Survey in the Research Org. field.

ASI PDF

Our new subscription to LexisNexis Statistical that includes PDF files for all publications since 2003 seems to have started. The link to the PDF is at the bottom of the abstract. Not all the links are active yet. This will include the non-depository documents that we have been getting in microfiche.

Geolytics CDs

Yes the CD works, but how does it work? I just spent 5 minutes remembering this, so I thought I would post it so everyone else doesn't have to fumble around in front of the patron remembering how to do this.

The Geolytics CDs create a file on the hard drive called "noname.req" this is the file that contains all the information on what you are looking for. As you create maps, reports, etc. you create more files starting with the "noname" designation. Now if you have a user who wants to save all the information to a CD, flash drive, floppy, etc. then they need to start out by going to the File menu and choosing "Save Request as" and then saving the request in the drive they are interested in. Then run the reports and maps as usual and they will save to that drive.

Problem: If they want to save to a CD then need to first save all the information to a local drive and then copy it to the CD. When you save data to a CD it is a two step process, first you copy the file there then you have to tell the computer to burn the data to the CD. The Geolytics program wants to keep modifying the files as you gather data, so just save the files to some other device then copy them to the CD.

Lost? I am more then happy to demonstrate this to anyone who is confused.

Minutes, April 20, 2006

Posted for Pat, by Jennie.
Filling Sheila’s position hasn’t been approved yet, but because the Systems position has already been put together from other vacant positions and hers wasn’t touched, it probably will be approved.

The Maymester and summer hours for Government Publications will be the same as last year, closing at 6 Mon-Thurs and 5 Fri-Sun.

Leanne went to the Dean’s meeting. He will decide sometime July-September when to threaten to cut back hours, assuming that the new tri-executives will exert pressure to get the library more funding. Because the Boulder campus is being de-emphasized in favor
of Denver/Health Sciences, there will continue to be budget problems; the Ward Churchill situation (on which a report is due May 9) makes it worse. Jim will be asking for money to fund the new bay at PASCAL. Staff Development will organize information on stress management.

We have agreed to create separate records for online versions of both serials and monographs, and to cease latest-entry cataloging for all serials, including print. We will search OCLC for cataloging for online versions, and template-derive records for those that have none matching our online source. We will continue adding/correcting URLs for existing Chinook records (not clear whether that includes serials). We assent to the philosophy that separate records are good for patrons, and that it would be best (but not feasible) to re-catalog all latest-entry and online-combined records. If we create templates for the online versions, we can include 776 fields for the other format (print or online) and suggest that they display and are hot-linked, if they aren’t already.

Department Meeting Minutes - 4/13/06

1). Will be getting 23 boxes of discarded material from the U.S. Court of Appeals, which will be placed in McGov until we have time to process them.

2). Yolanda will work 1-9 on Sunday, April 23. There was then discussion of various other weekend days needing covered, only one is left and that is: May 6.
We also discussed that during Maymester the hours for the library are Sat: 12-5, Sun: 12-7.

3). In terms of reference tools (like Andriot AKA Guide to U.S. Government Publications) these titles will only be placed on the in-house use truck if used while doing reference.

4). Tim will request that the public printers be allowed to print to the color printers.

5). Tattle tap projects:
If anyone has any tattle tap project to suggest for Anita please let Linda know.
Circ returns will now be tattle taped, so please place them on the tattle tape shelf. (Don't worry if they are tattle taped twice)

6). Dam Room
Linda wanted to remind everyone that Engineering has a set of materials from a professor's estate containing reports, graphs, tables, slides, etc. on dam failures all over the world. So if you get any questions that might be answered by this give Lorna a call.

7). PASCAL
Jennie discovered the reason random items were making their way to PASCAL. There was a item template that inserted a PASCAL pending code in the item and so things would get sent offsite. Brice has fixed this template and now items created in circ should have a location of "govst" and we will fix them up here.

8). IMLS Grant. We have passed the 1st review and they only had a few questions for us!

9). GEOG 1982 AKA World Regional Geography. There are additional handouts by the phone if anyone needs one. The assignment starts next week and a few people have already come by.

10). There is an internal search going on for the position of head of monographic cataloging and Tim has been asked to be on the search committee. We are still waiting on the go-ahead for Sheila's position.

