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Columbia has 4 FTE in the Order and Receiving Unit (OAR) who place firm orders and receive firm ordered material.  One FTE in the OAR Unit is assigned 35% cataloging duties.  OAR staff possess language skills at a sufficient enough level to place orders, correspond with international vendors, and catalog some firm ordered material upon receipt.  The OAR Unit does not firm order Chinese-Japanese-Korean-Tibetan (CJKT) material as the processing of material in CJKT languages occurs in the technical services department at C.V. Starr East Asian Library.  At Cornell, all ordering staff also receive some material but not all staff who perform receiving also perform the ordering function. Four Cornell ordering staff who are devoted to languages in non-roman scripts,also receive all materials in those languages. Additionally, Cornell staff who order special materials with individual procurement cards, receive those materials they order.  And since all ordering staff are cross-trained to do receiving, when time and workloads permit, they Cornell ordering staff handle more traditional receiving.

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The OAR Unit at Columbia ingests order requests from selectors by email, the Pre-Order Online Form (POOF), GOBI, and drop-offs in the Selector Review Area.  Columbia processes "Priority 1" orders (patron requests, course reserves, regular rush) first before other orders.  A majority of the orders are submitted with vendors pre-assigned by selectors and in the case of selections made in GOBI, are ordered with Columbia's main domestic vendor YBP.  Order requests submitted without an assigned vendor are assigned vendors based on country of publication, or language.  Cornell receives orders from selectors through World Cat Select (WCS), POOF, email, and drop off/order tray.  Cornell processes orders within a 24 hour timeframe.  Vendors are assigned by WCSstaff are committed to processing orders within 48 hours of receiving them.  For orders placed in WCS or POOF, vendors are assigned by a complex matrix associated with each platform.  The matrix is dependent several criteria, including place and date of publication, language, type of material, or and type of order (i.e. rush, Inter-Library Loan, reserve). 

Both Columbia and Cornell handle similar material, process priority and non-priority orders, and receive them in similar ways.  However, there are significant differences in policies, practices and workflows between the two institutions and some of these are inherent in the systems utilized to ingest and place orders.  Columbia utilizes GOBI as its main discovery, selection and ordering tool for domestic and UK imprints that are not specialized material, e.g., fine art and architecture and music scores.  The POOF is primarily used by selectors to submit orders, then OAR staff enter the orders directly into Voyager after ingesting the record using WorldCat's Connexion.  OAR Unit staff are authorized to approve purchase orders in Voyager and are reviewed by the Order Unit Librarian or Head, MAS before they are forwarded to vendors.  Cornell does not use GOBI in the same manner as Columbia.  Cornell's primary discovery, selection and ordering tool is WCS.  The use of WCS at Cornell informs their practices and workflows.  Cornell, though increasingly, Cornell selectors are using POOF to submit orders to Cornell's LTS. The daily approval of new orders at Cornell is performed as an activity discreet from the creation of orders.  Not all Cornell ordering handle the daily approval function, but there are currently   Cornell's ordering staff do not approve POs in Voyager; supervisors of ordering staff approve POs on a daily basis.  Cornell's ordering staff create new orders using the POOF whereas Columbia enters them directly into Voyager.

Summarize dependencies and limitations in working with other functional units at Columbia and Cornell.

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