As MERLIN transitions to a standalone cluster in MOBIUS, we will be migrating to the III-hosted environment for Sierra.  The date planned for this migration is March 30, 2017.  During the migration, which is scheduled to take anywhere from 4-6 hours starting at 8am PST, the MERLIN catalog will be unavailable.  You will not be able to access Sierra for staff purposes nor will the MERLIN OPAC be available to the public.   Please plan accordingly and if you have any questions, contact your MERLIN Standalone TF member (David Owens, Maggie Trish, Buddy Pennington, or Corrie Hutchinson). 

The MU Libraries, as part of the Greater Western Library Alliance, recently joined partners from 24 countries and over 1,000 libraries, library consortia and research organizations in becoming a member of the international collaboration, Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access in Particle Physics Publishing (SCOAP3), an open access initiative convened at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) on January 1, 2014. With the support of these partners, many scientific articles in the field of High-Energy Physics (HEP) will become Open Access at no cost for any author: everyone will be able to read them; authors will retain copyright; and generous licenses will enable wide re-use of this information.

Eleven publishers of high quality international journals, including Elsevier and Springer, are participating in SCOAP3.  Reductions in subscription fees for participating libraries will make funds available for libraries to support SCOAP3. The MU Libraries maintains subscriptions that entitle MU researchers access to many of these journals. Through its participation in the initiative, the MU Libraries will shift funding from subscriptions to these journals to financial support of the SCOAP3 initiative.

The objective of SCOAP3 is to grant unrestricted access to scientific articles appearing in scientific journals. In the SCOAP3 model, libraries and funding agencies pool resources currently used to subscribe to journals, in co-operation with publishers, and use them to support the peer-review system directly instead.

“SCOAP3 is an exciting initiative, and we are proud at the MU Libraries to be a part of it. We are committed to Open Access publishing and believe that this new model has the potential to help control the increases in journal subscription costs,” said Ann Campion Riley, associate director of access, collections and technical services.

For more information about SCOAP3, visit http://scoap3.org/.

For a complete list of the SCOAP3 journals, visit http://scoap3.org/scoap3journals

 

All are invited to an Open House in Technical Services on Dec. 12 from 1-3 to see our new arrangements. Sandwiches and cookies will be served.

In anticipation of transitioning from AACR2 to the new cataloging code, Resource Description and Access (RDA), the Catalog Department has participated in several long-distance and local training sessions in the last several months.  Following are some of the training we have undergone:

All staff participated in the Library of Congress BIBCO program series.  This series involved learning RDA elements in bibliographic records and included viewing Library of Congress webinars and customized local training.  As you may note from the topics, RDA is based on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR).  One challenging aspect of RDA is in learning the new terminology and the different organization of the instructions.

Module 1. Introduction to RDA; Identifying Manifestations and Items

Module 2. Describing Carrier and Identifying Words

Module 3. Identifying Expressions and Describing Content

Module 4. Relationships

Last fall, we participated in the Library of Congress NACO (Name Authority Cooperative) training, which covered establishing names and the new RDA fields in authority records.  This training included two live sessions with Library of Congress trainers.

Bette Stuart and Felicity Dykas participated in the CONSER training series related to RDA and serials cataloging.

Wayne Sanders, Felicity Dykas, Brian Cain, and Jackie Blonigen completed the NACO series training.

To augment their training, five people participated in MOBIUS sponsored training on April 15.  Jackie Blonigen, Brian Cain, Karla Geerlings, Colleen Smith, and Bette Stuart traveled to Warrensburg for the all-day training session.

You will be seeing more and more RDA records in MERLIN.  While much of what we hope to gain from moving to RDA won’t be realized for a few years (e.g., linked data), what you will notice right away is that we are using fewer abbreviations and we are adding information about relationships.

The Digitization Interest Group will be meeting on Monday, April 15. This is an informal group that meets to share information about the digitization related activities at MU Libraries. All are welcome!

