Don’t Shovel Snow with a Soupspoon: Effective Technical Service Outsourcing Using OCLC PromptCat and Vendor Processing Services. Leah Black (Michigan State University)
Each year the Michigan State University Libraries purchases thousands of new monographs to help meet the research and curricular needs of the University’s students and faculty. While the university’s commitment to protect the materials budget from reductions during economic downturns is laudable, the Libraries’ Technical Services division is faced with the challenge of receiving, cataloging , and processing its new receipts with less staff than ever before. Something like trying to clear twelve inches of snow from your driveway using nothing but a soupspoon!
At MSU, monographs ordered from Yankee Book Peddler are received shelf-ready through OCLC’s PromptCat service, providing enhanced processing efficiency for fully half of the library’s monographic orders. This presentation will describe the Libraries’ shelf-ready workflow, compare the workflow to traditional copy cataloging routines, discuss advantages and disadvantages of the shelf-ready approach, and provide at least five reasons why PromptCat shelf-ready processing is a more effective snow shovel than a soupspoon.