Thanks to  Niki Tippets and Dr. Nancy Thomas we were able to gain experience cataloging in a real world setting--The Office of Science and Resource Management.

A Little Bit About the Process by Kristi Austin

Introduction

Six students from Emporia State University, 1 VIP (Mark Ewing, prior participant in two Rocky Mountain National Park practica), and two instructors (Nancy Thomas and Marie Mack) spent five days at the Grand Teton National Park’s Office of Science and Natural Resources Management building (OSRM), near the Moose Entrance to the Park.  We had two main goals:

1) to work towards setting up a cataloging system that the staff at the Office of Science and Resources Management Division (OSRM) could use to identify and locate the books, reports, and other documents held in their building; and

2) to add the bibliographic data for these items to a collective database that  may someday include the holdings of all the offices of the National Park Service.

Therefore, whatever system we created needed to be tailored to the individual needs of the OSRM, but should also conform to the needs of the National Park Service as a whole.  Cataloguing for the needs of the Park Service had already been started by the NPS’s Technical Information Center in Denver; members of the TIC had been out to Grand Teton National Park a couple of times.

Though we had between us a considerable amount of library experience, none of us were professional cataloguers, and we understood from the very beginning that we would be learning as we worked, trying out various ways of doing things to find the best methods, and making decisions “on the fly.”  This made for a very unique opportunity, and we were all quite open to the idea of breaking new ground, “trailblazing” a new project that will be ongoing for some time.  Flexibility and the ability to change direction as needed were important attitudes for us to maintain, as circumstances metamorphosed while we were working on the project; also we needed to be able to work in pretty “cozy” (i.e., cramped) quarters.  The OSRM is a wonderful old log building that’s been subdivided into eight or ten small, very full offices, nearly all of which are currently occupied; we had the large office of the Division Chief (currently a vacant position) for our use part of the time, but the materials to be cataloged are spread through all the offices, and we had to diplomatically “invade” people’s space at times, being careful to note where something was located before moving it.  The biologists and others working in the building were very busy and we tried to disturb them as little as possible.

5/20 Monday

Monday morning we met in the parking lot of the Park Visitor’s Center and carpooled to the OSRM.  [Our trip from the Teton Science School, where we were staying, to the Moose entrance to the park was a twice-daily delight, as we traversed Antelope Flat and drove around Blacktail Butte, an area absolutely teeming with wildlife.  Being a little late at the meeting place in the morning became a bit of a joke, as we had to stop for “Bison crossings” or antelope sightings, or whatever.]

At the Office of Science and Resources Management, we met Niki Tippets, the Administrative Support Assistant for the office, who gave us a tour and orientation.  She told us more about what they do there, who does what, and what they were hoping we’d accomplish during this week and the Fall session.  Apparently there has been a lot of frustration at the OSRM because nobody knows what monographs, reports, maps, or journal issues are available within the building and in which office they are located.  There is little storage in the building, and because of its historic status, it can’t be modified, so they are dealing with an overcrowded situation in which personnel come and go; there are several seasonal employees as well as those who are headquartered there but work in the field when they can.  In other words, they really need a working catalog of what is in the building and where each item is located.  Niki explained the difference between an EA (environmental assessment) and an EIS (environmental impact statement); compiling these documents takes up a lot of their time, and requires that they have ready access to other materials for research (hence the importance of our cataloging project).  She also mentioned NR-BIB, the Park Service’s project to create a unified bibliography; it is this database into which our catalogue records will eventually be added.

 We thought it best to get started with the materials in the Division Chief’s office, since there weren’t very many materials there and nobody to disturb most of the time.  We would use colored dots on the spine of the items (or front cover) to indicate which office the materials came from.  We would not remove items from offices if we could avoid it.  Since there is only one printer available for the entire building, we would have to be careful while printing labels so as not to mess up anybody else’s print job.  We wanted to keep the amount of paper used to a minimum, so we used strips of paper to write our catalogue records on, rather than filling in a form.  There was no authority file to use except within the ProCite program, and we only had access for a single user, which was bound to create a bottleneck in the process.  We’d spent a little time thinking about workflow before arriving at GTNP, so we were aware of how we would probably have to work:  in an assembly-line method, trading off occasionally so nobody got too burned out with any particular task.

 The cataloguing work done by the Denver TIC group just a few months earlier did not seem to be available to us; it would have been handy to compare the items they had labeled (in Niki’s office) with the catalogue records they’d created in ProCite for them.

