CAROL WAGGONER-ANGLETONFEBRUARY 16 , 2010

Talking Technical: with Kyle McCarrell, Head of Technical Services, Reese Library

Augusta State University

Stats on Kyle McCarrell

Kyle has been the Technical Services Librarian at Reese Library for 7 months. This is his first professional library position

Stats on Kyle McCarrell

BA in music for Cedarville CollegeMA in music from the Cincinnati

Conservatory of of MusicFound that he didn’t find professional

satisfaction as a school band directorKyle had an epiphany. He was meant to be a

librarian.Back to school

Stats on Kyle McCarrell

While a studentKyle had an internship in cataloging with the

USC music libraryHe also worked for the music library as a

student assistantHe was also a graduate assistant for a class

in Library Instruction Course Design• With MLIS in hand, Kyle was set to be a

music subject librarian

Stats on Kyle McCarrell

Technical services offered something music librarianship did not. A JOB!

Kyle brings a passion for detail to his job and an appreciation that cataloging can have right, wrong and grey areas for answers. He enjoys the responsibility that comes from being the backbone of all services the library offers

His greatest challenges so far have been getting a handle on the acquisitions process and restoring lapsed vendor relationships

Future goals the department include establishing a standard of more complete catalog records and streamlining workflows

Kyle’s Kingdom

Kyle’s Colleagues

Top left – Amanda Strever, Acquisitions AssistantTop right – Kate Culver, Cataloging AssistantBottom left – Jann-Marie ChandlerNot pictured – Marcia Reese, Serials AssistantArielle White – Student assistant

Technical Services Workflow: Acquisitions

Books and serials are acquired from requests and suggestions by faculty members

Requests can be submitted by the Gobi acquisitions software or by email. E-mails must include title, author, date, publisher and ISBN or ISSN if available

Requests are checked to see that they are not already held and prices on items are checked in more than one database to secure best price

Acquisitions information is tracked by an Excel spreadsheet

Technical Services Workflow: Cataloging Monographs and Serials

When a book or serial arrives it is checked against the invoice and placed on the “In” cart

Books are other items are cataloged by Kate. Serials are managed by Marcia

Most records are added by copy cataloging. Kate and Marsha add additional information from the item in hand or additional information to meet local needs

Records are created in OCLC Connexion and pushed to the Voyager catalog and OCLC World Cat if applicable

Technical Services Workflow: Cataloging Monographs and Serials

Technical Services Workflow: Cataloging Monographs and Serials

Technical Services Workflow: Final Touches

Jann – Marie is actually assigned to Government Documents but works in Technical Services when demand is high. She adds the spine labels and bar codes

Arielle – adds the ownership stamps and strips (activates) the bar code

Kyle double checks the item record and hands the item back to Amanda who checks each item in and notifies the requester that the item is available

Advice from Kyle

Be prepared to have the job market modify your career goals. Stay flexible

Looking to the future – Kyle feels that RDA may take a long time to be adopted as a cataloging standard The advantages of RDA have not been clearly articulated to the community

Records will be improved by more additional features, such as access to content pages, and stricter adherence to controlled vocabularies