Electronic Resources

Register for Remote Access

Library Catalog

PubMed

Photocopy/Interlibrary
Loan

Regional Medical Library
(NN/LM SCR)

Consumer Health

Historical Collections

HAM-TMC Library and Fondren Library

Jobs at the Library

Does the HAM-TMC Library have your email address?

 

What the Collections Department Does Who Does What Who to Contact Your Old Books - This guide covers some frequently asked questions about rare books and book values Recommend: A book purchase A journal subscription Other item (video, CD-ROM, etc.) What the Collections Department Does Selecting The Collections Department makes decisions about what materials (books and journals, online resources, AV materials, etc.) should be added to the collection. We look at a number of different factors in making a decision, including: Who is requesting the material? Does it fall within the scope of our collections? How much does it cost? Is the cost one time or ongoing? What is the quality / usefulness of the material? Acquisitions There are several different ways the Collections Department goes about obtaining materials: Approval plans (we set up a profile with a vendor who supplies us books to review / add on a regular basis) Firm orders (purchasing an individual title) Subscriptions (an agreement that all issues of a periodical title will be sent to us for a certain time period) Standing Orders (we pay for books in a series as they are published and sent to us) Licensing agreements (for electronic materials) Gifts (we take books with the understanding that we will donate them, sell them, or otherwise dispose of them if we can't use them; we don't take periodicals) If materials haven't been received within a certain period of time, we follow up by sending a claim to the publisher or vendor. We might submit a claim by phone, by e-mail, by fax or by letter, depending on who the vendor is and how we can reach them. Receipt & Payment Periodical issues arrive every day in the general mail. They're checked into the Library catalog and given to stacks staff to put on the shelves. We pay two big renewal invoices for our subscriptions every year; these are received in late summer and paid mid / late fall. We receive supplemental invoices for periodicals throughout the year. Publishers and vendors ship books to us on a regular basis. Each shipment usually includes an invoice We check the shipment and the invoice to make sure the materials are ones we requested and that the billing is correct Once they've been verified, invoices for library materials are sent to Library Accounting for payment Cataloging / Processing "Cataloging" means creating a bibliographic record for a book or journal title in Library catalog, assigning a call number (for books), creating control and check-in records (for periodicals), etc. We acquire many more periodical issues than we do books but we catalog many more books than we do periodicals. Most periodical issues we receive are for titles that have already been cataloged; we rarely add more than a handful of new periodical titles in a given year, although many titles change their names in the course of year. Nearly every book we receive is a title we haven't had previously & almost all need to be cataloged; we usually add at least 2000 new books each year. "Processing" refers to the things that need to be done to a book to make it ready to go on the public shelves. This includes marking, labeling, applying barcodes, book pockets and security tags, etc. Collection Maintenance On a regular basis we gather separate periodical issues together to be sent to the bindery. How frequently we bind depends on the amount of material published in a given period of time. Sometimes we will wait on binding a title if there are issues missing of if one year isn't bulky enough. We send bindery materials to a company in Shreveport, La. The process of pulling and preparing issues to be sent to receiving, processing and reshelving the bound volumes takes about three weeks. If we can, we repair materials that have been damaged. If we can't repair them, we usually try to replace them. When the shelves get too crowded, we look to see whether there are materials we can withdraw from the collection. This is called "weeding." We've eliminated most multiple copies. It used to be that we tried to keep all editions of a title; currently, when we receive a new edition of a title we're likely to withdraw previous editions unless they have seen significant recent use. We're looking at developing an offsite storage facility. Who Does What Chuck Breedy Cataloging Assistant 713-799-7122 chuckb@library.tmc.edu copy cataloging for books pulls bindery prep/damaged items for patrons book sale Mireille Clark Bindery Assistant 713-799-7143 mireille@library.tmc.edu oversees bindery program orders for monographic materials Richard Jasper Assistant Director for Collections 713-799-7126 richardj@library.tmc.edu Purchase decisions Electronic materials Licensing agreements Vendor relationships Weeding/retention/space decisions Richard Guinn M.L.S. Catalog Librarian 713-799-7160 susanl@library.tmc.edu original cataloging electronic materials cataloging database integrity/authorities lost/missing/withdrawn items Laurel Sanders Serials Librarian 713-799-7114 laurels@library.tmc.edu serials cataloging serials title changes serials claiming serials payments/invoices vendor relationships Terrie Smalls-Hall Monographs Assistant 713-799-7167 terries@library.tmc.edu oversees approval plan receives monographic materials handles payments/invoices for approvals, firm orders and standing orders Who to Contact AV Materials Richard Jasper (selection) Susan Lawson (cataloging) Sonia De Guzman (check in) Barcodes Terrie Smalls-Hall Richard Jasper Bindery Materials Mireille Clark Book Sale Richard Jasper Chuck Breedy Cataloging (books) Susan Lawson Chuck Breedy Cataloging (serials) Laurel Sanders Damaged Materials Electronic Materials Richard Jasper (selection) Laurel Sanders (payment) Richard Guinn(cataloging) Gift Materials Lost / Missing books Richard Guinn Marking / Labeling Missing Issues (serials) Laurel Sanders OCLC / AMIGOS Richard Jasper Order Status / Claiming (books) Terrie Smalls-Hall Payments / Invoices Laurel Sanders (serials) Terrie Smalls-Hall (books) Purchase Requests Richard Jasper Replacement issues Laurel Sanders Rush Cataloging Richard Guinn Terrie Smalls-Hall Serials Check In SIRSI (Library Catalog) Richard Guinn Laurel Sanders Richard Jasper Statistics Richard Jasper Weeding Richard Jasper     Chuck Breedy 713-799-7122 chuckb@library.tmc.edu Mireille Clark 713-799-7143 mireille@library.tmc.edu Michael Jackson 713.799.7132 mljackson@library.tmc.edu Richard Jasper 713-799-7126 richardj@library.tmc.edu Paddy Naidu 713.799.7125 pnaidu@library.tmc.edu Laurel Sanders 713-799-7114 laurels@library.tmc.edu Terrie Smalls-Hall 713-799-7167 terries@library.tmc.edu Gagina Wilson 713-799-7144 gwilson@library.tmc.edu

---