A Case Study Presenters: Karen A. Plummer Valerie Jenkins Joy Ramos

 Collection Status  Older collection  Large unprocessed gift collection from Akron Public Schools  Multiple, confusing local classification systems  Cataloging Staff  Prior to 2001, no one dedicated to curriculum materials  One paraprofessional cataloging juvenile literature but not educational/instructional materials

 Curriculum Center Cataloger and Education Librarian work together to identify problems  Bring in representatives from the College of Education to get first hand user impressions  Recommendations:  Classify ALL materials using standard Dewey  Add grade levels to classification number  Weed outdated materials from collection  Integrate fiction and non-fiction collections Note: implementation showed that users really wanted fiction classed separately from nonfiction

 Started with Juvenile Fiction and Nonfiction  Biggest challenge: Grade Level  Tools Used  OCLC Dewey Cutter Program – key in author’s last name, hit enter and program provides the correct Cutter Number  Library of Congress’ Classification Web – Wonderful LC to Dewey correlation tool: key in LC classification number, hit “Go” and search engine provides a list of the most relevant Dewey classification numbers  Amazon.com for grade level – often provides reading level and/or excerpts from reviews originally published in School Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, etc.

 Search local online system by barcode, which is the quickest way to retrieve a title that is already processed  Call Number Nonfiction has a Dewey Number assigned Adjust Cutter number to reflect 4-figure table and/or Adjust for Cutter numbers beginning with a vowel or “S” Fiction: change “jF” and/or “jE” to “Fiction” and adjust Cutter number as needed  Update the record according to AACR2 cataloging rules – punctuation, etc.  Check subject headings: record will need LC heading and also LC Children’s headings  Assign a grade level after the Cutter number. Examine content of book Check information in School Library Journal or Publisher’s Weekly via Amazon.com reviews

 Also needed to weed the instructional materials before reclassifying them, but needed resources to replace them first  Backlog: Gift from the Akron Public Schools  Primarily multi-piece kits Not all complete Stored in multiple places and frequently moved so pieces were separated from each other  Too much for one person so temporarily halted reclassification and expanded the workforce Trained Valerie and Joy to catalog instructional materials and kits Biggest question: how to expedite process?

 Goal was to expedite cataloging and processing of kits containing 3 to 50+ items  Guidelines determine what to keep from education bibliographer, Dr. Steve Aby  Anything older than 10 years … could be eliminated generally.  If we had any questions, he would review the items on a case by case basis.  We had kits and pieces of kits scattered across ranges of shelving and on book carts.  Initially tried sorting by grade and by subject  What really worked was sorting by publisher first, then subject, then grade level; this brought together the scattered pieces of a kit

 Cataloged largest kit in a series first  Organized individual items in kit as follows: Student textbook Teacher’s guide/manual Other print resources in alphabetical order Media resources  Helped standardize subject access points  Resulted in a model record  Created a template for cutting and pasting information for other kits in the series  Allowed us to maximize usage of publishers’ standard formats between grades.

 Set up kit items as volumes:  Start with: Student text, v.1 and teacher edition v.2  Alphabetized remaining resources: v. 3 Alternative assessments, v. 4 Block planning guide, v. 5 Chapter review, etc.  Media items at end, v.10 DVD, v. 11 CD-ROM, etc.  Contents note:  Used contents note to list volume numbers and their respective titles.  Used this data to copy and paste into item records to identify each volume.  Physical processing was expedited by running 2 sets of labels from list of items rather than taking more time to handwrite OCLC and call number in each item, placing one set in items for this ephemeral collection.

 Juvenile Fiction and Nonfiction Reclassed  2002-Present: 3511 titles  New Titles Added  2005-present: Nonfiction/Instructional 925 Fiction 4274 items

 Working together to better manage projects has served to put a process in place for future collections  Working smarter, increasing efficiency, and saving time  Upgrading skills led to staff position upgrades and reclassification  Users better served