1. 2CUL work on POOF! (Pre-
Order Online Form)
Matthew Pavlick
Head, Monographic Acquisitions, Columbia
University Library
Boaz Nadav-Manes
Director, Acquisitions and Automated
Technical Services, Cornell University Library
Charleston Conference in South Carolina.
November 2011
2. From OOF to POOF!
• In 2007 Columbia
launched the Online Order
Form (OOF)
• In 5 years we’ve received
and processed over 7,400
submitted requests for all
formats and levels of
priority
• Created a prelim record
and p.o. with location and
fund code
• Full record from
OCLC was overlaid
• Review form for de-
duping
3. CUL X 2=2CUL The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a grant to the two
libraries to support the development of this innovative partnership.
The specific goals during the two-year proposal period include:
•Improve the quality of collections and services and expertise
available to key constituencies through joint innovative activities
and the redirection of resources.
•Lay the foundation for a permanent selective integration between
the Columbia University Libraries and the Cornell University Library.
•Achieve significant integration of operations, services, collections,
and resources within three years, and establish a fiscal and
governance framework for managing integration, initially between
Columbia and Cornell.
•Achieve significant cost savings through shared services, joint
collections, and the elimination of redundancy, to respond to
budget reductions and the need to invest in emerging priorities.
•Collaborate in the pursuit of generating new resources.
•Co-invest in critical under-supported areas and innovative new
services for the universities.
•Build understanding and support for the 2CUL collaboration among
stakeholders at both universities, including library staff, university
administration, faculty and students, and other university divisions.
•Share experiences and findings from this initiative with the broader
higher education and library communities. Provide a blueprint or
example for other such collaborations.
TECHNICAL SERVICES
•POOF!
•COORDINATED
APPROVAL PLANS FOR
GLOBAL STUDIES
• SLAVIC
• CHINESE
• SHARED
CATALOGING
• KOREAN and others
• RDA TRAINING
• ELECTRONIC
RESOURCES
• EBOOKS
• SUMMON
5. Some numbers:
• Total print monographic Firm orders placed at
Cornell:
2008/09 2009/10 2010/11
31,751 29,274 27,657
• Total print monographic Firm orders placed at
Columbia:
2008/09 2009/10 2010/11
22,432 21,325 21,125
6. Product description
• POOF! is an online tool built with Drupal,
• Uses queries that acquire bibliographic metadata from WorldCat
• Presents the data in a user friendly fashion.
• Subject specialists in both Columbia and Cornell can review the
bibliographical information and discover if an item is already held by the
other 2CUL partner,
• The specialist will be also able to reject or defer an item for additional
review.
• A preset matrix determines where the purchase will be made from (based
on variables within the metadata associated with the material to be
purchased.)
• Various scripts would enact the decisions in the appropriate system that
will create the acquisitions record and purchase order in Voyager.
• The tool provides avenues for subject specialists to interact across
institutions with each other (and with contributing vendors) regarding the
value of the items reviewed, ranking them in terms of their usefulness,
and adding comments.
8. Records loaded into WCS stream
Records are matched in a matrix with vendors
Is there a
matching vendor?
Pending PO’s are created
Is it a non-book
format?
MS Access reports identify notes which are
added to line items
Is there an
existing record
in Voyager?
Scores, Documents, Visual
material are kicked out and
assigned vendor by
specialists
Order specialists assign
vendor and add fund, price
and location taken from
WCS records
Is it an
exact
duplicate?
POOF Titled are
selected
Records are
rejected and
emails are sent
to selectors
PO’s approved and sent to
vendors via EDIs or mailed
to vendors
YES
YES
YES
YES
NO
NO
NO
NO
POOF more detailed
Workflow:
9. Who are the users of POOF!?
• Subject specialists
• Library patrons (faculty, students, staff)
• Acquisitions processing staff
• Materials vendors
10. A “sprint plan” for development
Num Weeks Sprint description
0 2 Planning
1 4
Create model in Drupal,
basic data entry, basic
forms (no AJAX).
Client/tester: Adam
Chandler
2 4
Queue management,
facilities for switchboard.
Client/tester: Adam
Chandler, Boaz
3a 4
OCLC search, -Search-
Search-Search-Search-
Search-Search-Search-
Zotero harvest and improve interface interactivity
-------- Client/tester: Adam
Chandler, Boaz, other?
3b parallel
Vendor matrix extensions to
support Columbia by Pete
Hoyt with help from Boaz .
