Work with MLA leadership to include information on the important and exciting opportunities in Technical Services activities in libraries when distributing their promotional material, such as, the new recruitment video.  A letter is currently being reviewed to send to MLA leadership emphasizing the need to explicitly include technical services activities in their promotional material.

As of January 1st, 2007, the Medical Library Association Technical Services Section had one hundred sixty five members. Members were encouraged to promote MLA at state and regional meetings. The membership committee chair received several list of members. Those lists were generated from the MLA database. New technical services librarians were identified and encouraged to join the section. The MLA TSS promotional brochure has been used to promote Technical Services Section. The renewal reminders were sent via email.

The TSS Membership Chair served as section liaison to the MLA Membership Committee and will represent the MLA TSS Membership Committee at the New Member/First Attendee Breakfast.  

TSS Membership Committee Members for 2006-2007: Mary L. Holcomb, Junie Janzen, Lisa Palmer, and Hanna Kwasik, Chair 

With a single slate election this year, the following candidates were confirmed through electronic voting by section members:  Hannah Kwasik (hkwasi@usuhus.edu) for Section Chair-Elect, Program Chair; Suzanne Nagy (Suzanne.nagy@med.fsu.edu) for Section Council Rep-Elect; and Jan Cox (jcox2@iupui.edu) for Nominee for MLA Nominating Committee.   The remaining section officer is:  Secretary/Treasurer: Linda Flavin.  Thank you to the members of the Section Nominating Committee this year:  Jan Cox, Mary Holcomb, and Virginia Lingle, Chair.

The Continuing Education Committee, chaired by Xiaoli Li, and committee members Lynne Bowman, and Joan Gregory continued to promote CE opportunities for technical services librarians through a regular column in the section newsletter, as well as on the section's discussion list. The committee has identified a workshop entitled "Basic Creation of Series Authorities" for MLA 2008. The workshop is a standard training class co-developed by the Library of Congress Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) and ALA's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS). The committee thought the workshop would be timely and important in light of LC's recent decision not to create series authority records anymore.  Unfortunately, the committee could not identify instructors by April 2007because the course is still under development; thus we did not meet the requirements for sponsoring a CE in 2008. We should plan to have the workshop offered in 2009.

Seventeen standards were reviewed this year, totaling the same as last year. The following committee members actively read and reviewed the listed ANSI/NISO standards and responded by the deadlines that were required. 

Cecilia Botero, Dean Cody, Junie Janzen, Catherine Marlow, Michael Wood Felicia Yeh, Leopoldo Montoya, Nadine Ellero, Chair. 

It has been the committee’s great fortune to have several new members: Dean Cody, Junie Janzen and Catherine Marlow who showed great enthusiasm, were fast learners to the process of reviewing standards, and have written some very thoughtful reviews. 

The following is a complete list of all the standards that were reviewed during the May 2006-April 2007 annual reporting time period. 

ISO 5127 Information and Documentation - Vocabulary (June 2006) 

ISO 10444 Information and Documentation – International Standard Technical Report Number (ISRN) (June 2006) 

ISO/WD 27729 Information and Documentation – International Standard Party Identifier (ISPI) (June 2006) 

ISO/FDIS Codes for the Representation of Names of Countries and their Subdivisions, Part 1: Country Codes (June 2006) 

ISO TC 46/SC 9 N447 rev (26324) Information and Documentation – Digital Object Identifier (DOI) System (June 2006) 

ISO/DIS 25577 - MarcXchange (July 2006) 

ANSI/NISO Z39.43-1993 Standard Address Number (SAN) for the Publishing Industry (August 2006) 

ISO/DIS 3297 Information and Documentation – International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) (October 2006) 

ISO/PDTS 23081-2 Records Management Process - Metadata for Records, Pt.2: Conceptual and Implementation Issues (October 2006) 

ISO/TC 46/SC4 N601 Information and Documentation – The WARC File Format (October 2006) 

ISO/TC 46/SC4 N597 Information and Documentation – Data Model for use of RFID in Libraries (October 2006) 

ISO/TC 46/SC8 (11620) Information and Documentation – Library Performance Indicators (December 2006) 

ISO/TC 46/SC8 (9707) Information and Documentation – Statistics on the Production and Distribution of Books, Newspapers, Periodicals and Electronic Publications (December 2006) 

ISO/FDIS (9230) Information and Documentation – Determination of Price Indexes for Print and Electronic Media Purchased by Libraries (January 2007) 

ISO/CD (10957) Information and Documentation – International Standard Music Number (ISMN)  (March 2007) 

ISO/IEC CD1 (19773) Information Technology – Metadata Registries (MDR) Modules  (March 2007) 

ISO/CD (26122) Information and Documentation – Work Process Analysis for Records  (Currently in Review, Due April 14, 2007) 

Thanks and gratitude is extended to all the active members who have enabled MLA to continue in this important and often tedious work with short deadlines. I thank Leopoldo Montoya for his continuous support in sharing his ideas and concerns.

