The papers are ready to be shipped for digitization. OCA will take four carts at a time. When the work is returned, Doc Services will check it for quality control. The group discussed whether to keep duplicate paper copies of MIT material once it has been digitized. Until the question is decided, duplicate copies will be sent to the LSA.
Dewey selected the Sloan Working Papers as a Dome project because it is their most important series, is OCA friendly, and it contains no color and no photographs. But the difficulties Bob encountered have implications for our more general understanding of workflows. Bob described in detail the difficulties involved in establishing an accurate list of all the Sloan Working Papers. The process is complicated by the sheer number of papers (roughly 5000), the fact that numbers were skipped, that papers were issued in multiple versions (sometimes with the same number) and in multiple series. In many cases we don't have all the versions. Sloan Working Papers include series issued by ten different centers that assigned their own series numbers as well as Sloan Working Paper numbers. Bob found numerous errors and inconsistencies in the Barton records. Because these records are providing the metadata for the collection, cataloging has been involved in correcting records. In some cases Bob has had to look at the actual pieces in order to verify which version(s) we have. Dewey has spent many hours on the project and cataloging has also contributed significant time. This suggests that we may need to reconsider what constitutes an ostensibly simple straight forward-project. Or, we might reconcile ourselves to a more quick and dirty process.
Update on July 22, 2008 at DSG meeting
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Attached a new version of the shelf list for Dewey, after some cleanup work from Bob.
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