Client/tester: Boaz,
Columbia representative
4a 4
Authentication add-on
either via CUWebAuth or
Shibboleth, account
management. Client/tester:
Adam Chandler, Columbia
representative
4b parallel
Usability Tests with Boaz
and a group of selectors
5 4
Fix key issues from usability
testing, deploy. Client
tester: Adam Chandler,
Boaz, selectors?
na na Future Enhancements
11. Some of the challenges…
• ISBN Information
• Gamification, aka: game layer
• Institutional differences…
• Vendor Matrix and Fund Code Information
• Roles
• MARC Templates
• Zotero Information
• Authentication Options
• Book Covers
• Use of OCLC’s API
13. Matrix: At 8:30am a script designed by local programmer picks up a new POOF! file
and runs it against our WCS “brain”. It is aimed to recognize specific elements in the
marc records mostly taken from 260, the 008 and the Leader fields encoded in the file
we downloaded
Approval publishers
Monographs Year of publication
Chosen vendor
14. It also recognizes different formats and channels the records to specific paths
Printed music
Projected medium
15. CORNELL POOF! STATS: FROM
IMPLEMENATION TO TODAY, MAY 2011
through NOV 2011
• 1730 Bibliographic Records with POOF 035s.
• 1261 of these Bibs have been attached to 1283 line items that have been invoiced and paid for in
2011 (there are more line items than bibs because of multiple orders or copies on the same bib).
• 451 Line items are still On Order, pending receipt and invoicing.
• $85,916.21 has been spent for the 1261 Invoiced/Received line items in 2011, by
• 43 DIFFERENT Selectors, using
• 213 different FUNDS
Additional Information:
• 1221 of the 1730 POOF Bibs were created automatically by the system, while 509 were processed
as “kick-outs” by staff members. (~29.4%) *
• 54 Invoiced POOF titles are E-books. *
• 7 Required the vendor to be changed by a staff person (non-Ebooks).*
• 13 Were not ordered at all, for legitimate reasons (previously Cat. as Serials, already due to arrive
as Approval, etc.)*
*Relates to items requiring manual intervention by staff.
16. Exceptions of any kind (no country information, no vendor etc.) are moved to
a specific folder and are called “kick-outs”. These records are funneled to
specific folders according to vendors or formats
17. The “Kick-out” records are kept in their Marc format and need to be imported manually into our system and
verified against our existing records. Each of them still retains the WCS selection information provided like
funds, notes etc.
Price
Vendor
Location
18. POOF! AT COLUMBIA
• Selectors assign vendors
• Retained Review Queue
and Review Page
• Manual de-duping
process
• Selections are approved
and load overnight with
record and p.o.
• Selections with enough
metadata to determine
country of publication
are assigned a vendor
by matrix
19. Vendor code
mapped into PO
Country code
triggers Matrix
rule
Selector/vendor choose
country code
In List of
Vendors
?
Vendor
code?
OCLC
records?
PO created
Valid
Country
code?
Choose POOF
Sent to poof folder
Sent to POOF folder
Valid
Country
code?
Sent to
POOF folder
Country code
triggers Matrix rule
PO created
POOF MATRIX
Columbia case 11/21
PO created
YES
NO
NO
YES
YES NO YES
NO
NO
YES
eBook
format
selected in
POOF?
Send email to cule-
book@libraries.cul.columbia.ed
uYES
NO
eBook
format?
YES
NO
Send email to cule-
book@libraries.cul.columbia.edu
20. Future Enhancements
Enhancement items already on our list:
•Capability to allow vendors to input title offers to specific selectors.
•Determining which Borrow Direct libraries own a title.
•Redirecting ILL unfulfilled order requests to selector’s Inbox for consideration and decision
making.
•Missing or lost items will be forwarded automatically to the selectors’ new items queue.
•Notifications of availability of alternate formats (electronic/print) of patron-driven order
requests.
•Refresh of deferred or pending requests against the WorldCat and Voyager data.
•Control to configure preferences for showing/hiding fields will be managed at the individual
institution.
•Shibboleth authentication.
