Latin American bulk loading A collaboration between Tulane’s Latin American Library and the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library Technical Services Division Sally Krash, Head of Acquisitions, Tulane University, August 2015 image from Codex Campos, Pueblo, Mexico 1855

Problems The Latin American Library (LAL) at Tulane has one of the top Latin American collections in the United States. For some Latin American geographical areas, LAL is collecting materials that no other libraries are collecting, so they are looked to for setting the gold standard for collecting in these areas. Collection development activities include current and retrospective materials, and are comprehensive in scope. Latin Americanists were not able to access/discover our most recent acquisitions. Discoverability: The amount of materials received under our Latin American blanket plans exceeded our capacity for ingest processing. Materials were unpacked, invoices were paid, and materials were moved into an acquisitions backlog shelving area. When acquisitions staff had time, they looked for OCLC records or created provisional records and moved books to a cataloging backlog area. In 2012, each of these backlogs was approximately 2 years behind. Cataloging backlogs were being outsourced to Library Associates, but this did not solve our primary problems – we were receiving more materials than we could process and materials were not discoverable for several years after receipt. Chain of Custody: Invoices were paid against blanket purchase orders, so line-item details were not available for any of these transactions. Subsequently, tracing a book back to the original invoice was a manual process, complicated by the fact that some parameters can be confusing which can lead to duplicates/receiving the same title from multiple vendors. Other duplicates: Many Latin American vendors use our OPAC interface to see if we own items before sending them. Since we were behind in loading records, they often did not see that we had already received items, which led to significant returns.

Existing Environment (2012) 22 Latin American blanket plans with 18 vendors. 700 books (with occasional ephemera and cds/dvds) received each month 2012 acquisitions capacity to process 250 books per month limited capacity to process these materials in cataloging, hence the outsourcing PK (Post-Katrina) effect: 2 million replaced/remediated pieces coming through Recovery Center, but in-house cataloging was still catching up with materials received PK. [New Head of Cataloging (2010), Head of Acquisitions (2012)]

Solution/Goal Make Latin American Library materials received under blanket plans discoverable at the point of receipt. Accomplish this by bulk-loading vendor supplied records or adding provisional records in acquisitions through a new receive/purchase order/invoice process. This process will establish a chain- of-custody for these materials by systematically creating purchase orders with line-item details.

Participants Latin American Library Director Head of Cataloging Head of Acquisitions Acquisitions Technicians (2) Vendors (12)

Timeline Meet with vendors at SALALM (May, 2013) Also met with other acquisitions librarians to review best practices Establish record parameters (next slide) Receive and review records Create duplicate detection profile (1) and bulk import rules (15) (template – slide 8) Test bulk-loading/purchase order creation Document workflow process Train acquisitions technician on bulk loading records Train acquisitions technician on new manual process Outsource cataloging to MARCADIA (all but one vendor) Live date: July 1, 2014 (original), July 1, 2015 (actual)

MARC records MARC21 UTF-8 Unicode character set 980 subfield a – invoice date in the following format YYMMDD. Example, Nov. 1, 2013 would read as subfield b – price in US dollars, including decimal points. Example $41.13 is the cost of the book in US dollars, and the field needs to show ‡b subfield f needs to show your invoice number

Bulk import rule template Rule Name Tab Code: See vendor tab Name: See vendor tab Rules Tab Bib Dup Profile: OCLC Conditional [for CENTAMER, IBEROHIS, IBEROLAL, IBEROLIT use LAL-CON] Auth Dup Profile: Owning Library: HT Expected Character Set Mapping: MARC21 UTF-8 (do NOT check last two entries) Profiles Tab Single MFHD/select Bibs, MFHDs, POs Single button/Single MFHD pop-up window Loc Field: * Loc Subfield: * Loc Indicator 1: * Loc Indicator 2: * Copy , Fields From Bib to MFHD (check this one) Orders button: Order/Vendor tab: Order Location: Monograph Acquisitions Order Type: Approval Line Item Type Default: Single-part Vendor Code: enter Voyager vendor code- see tab Number of Copies per Line Item Default: 1 Notes: 980 f, Instructions: 980 a Price/Fund tab: Price Field: 980 Subfield: b, Default: $0.00, Currency: USD Fund Field: Default Code: see vendor tab Item Type Tab Blank Mapping Tab (add) MARC Item Type: * MARC Location Code: * Voyager Item Type: Book Voyager Location: HT LAL Call Number Hierarchy: Other Barcode Tab Blank Item Information Tab Blank

Findings The Latin American Library Director communicated heavily with vendors about supplying records, and the Head of Acquisitions was able to move the process forward after face-to-face meetings at SALALM 2013 Most vendors had just started creating MARC records, and had one person doing that (when that person left, we had no MARC records until that person was replaced) We worked with one major vendor (Libros Centroamericanos) to explain what an American academic library needed to see in these records The technology available to some vendors is not as advanced as we are used to, and those records require more manipulation There are issues with diacritics for MARC records from 2 vendors, so workflows had to be adjusted to load Marc 8 records (rather than UTF8) Records for 10 vendors did not meet our quality standards, so the Head of Cataloging established outsourcing of full cataloging to MARCADIA Records for one vendor did meet our standards, and those materials go into the copy-cataloging workflow One vendor supplied one set of records earlier this year, but we have not been able to get any further records Two vendors charged for records, so funding had to be identified to pay for those records

Results: Happy Latin American Library Happy Latin Americanists Happy Technical Services Questions?