Page History

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Investigation: Members of the Working Group shared respective inventories of ordering staff activities and discussed details of staffing, staff expertise and job assignments in phone conversations, email correspondence, and one face-to-face meeting.  

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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 the materials they order with use of their procurement cards.  And since all ordering staff are cross-trained to do receiving, when time and workloads permit, 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 staff 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 dictates several criteria, including place and date of publication, language, type of material, and type of order (i.e. rush, Inter-Library Loan, reserve).  Orders which do not fit the criteria outlined in the matrix are "kicked out" to folders from which ordering staff can manually handle the purchase order and assign the appropriate vendor.

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, 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 activity.  Not all Cornell ordering staff handle the daily approval function, but there are currently 5-6 staff across AATS who are trained to do it.  Cornell ordering staff use a carefully-maintained spreadsheet to determine correct vendor or change automatically-assigned vendor selection when appropriate.

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

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Columbia and Cornell's ordering units depend on external departments such as collection development, Information Technology (IT), and accounting departments, which can sometimes inhibit their ordering processes.  Columbia cannot conduct business with a vendor until they have it has been set up by the Universityuniversity's Vendor Management vendor management team.  Cornell's policy is a bit more lax with regards relaxed in regard to doing business with new vendors.  Credit cards are strictly controlled at Columbia and only the Order Unit Librarian and Head, MAS possess credit cards for firm ordering.  Several of Cornell's ordering staff have their own credit cards, and track those purchases carefully on individually-maintained spreadsheets.  Both Columbia and Cornell rely on their respective collection development departments whenever an order is submitted on an overspent fund.  Columbia must ask for collection development's permission to proceed on orders over $500.  Cornell staff must ask a member of the accounting department to handle individual credit card purchases which exceed $500.

Summarize available baseline productivity numbers in the receiving departments at Columbia and Cornell.

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