•And more…
21. POOF! 2CUL teams
Columbia
Matthew Pavlick (lead)
Mark Wilson
Evelyn Ocken
Cornell
Boaz Nadav-Manes (lead)
Adam Chandler
Adam Smith
Chris Manly
Steve Rokitka
Enrico Silterra
Pete Hoyt
For more details contact: Matthew Pavlick mkp2106@columbia.edu
Boaz Nadav-Manes btn3@cornell.edu
Editor's Notes
Based on the source code of the Internet Resource Cataloging Request form, MAS and CUL’s systems librarians developed the OOF to replace paper submissions and automate the creation of a record and p.o. in Voyager
Much of the cost incurred to acquire new materials for libraries happens as a result of the number of hand-offs of data between the person first deciding what to buy and the system used to execute the purchase order request. The diagram below illustrates the complexities and number of steps involved in the title-level acquisitions activity.
Subject specialists would use POOF! as a starting point to initiate a purchase request. Tools currently employed include scrawls on paper, publisher blurbs, screen shots, and e-mail messages. The functionality described in the sample schematics for POOF! would save this user significant time by allowing her to copy/paste an OCLC record number or ISBN. POOF! will query WorldCat and harvest appropriate metadata to fill in the required bibliographic fields associated with the title to be ordered. Other features will allow for a template of default values for fund codes, holding library locations, price, and currency. Once the subject specialist completes the form, she may simply submit the order request to her respective ordering processing center for final action. In the case of 2CUL, shared subject specialists will be able to submit purchase requests for both Cornell and Columbia from the same system. A consequence of submitting the purchase request is the log of transactions. Subject specialists would have a concise history of their purchase requests.
Library patrons (faculty, students, staff) would use POOF! to initiate an order request. Their request would be reviewed by a library staff user who would forward the bibliographic and requestor metadata along to the subject specialist user.
Acquisitions processing staff may use the POOF! to enter order requests for those subject specialists who choose to use other means to transmit their requests to their respective processing center. But the major benefit for this user is that all of the steps illustrated in the diagram above would be performed by machine when POOF! has been used as the order metadata ingest tool. POOF! , the one-by-one transactions would be done automatically.
Specialist materials vendor staff may use POOF! as a tool to create MARC records they wish to forward to specific subject specialists for purchase decisions. The costs for entering the ordering metadata will have been shifted from the Library to the vendor, thus achieving another source of savings for the Library. The vendor benefits by not having to invest in an infrastructure to create and transmit MARC records. The Library benefits by receiving MARC records—records in a format that can be manipulated through exiting acquisitions processing systems such as Voyager.
The majority of our “kick-outs” are records that were deduped by Voyager when we tried to bulk-save them into our system in order to create new purchase orders.
We need to make sure that these records are essential duplicates that are truly needed for our collections. If they are mere duplicates they need to be rejected. Unless indicated by our selectors that these are “intentional duplicates” we treat them as unwanted orders.
Columbia doesn’t use World Cat Select. Selectors assign vendors. Matrix attached to POOF assigns vendors when enough bib info with country code is available
Add Shibboleth authentication.
Write requirements for emailing patrons at each point of the request processing.
Treat Atlas ILL emails for unfulfilled requests like another vendor filter.
Add facility to get bibliographic data from vendor's web sites. Selector or other user will copy information from vendor sites and paste items into the appropriate queue in POOF.
Amazon.com routing in vendor matrix?
Add book covers to interface? Get from Google?
Consider transitioning to Zotero based on the following considerations:
selector adoption
usability updates to Zotero or our ability to customize the source.
Create a POOF interface for handheld devices - maybe potential for future developments? It will be really nice to have the option for a selector to pick a catalog or even a book at a store scan the barcode add fund and location information and stream it through poof to Acquisitions. (Consider for a possible Phase 3?)
Make the "stripped down" form on the CUL Web site interactive, more like the "deluxe" form.
Create functionality to automatically email patrons who have made suggestions that were ultimately rejected.
Consider adjustments that may be necessary to accommodate vendors inputing requests in POOF, such as for foreign language materials, Korean, Hebrew, etc.
Create a "smart router" to have a seamless interaction with POOF (Ada handles POOF records and not emails) from the online order request form to the "Switchboard operator" and from her to selectors.
Build in time in phase two to address bug reports, enhancement requests, etc. of phase 1 work, as more people will be using it.
Consider internal promotion, outreach, in meetings at each organization, possibly screencasts, etc.
External promotions, reports, articles, conference presentations.
Consider creating an open source project (use Drupal.org's facilities for documentation, issue tracking, etc?):
refactoring, packaging code
project site, with documentation, bug tracking features, etc.
plan building a community around project, promoting through articles, conferences
seek contributed input filters
what will our support/maintenance commitment be?
