November 18, 2020

A New Normal: Korean Collection Cataloging during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Heija Ryoo (Korean Cataloger, Tateuchi East Asia Library)

Back in March, when our campus and its libraries first closed their doors, we had no idea the pandemic would keep us working remotely for so long. How can we cataloging staff do our work with little or no access to physical books? The answer has been to break with the normal and implement a new normal.

The Tateuchi East Asia Library (TEAL) receives an annual grant from the Korea Foundation to purchase materials to support UW’s Korea Studies program. From spring to the end of September, Korean materials staff are usually busy with the ordering, processing, and cataloging of titles purchased through the fund. The report we submit to the Foundation, usually in September, must specify the cataloging status of all materials purchased that fiscal year; hence we make every effort to complete cataloging by then. This year, that would obviously not be easy.

As the Korean Cataloger (on half-time employment), my responsibility is to catalog Korea Foundation grant books first, and then to work on other new acquisition titles. I drew up a plan for our Korean collection team, which also included half-time Korean Acquisitions and Cataloging Specialist Chuyong Bae and full-time Serials/Biding/Cataloging Specialist Kyungsuk Yi. (Korean Studies Librarian Hyokyoung Yi was on research leave for the 2019-2020 academic year). The three of us met on Zoom to discuss options and work out new procedures.

For the first few weeks after the library’s closure, we adapted by taking books home to process. Yet with campus mail no longer delivering new books to the library, these could not be replenished. We continued to confer and collaborate, refining our workflow several times over the following months.

A “new normal” for cataloging began to take shape.

We worked out new procedures in four areas:

1. Create abbreviated-level cataloging records from orders and invoices

OCLC, which produces the international online catalog WorldCat, specifies encoding standards for various levels of cataloging, from abbreviated-level to full-level. We usually directly create full-level records. Working remotely without access to physical books, we devised procedures for provisionally creating abbreviated-level records from orders and invoices, supplemented by information from the Korean National Library, the Korean Education and Research Information Service (KERIS), and Korean vendors. We can enhance these to form full-level records as the physical books become available.

2. Distribute books from campus mail storage to TEAL and staff members’ homes

From late March to June, TEAL requested vendors to halt all book shipments. Books already dispatched, after arrival at UW, were stored centrally by campus mail. However, on one of our biweekly “work pick-up days,” Kyungsuk was delighted to discover some new boxes of Korea Foundation books stacked up in TEAL’s mail room. Shipped prior to the pandemic, they had been held at campus mail, then deposited at TEAL when storage space ran out. We quickly ferried these to staff members’ homes for processing. Thereafter, we arranged for campus mail to transfer additional Korea Foundation boxes to TEAL; we began to receive those in late September.

3. Reverse the order of technical processing

We usually handle the receiving process first—Chuyong’s domain—then catalog later. For the Korea Foundation books cataloging was an urgent priority, so we decided to reverse this order. Kyungsuk collected book boxes on work pick-up days, and, assisted by her husband, would deliver some to my home for cataloging. Once we are able to resume onsite work, we will complete acquisitions receipt processing and marking for these materials.

4. Catalog by box rather than level or type

When working onsite, we often assign specific tasks to different people. As the Korean Cataloger, I would normally do only original and complex copy cataloging. Working separately and remotely at home, we adopted a new approach: each person completed the full range of cataloging required for each book in the boxes they received, irrespective of level or type.

 

It has now been eight months since the pandemic forced us to work from home, and we continue to work with the “new normal.” We have now completed full-level cataloging for books received before September, and in November will finish all Korea Foundation books for the 2019-2020 fiscal year, the last of which arrived in October. As we gradually return to our offices, we hope to revert to conventional cataloging procedures.

Teamwork and creativity have helped carry us through many difficult challenges this year, including the cataloging of the Korea Foundation grant books. In many cases, it has been necessary to break beyond traditional work flows; such solutions have become our “new normal.”