Goal 4:  Creating and Communicating our Knowledge

A.  In 2006/2007 three issues of the section’s newsletter, Technical Trends, were published and made available on the section’s website.  Section members were notified of the availability of the newsletter via the section’s listserv.   

The newsletter contains articles that keep section members informed of professional issues that affect them.  These include the regular columns NISO News and OCLC Interests.  Special features this year included a report on a MARC utilization project, reports on activities at NASIG and ALA CC:DA, and a report on transforming scholarly publishing programs at the annual meeting.  Another regular feature lists upcoming CE opportunities from a variety of sources for section members.  The newsletter informs the membership of important events and changes within the section itself, including election results, program planning at the MLA annual meeting, and official section reports.  It plays a key role in fulfilling the section’s goals for advocacy, life long learning and creating and communicating knowledge. 

Monthly statistics reflect that the TSS averages over 1000 hits per month, which includes hits to all individual pages, except the Technical Trends, which resides at a different address.  Technical Trends receive an average of 6000 hits per month; many of them are retrieved from search engines. 

The newsletter is in the process of being moved from servers at Rowland Medical Library, University of Mississippi Medical Center to MLANET.  This should be completed by August 2007. 

We would like to thank the section membership for their contributions and ongoing support of the newsletter.

B.  Chamya Kincy liaison to the ALA Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access attended her first meeting and had the following to report:

Chair, Cheri Folkner, announced several motions approved by CC:DA, including submission of the List of Specialist Cataloguing Manuals for RDA and review of ISBD Consolidated.  Several Task Forces, including the Task Force on FRBR Terminology and the Task Force on Specific Material Designations, were discharged. A new Task Force on CC:DA's Internal and External Communication was formed.  Jennifer Bowen, ALA Rep. to JSC led a discussion on a variety of topics including upcoming drafts of RDA Chapter 3 and 6-7, CC:DA concerns about the RDA development process, and CONSER compatibility with RDA guidelines.  Barbara Tillet, LC Rep., announced the newly formed Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, the fate of CIP, and the implementation of the CONSER standard record.

Goal 5:  Building a Network of Partners

At the 2007 MLA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia the Technical Services Section will participate in three programs.  The section is the sole sponsor of “Revolution or Brotherly Love: OCLC, NLM, LC,” an invited panel discussion with representatives from those organizations.  The discussion will focus on the changes that have occurred and what the future might hold for bibliographic databases.  From NLM, Diane Boehr, the Head of Cataloging Section, accepted the invitation to participate on the panel.  The other invitations have not yet been accepted.  Diane Boehr is also the MLA representative to the LC-sponsored Future of Bibliographic Control Working Group and will discuss that group’s activities as well.  The section is co-sponsoring two other programs: 1) “Information Revolution-Improving the Face of Vendor Relationships/Revolutionizing Our Bonds,” an invited panel session with a moderator and contributed posters with the Hospital Libraries Section as primary sponsor, and also co-sponsored by the Collection Development Section; 2) “Declaring Our Independence: Ringing in New Practices, New Partners, New Spaces,” a contributed paper session with the Leadership and Management Section as primary sponsor and the Hospital Libraries Section another co-sponsor. 

The TSS was invited to participate as a member of the Scholarly Publishing Task Force, which includes the Government Relations Committee, Collection Development Section, Leadership and Management Section, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Librarians, and the Technical Services Section. The program is entitled: Scholarly Publishing Issues: The Challenges and Opportunities Facing Libraries in an Open Access Environment.  The Symposium will take place on Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 1:30 p.m.- 5:30p.m. At a cost of $175 members; $210 non-members and will provide 4 MLA CE Contact Hours. 

Several section members serve as liaisons for MLA to other professional organizations:  Chamya Kincy to the ALA Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access; Maggie Wineburgh-Freed to NASIG; Leopoldo Montoya, to NISO; and Pat Rodgers to the ALA Publisher/Vendor Library Relations.

Other:  Section Organization