11). Cataloging meeting on Wed @ 3pm.
This meeting will discuss the separation of records for online and print copies of a title. There was a lot of discussion on this topic, but if anyone in the department wants to go to this meeting they should.

Submitted by Jennie, if I left anything out, please feel free to add it in a comment.

Archaeological sites

There is a class doing a project in which they are searching for information on a specific archeological site. This class has already checked out quite a few of our Texas archaeological reports, but there are still a few left. The link for the series in Chinook is here.There are also a few in Norlin stacks (although many have been checked out), try searching the subject term "Archaeological surveying" to find some additional reports by state. This search will result in some false hits, but it does give you a few places to look. Leanne is cataloging the last of our uncataloged Texas reports so they can circulate, we will keep these newly cataloged material behind the desk for the moment.

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)

Today I had a request for a NACA report from 1944, which didn't show up in the NACA technical reports server. I did have a report number and title. Leanne remembered that we had NACA reports in paper in Y3.N21/5, but doing a Chinook search didn't work. This section is NOT currently converted, not even with serial records giving holding statements. To find reports you need the series name and then if you look in Andriot under Y3.N21/5 you can find the various series names and where their call numbers are. A big thanks to Leanne for figuring this out!

Department Meeting Minutes: April 6, 2006

Department Meeting - April 6, 2006

1. Depository Library Council Report:
The most significant announcement at the DLC was the new contract between GPO and FedEx/Kinkos. The GPO Express credit card will give federal agencies a substantial discount for printing small print jobs at FedEx/Kinkos. FedEx/Kinkos will send to GPO an electronic version of every job requested. GPO will review every job to identify publications for inclusion in the FDLP. Those selected will be cataloged and stored on the GPO servers.

2. Patron Print Card:
We want to keep a print card at the reference desk that we can let public patrons and students without BuffOne cards use to print. This will save them having to buy a card for a dollar. They should return the card to the desk when done printing. Even if they leave a small amount on money on the card, it should be cheaper than having to buy the card that they probably won’t ever use again.

3. Counting Hold Items for In-House Use:
We discussed how to count items on the hold shelf that get used several times a day, such as the census roll that is checked out two or three times during the day. It was agreed that we could use a yellow stickie to record multiple uses.

4. Volunteer:
Anita Cochran was by recently looking for volunteer opportunities. Pat had a large set that needed to be stripped. It was decided to start keeping a list of simple tasks that could be done by Anita or other volunteers.

5. Kitchen area:
The kitchen area is shaping up.

6. Punch Clock:
A request was sent in to obtain the Punch Clock software. Susan Anthes approved the order. John Culshaw has concerns about how this programs works with Windows XP and about the security of the system. His department is looking into alternative programs. It was agreed that waiting a couple of weeks for Systems to make a recommendation was no problem.

8. GEOG Class
We have completed most of the fifteen classes. Tim and Leanne did make it in for a eight o’clock. Adjustments were made during the week as feedback was given by TA’s. The assignment was given out mid-week so the students in the classes later in the week had a bit better idea of why we were talking to them. We have learned a lot in this process that will help next time we are asked to do this many classes.

9. Tourism Collection
Martha Jo is working on the tourism material from the Business Library and the Business Research Division. There should be a lot of boxes coming to us.

Department Meeting Minutes - 3/30/2006

Department Meeting - March 30, 2006

1. FERC Manual:
We will not be filing the sections for statutes and regulations. Instead well will have links in the bib records to the Federal Register and the U.S. Code.

2. ASI Update:
Sheila expressed concern about the records in the save file.

3. Tax Forms:
Additional copies of Pub 17 have been ordered, but hey will be delivered to Sheila’s house because IRS had a problem with the library address. There was discussion of putting all the tax forms at Sheila’s.

4. Documentation:
Linda is redoing the student instructions. Any suggestions will be welcome.

5. Workroom move:
Linda and Jennie showed plans for rearranging the workroom. Primary change is creating more room in the kitchen area.

CD-ROM stations

Guess what? The months of work have finally paid off and the CD-ROM stations are now up and operational! No more worrying that a CD-ROM doesn't work because of an update to a computer. Now if it doesn't work it is probably due to some entirely new unforeseen problem. :) I have checked all of the CD-ROMs and they appear to be working. Now I am sure there are areas that aren't working because I didn't try every possible way of using the CDs (checking 176 CDs for errors is time consuming). So please feel free to play around with them and let me know if you run into any problems.