Monday, April 15
1:00-2:00 p.m.
Ellis 4F51A

Updates:
1) Catalog Department digitization activities – Felicity Dykas
2) MOspace Digital Library (Islandora) – Felicity Dykas and LTS/LSO
3) New MU Libraries Digitization Advisory Committee – Anselm Huelsbergen
4) Digital Humanities activities at MU – Anne Barker
5) Digital Curator-Journalism/Mass Media position – Dorothy Carner
6) Other updates

More changes have been made by the Catalog Department to update MERLIN to conform to the new international cataloging rules – RDA (Resource Description and Access). Here are a couple of major changes:

1) Subject and uniform title access points for Bible have been updated:

Before: Bible. N.T.
Now: Bible. New Testament

Before: Bible. O.T.
Now: Bible. Old Testament

Under AACR2 individual books in the Bible were listed under N.T. or O.T. Now the name of the book is directly after Bible.

Before: Bible. N.T. Luke
Now: Bible. Luke

Before: Bible. O.T. Genesis
Now: Bible. Genesis.

2) Subject and uniform title access point for Koran have been updated to Qur’an. Note, that you will still retrieve many entries under Koran, because that is the actual title of resource.

Before: Koran
Now: Qur’an

For several months, bibliographic records based on new cataloging rules (RDA – Resource Description and Access) have been added to MERLIN.  We are transitioning from AACR2 to RDA in our cataloging here, also.

Here are some changes you will see:

1) Under AACR2, we abbreviated Department in corporate body names.  Under RDA, we will only abbreviate Department if it is used in an abbreviated from by the organization.

Former:  University of Missouri—Columbia.  Dept. of Agronomy

New:  University of Missouri—Columbia. Department of Agronomy
2) Under AACR2, we abbreviated a lot of words in the physical description.  Under RDA, a lot of those words are spelled out.  An exception is for centimeter, because cm is considered a symbol and not an abbreviation.

Former:  34 p. : ill. ; 23 cm

New:  34 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

For more information, watch for further updates or contact anyone in the Catalog Department.

Meet the new MU Libraries Salvage Team line-up.  In addition to bringing a variety of skills and knowledge to the team, these folks have volunteered to roll up their sleeves, brave unpleasant conditions and work tirelessly to salvage damaged library materials.

Group One
Michaelle Dorsey
Ruth Feldkamp
Sharon Gaughan
Kelli Hanson
James Keyzer-Andre
Amy Lana

Group Two
Jackie Blonigen
Marie Concannon
Gary Cox
Gwen Gray
Amanda Sprochi

LMT has approved the restructuring of the MU Libraries Salvage Team.  We are seeking MU Libraries Staff interested and able to serve as Salvage Team members.  There are a limited number of positions to be filled and we are seeking individuals who can best perform the tasks related to the salvage and recovery of damaged library materials.   If you would like to be considered for a place on the Salvage Team, please contact Michaelle Dorsey and express your interest.

Examples of Salvage Team Tasks

• Ability to work for long periods of time in damp, potentially dirty, and sooty, conditions
• Remove wet and damaged items from the area, clear aisle to allow free movement
• Inventory and pack wet materials into boxes
• Label and tape closed packed boxes
• Load packed boxes onto book trucks and deliver to on-site freezer or loading dock
• Load boxes into freezer or freezer truck
• Empty dehumidifier reservoirs
• Interleave the pages of a wet book with dry paper

November 6, 2012, 11:00 to noon
Ellis 4F51A

Agenda

1) Reports from MU representatives on MERLIN Digital Projects Committee committees

a) Web Development – Anselm Huelsbergen and/or Kate Anderson

b) Metadata – Felicity Dykas

c) Policy – Ann Riley

2) Islandora tour

Review of functions

Report on development

Our new digital library, using Islandora, is still in development.  Here is the sandbox:  http://irsandbox.lso.umsystem.edu/fedora/repository.

3) Updates from all