 We made some decisions regarding the use of keywords (ProCite does search keywords), authors (many are government agencies, and sometimes several agencies are listed as the authors), authority file, publisher (use the most specific one), pagination, etc.  We were not using Library of Congress, Dewey Decimal, or SuDocs call numbers, but a unique system that I believe was created by the TIC group in Denver.  The labels (call numbers) were to be laid out like this:
 
 

Subj. Subj. Author Date

ZOO Bear FWS  1999

We had lists to work from that gave us some of the subjects  and some agency author abbreviations (for example, FWS stands for Fish & Wildlife Service), but we found as we went that our one-page “cheat sheet” did not cover all possibilities, so we had to create additions, working consensually and making sure that all changes were communicated to whomever might be out of the room at the moment.  We wanted to make sure that:

1) we worked things out in such a way that everyone in the group had a say, and

2) that we all ended up doing things the same way.

We determined that there was no way we would finish the project in the few days we had, but that we could get a good start, work out parameters, etc.  Probably we would finish this room (the Division Chief’s) and go on to Niki’s room, where the Denver TIC group had begun.

 We got the project going pretty well, and quit at around 4:00 p.m.

5/21 Tuesday

Around noon it began to snow.  It had been predicted, but I sure hadn’t believed it!  We continued to work in the Division Chief’s office for the most part.  We sat around the big table, and as we each worked on different items, we would ask each other for advice, suggestions, confirmation, sympathy, etc.

 Our plan changed a bit:  Because Carol the Wildlife Biologist was going to be gone Wednesday and Thursday, we’d work on her office, and try to get it completed and put in call number order without worrying about being in someone’s way.

5/22 Wednesday

 More snow!  A great day to get in a lot of work, we all agreed.  Scheduled for the day was a lecture at the Visitor’s Center on the history of the park at 10:30 (given for new employees, but we were invited to sit in), and lunch at the Museum of Wildlife Art, near Jackson.

 We set up shop in Carol’s office and got to work on her materials.  Two of us worked at the table by the window, taking stacks of items off the shelves and writing down the information for each item on a slip of paper.  We were doing the cataloguing, setting up the information in fields for the data enterers: determining the author, title, subtitle, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, pages, series title or report ID, location code, ISBN or ISSN (if any—most often there was none), notes, call number, keywords (our stab at assigning subject headings without an authority file or thesaurus to work from), etc.

Then these items went to the data enterers/ cataloguers, who took what we wrote, reinterpreted it to fit the forms that were set up within the ProCite database, double-checked it against the item itself, searched the authority file and made sure that there was consistency between items in terms of keywords, subjects for the labels, etc.  They had to conform to strict formatting rules, and make sure the record was correct before saving it.
The items and slips were sent on to the labelers, who created labels in MS Word, printed them off (remember, there is but one printer for the entire building, so this could sometimes be tricky), and attached them to the items.

Mary, one of our most experienced cataloguers, was by now doing most of the data entry into the ProCite system, and she wrote up a one-page “ProCite Users Guide” that came in very handy.  Mark, Nancy, Marie, and Steve did a tremendous amount of expediting, clarifying, and checking with Niki and with people in Denver and other Park Service locations to get information to guide us; they did a lot of the work, too.

At 10:30 some of the group went off to the lecture, and when they came back it was about time to go to lunch.  The Museum of Wildlife Art has a lovely restaurant, and some of us stayed behind for a little while to look around.  Great gift shop!  Getting back to work, Nancy took on the job of searching ProCite to see if any of the materials in Carol’s office were already in the database, which would make it easier for the cataloguers and data enterers (we could just attach our location to the extant record rather than creating a new one).  By the time we knocked off work that night it was quite dark, the snow was very thick, and going was pretty slow.  We made it, though!

5/23 Thursday

 Thursday was another pretty intense day.  We concentrated on finishing the cataloguing of all the material in Carol’s office and labeling what we were able to get into the ProCite database; we kept the slips for those items that weren’t entered into the database.  Everything that we could was labeled, and then there was a big push to get everything onto the shelves in call number order by the end of the day.  Everyone worked together well in the small office.

We did it!  By closing time everything was in order, we were done, and we headed for Jackson for a night on the town.  (Someone else will have to provide you with those details; I’m not telling!)

