Saving Time, Energy, Keystrokes and Sanity Adventures in Order Automation Julie Kliever, Providence College Lynne Branche Brown, SkyRiver K.C. Hendges, Busca Inc. John Riley, Busca Inc. Charleston Conference November 4, 2011

Why? Dealing with increasing demands on staff. The need to increase efficiency. It’s part of our library’s mission to try new things Providence College has been: ….a Busca customer since ….a SkyRiver customer for a little over one year. We’ve had a history of automating some of our ordering and invoicing process. But it was time to take the next step forward.

Our current firm order workflow: For each monograph requested, the Acquisitions Assistant manually searches SkyRiver bibliographic utility for a record, then exports bib record and 9xx order record into Millennium ILS. Using EDI, order records are sent to Busca via FTP. For each shipment, invoices are imported from Busca via FTP. For each item, cataloger double-checks bib and manually creates item record. Sometimes a better, newer bib is found, and bib is manually replaced. Student completes physical processing (stamps and barcodes). Problems with this method : Both Acquisitions and Cataloging are spending time doing the same kind of checking. Bib, order and item records all require manual keying.

What could we do with Busca and SkyRiver to further automate our orders? Existing possibilities: We could download short MARC records to import into our Millennium ILS, and then attach our own order records. OR, we could submit orders directly to Busca from WebOffice, without importing them into our Millennium ILS. BUT, we’d still have to manually key order records, and find and pull the full bib record from SkyRiver once the item arrived. We wanted to come up with a “hybrid” ordering solution that would allow us to be more efficient. It would combine searching, ordering and receiving into one process.

Providence College asked Busca and Skyriver for help. Busca and SkyRiver replied “Sure – what changes need to be made to fill in the automation holes in your current workflow?” Specifically, we needed: BUSCA to customize their Web Office ordering cart to suit our automated order record creation requirements. (specifically: customized 9xx records for order creation) SKYRIVER to work with Busca in setting up automated invoice and bibliographic delivery - aka their “SkyMatch Service”.

Here’s the overview of how the process works for PC: We login into BUSCA Web Office We select items to order and place them in an order cart. NO MANUAL BIBLIOGRAPHIC SEARCHING IS NECESSARY. A MARC file is created from the cart. We download and import the MARC file into Millennium ILS. Short bib and attached order records are automatically created. NO MANUAL ORDER KEYING IS NECESSARY. We send the EDI orders via FTP to Busca. Busca sends a manifest of our purchased items to SkyRiver just before shipping them to Providence College. SkyRiver Skymatch finds a full bib record for each item and appends invoice payment info via 9xx fields. We import the file into Millennium ILS. Using original order record number, short bib records are overlaid with full bib records, order records are updated with invoice information, and item records are automatically created. REDUCES AMOUNT OF TIME SPENT ON ITEM PROCESSING.

But the devil is in the details! PROBLEM : Our order records use 4-digit fund codes. This information needs to be entered when the order record is created. Busca had to allow us to enter this information at time of order. SOLUTION: Busca worked with us to come up with a solution: They modified their WebOffice ordering cart to allow us to use a field we didn’t need (“PO#”) to supply information for fund code. The fund code is then recorded as the $u subfield in the 960 order field….

THE VENDOR DANCE Busca’s fancy footwork: Busca began a dialog with Providence College about their needs & how to best fulfill them. Providence required customization of the order process to satisfy their data requirements (e.g., the need for customized 960 fields) Busca gave Providence the ability to create & download brief MARC bib records to their unique specifications. SkyRiver’s fancy footwork: set up FTP support for the vendor. receives and parses the vendor data from the EDIFACT format to MARC. finds matching MARC records. combines vendor data, customers desired constant data, and MARC record. ….all of which sounds a lot simpler than it really is!

=LDR 00415nam z 4500 = b\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\|||\| =020 \\$a =049 \\$a =100 \\$aGrahame-Smith, Seth =245 \\$aPRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES: THE CLASSIC REGENCY ROMANCE-NOW WITH ULTRAVIOLENT ZOMBIE MAYHEM =260 \\$bQuirk Books =960 \\$ia$o1$s12.95$tPRCO$u3228$vBUSCA$zUSD =961 \\$dfor Undead Dept Chair Dr. Batsin D. Belfry Busca WebOffice, at right, generates MARC, below. For example…

SkyRiver Skymatch delivers full record. =001 sky =040 DLC|cDLC|dDLC =100 1\$aGrahame-Smith, Seth =245 10\$aPride and prejudice and zombies :$bthe classic regency romance—now with ultraviolent zombie mayhem /$cby Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith =935 \\$a.o =945 \\$aPS3607.R348$bP $lPRCC$nSkyRiver Record Service$si$t184$z090 =980 \\$a111025$b1295$c0$d000$e1050$f30861 =981 \\$aBUSCA

Of course, implementing all this did not go off seamlessly…what problems have we encounter along the way ? ON THE ORDERING SIDE: We had to work through changes with Busca to turn their bib record download feature into a bib-and-order creation feature. Since we are a part a shared catalog along with 11 academic and 12 hospital libraries in the HELIN consortium, we do not have direct control of our Acquisitions module. We had to work through load table issues and import via Data Exchange changes with the HELIN central office. We had to retrain both Acquisitions and Cataloging staff to new procedures. ON THE RECEIVING SIDE: More “ consortium problems”: Possibility of duplicate records- one (or more) other schools may already own the title. Solution: Duplicate ISBN report is run regularly. Dup records are merged. Some items do not have a matching bib record! Solution : Use SkyRiver’s “report unavailable record” feature. DOUBLE-TROUBLE: Our order record is attached to another school’s full bib, Item has no match in SkyRiver, causing bib to be overlayed with short record. Solution : Still working on this! Current solution has us separating out these “no-match” records when receiving file.

WE CAN NOW SAY WE ARE FULLY AUTOMATED! This is still a work in progress ….but the progress is good! Changing workflow is always difficult. We’re in constant contact with Busca and SkyRiver. It’s necessary to maintain an ongoing cycle of feedback. This also allows them vendors to improves the efficiency and quality of their services. After all, the ultimate goal is to make the system easier & more streamlined for everyone.

….Does anyone else have automation adventures to share? Contact info: Julie Kliever John Riley Lynne Branche Brown