Greetings,

MCU (Monograph Cataloging Unit) will start outsourcing all PRECAT books to an offsite vendor.
We will ship books to the vendor on the last two work days of each month. The books will be
cataloged and shipped back to us by the end of the following month. As of July 1, 2007, we have
stopped distributing PRECAT items to individual libraries. We are keeping these books in
14E-210B until the shipment date. For the month of July, for example, the shipment date to the
vendor will be July 30 – 31, and all the books should be sent back to us by August 31.

In order to facilitate our internal workflow and meet the specifications of the offsite vendor,
we have made a few minor changes to the PRECAT collection as follows:

Call Number – Instead of using the Aleph system number as the call number, the pattern CATYYMM
will be used. For example, all books in July will share the same call number of CAT0707. This
will allow us to easily pull a monthly list of items that were sent to the vendor. If anyone is
interested in keeping track of monthly PRECAT items for your own library, it can be done with a
call number search limited by Location in Barton (See attachment “KeywordSearch-Lib”).

Pre-Cataloged Collection – Older, pre-July 2007 “PRECAT” items will continue to display the phrase
“Pre-Cataloged Collection” in Barton, but items sent to the vendor starting in July 2007 will
display the phrase “Offsite Cataloging.” (See attachments “BriefResultsDisplay1” and
“BriefResultsDisplay2” for examples.)

Rush Request – If a PRECAT book is requested by a patron before we ship it to the vendor, the
monograph original cataloger will complete the cataloging. But if the requested books cannot be
cataloged within 2-3 work days, we will leave the two following notes in the item record:

1. Internal Note, “Rush for (requestor’s name) YYMMDD.”
2. Circ. Note, “Return to Jane, 14E-210B”

Books that were distributed to individual libraries as PRECAT before July 1 2007 will continue to
be called back in their anniversary month. Therefore, by June 1 2008, we will have recalled all
outstanding PRECAT items.

We will give this new process a 3- to 6-month trial period. During this time you are welcome to
send me your comments on the process. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks,
Selina

________________________________________
| Selina Wang 
| Associate Head, Cataloging and Metadata Services
| Head, Monograph Cataloging
| MIT Libraries, 14E-210B
| 77 Massachusetts Ave.
| Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
| Voice: 617-253-0535
| Fax: 617-253-2464
| selinaw@mit.edu