5/24  Friday

 Back in the Division Chief’s office, we had a debriefing.  We talked about what else was required for this course, and the deadlines.  We will try to download ProCite and do more work.  I’d like to be able to create an authority file or thesaurus or list of subject headings for the next group of people (there’s another class in September of 2002, and probably more to follow).  We discussed what we wish we’d known beforehand, what went well, what we learned, and anything else we wanted to bring up.

What would be useful information for next time?

•  More about the politics of the situation (i.e., what we were getting into) might have made some things a little clearer from the start.
•  Future groups might consider working in staggered shifts (since only one can work in ProCite at a time); they might try to take materials away to another work location, since the OSRM is so cramped and full of busy people.
•  Some of us felt that having work forms to fill in (ProCite has many forms available for different types of materials) would add greatly to the efficiency of the operation.
•  Having access to a keyword/subject list would also have sped things up.

What went well?

•  We worked together really well.  Nobody in this group was pushy, aggressive, or unpleasant in any way.
• We had lots of varied experience between us, which came in handy in unexpected ways.
• We weren’t afraid to ask questions or discuss alternatives.
• The size of the group was just right, especially considering the space in which we had to work.
• We had a tremendous amount of encouragement, in the form of kind words, support, and cookies (Steve and Marie brought us cookies every day!).
• When we realized what the project entailed, we set a goal and then achieved it, which gave us a wonderful feeling of accomplishment.

• This was an excellent opportunity to develop or nurture our problem-solving skills, and could be considered “project  management” experience.
•  It gave us a chance to hone those “group project” skills of working together (this was a somewhat random group, many of whom were strangers when we began).
• We also learned a lot about cataloguing, of course, and about choosing options and setting standards.

For us, this project is not over and forgotten—we hope we have set things up so that those who take over will have an easy and interesting time of it.  Though there may be some clean up, standardization, etc., we did our best under the circumstances, and feel very honored to have been involved with the first Cataloging in the Tetons course.

If one has an interest in nature, wildlife, biology, botany, the Park Service, or the politics of land use in the West, the materials we worked on will be appealing in and of themselves.  The variety and breadth of the collection is fascinating, and one could learn a great deal just from working with the materials.

We hope that others will enjoy the opportunity as much as we did.

--Kristi N. Austin
July 17, 2002

The finished product--so far...
 

The Biologist's office	Mary and Steve in the Division Chief's office

Thoughts on the task by Pam Vaughn
 

    Legend has it that in the early 1830’s, Davey Jackson showed his assembled band of mountain men a pencil and paper.  If any trapper recognized either item he was not invited to accompany Davey on his next expedition.  The legend may not be true, but the fact is there is no firsthand written account of Davey Jackson’s exploits in the valley that bears his name.
    Jackson Hole is now part of Grand Teton National Park.  Grand Teton National Park still suffers from a lack of record keeping.  That’s where you come in.  Emporia State University has been invited to catalog books, records, maps, and artifacts at the park headquarters.
The first group from Emporia journeyed to Jackson, Wyoming in the early spring of 2002.  Another group will meet there in September.  Other groups may follow in the spring and fall of coming years.

THE JOB
    Many of you have been to Estes Park, Colorado to assist in archiving purchased and donated records and materials.  Emporia has assisted the park service in Estes Park for four years.  A routine has been established--they are used to us and we are used to them.  The Teton National Park project is just beginning and the program is being worked out as we go along. You will be glad you did the reading because it all comes together once you start organizing and making catalog entries
    Office space was limited at the Park headquarters where we worked this spring.  We did our cataloging in the offices of staff members who happened to be in the field on any particular day.  We cataloged material that the Park staff used in their daily duties.  For this reason, we were especially careful to replace books and documents on the same shelf from which we had taken them.  There was only one bathroom for Park staff members and Emporia volunteers.  The staff shared their microwave with us.  To give you an idea of how limited space was the microwave was located in the bathroom.
    The group worked well together.  We learned about cataloging and all took turns at each task.  Our learning experience was much more than physically cataloging items.  The learning came in helping a busy organization become standardized and in cross-referencing materials from office to office.  We developed a basic plan that we believe will still be valid if and when the Park expands its headquarters.
    Davey Jackson may not have appreciated what you’ll be doing, but the Park service will.  Good luck and have fun.
 
 

A Little Bit About the Process by Kristi Austin

Thoughts on the task by Pam Vaughn

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