Serials and Acquisitions Services: CAST: NYP Procedures

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To all selectors:

As you may know, in the past year, we have been experimenting with how we might handle order requests for items that we know are not yet published (NYP) before the order is placed. We discussed this very briefly at the recent Collection Development Retreat. The purposes of this project are two fold:
1 To avoid placing order for NYP items in order to:

Reduce the amount of encumbrances that are rolled over from one fiscal year to another
Assure that we are expending the current collections budget to the fullest extent possible

2 To track requests for NYP items in Unicorn by:

Eliminating manual storage and tracking of paper-based order requests
Providing regular reports on your NYP requests to determine if item is available and time to order
Providing the capability for you, as selectors, to view your outstanding NYP requests through the WebCat via a web page, using defined URLs
Providing Acquisitions Services Department with the ability to manage the monthly review of NYP requests via a web page with defined URLs.

We have experimented with our process in the past fiscal year and reduced the carryover amount by over $41,000. We now have finalized the process and developed a web report for you to consult your NYP requests. This procedure does not account for items that we learn are NYP after the order has been placed. Once they are ordered, they are managed using our claiming report.

Generally, when an order request comes to us, we first will endeavor to learn if the item has been published by reviewing brochures, etc. and searching OCLC. The procedures that we are employing to determine if an item is NYP are to:

1 Review forthcoming publication notices and brochures accompanying the order request for pending publication announcements

2 Search OCLC to see if it reveals one or more of the following:

MARC CIP (cataloging in process bibliographic record lacking the physical description--pagination and size)
OCLC records that have not yet been updated to a full record (CIPs); and/or
OCLC records that have only two or less holding locations listed.

There are some exclusions to this process. They are: rush orders, foreign publishers, small presses and societies publications, music scores, maps and other formats, such as AV. Orders for items in these categories are placed immediately.

Once we have learned that an order request meets one or more of the above criteria and determined the item to be truly NYP, a bibliographic record is created or updated with local notes to provide search and report mechanisms. The record is shadowed (not available to our users). If the record already exists in the system, the record is simply modified with additional local note fields (fund, selection list elements, etc.), including 500s, 536s and 594s and is shadowed. There are separate 594 and 536 fields on a record for each order request. There may be separate 500 notes for each order as needed.

You can search this shadowed catalog and view your own reports on the web. There are two web sites, one for University Park and the other for college/campus libraries:

NYP order requests are provided at each of the web sites. Instructions for searching your NYP requests are provided at each site. We urge selectors to review their lists twice a year -- in early August and in March. Please note that you will see two availability messages. One message is "In Process - Ask at service desk," which occurs when there are no item records. The other, "There are no copies currently available for checkout," occurred with migrated records because an item record was created for those titles. Obviously, the migrated records will eventually disappear with time and fulfillment of the order.

As in the past, Acquisitions will assume that the item is wanted despite a delayed publication date. CAST team will contact you if there is a price differentiation of $50 or more or a greatly extended publication date, the request was designated rush, or when it learns that a schedule publications has been cancelled. The one exception to this process for UFO team is that they will contact you only if the price differentiation is $100. Every items will be checked periodically throughout the year. Once it is more than 365 days old, we may contact you to determine whether or not you want us to continue to seek the item.

We look forward to your comments on this process. Please send your questions about the process to CAST or Bob Alan. If you have questions about your individual requests, please contact the teams. Thanks.