LCCN, July 11, 2013
ISSN 2324-6464 Interview with Gina Gladden, serials technician By Rick Fitzgerald In this article we will interview Gina Gladden, serials processing technician in ABA's U.S. General Division, U.S. Serials-Arts, Humanities and Sciences section. What was your first job at the Library? I was initially hired by the Library in 1992 as a contractor. I spent ten years working primarily on two major serials conversion projects. The first one, from the late 80's through the mid-90's was called the SERLOC (SERial LOCation) project, which brought comprehensively into electronic form all the bibliographic data from two manual files (including records for titles the Library did not keep), one of 3x5 index cards and the other called the "serial visible file". New serials receipts were also incorporated into SERLOC after its inception. When the Voyager integrated library system was implemented in 2000 (incorporating and merging the records from the SERLOC file with those of another bibliographic file, called MUMS), the second conversion project began, which consisted of migrating all of the holdings data from the manual files into the ILS. So eventually you were hired on a permanent basis. Tell us a bit about your career since then. I was hired full-time on July 1, 2002. In fact I recently celebrated ten years of service with LC! I worked in the former Serial Record Division - this was a centralized area where all processing of serial publications was done, including selection, cataloging, and check-in. The division also performed maintenance tasks related to the entire hundred-plus year history of serial publications at the Library. At that point, the Voyager system had already been implemented. My primary duty at that time was checking in serial issues that were brought into the Library via copyright deposit, purchase government transfer, exchange, and gift. One challenge in dealing with serials is that they always change. And, of course, so do organizations! When ABA reorganized into new divisions in 2008, serials processing became more distributed, and I joined my current team, which deals exclusively with copyright receipts. At that time, my fellow processing technicians and I began to learn more about, and also perform, some cataloger's duties. Most staff in ABA are familiar with the phrase "special duties as assigned" - when we are asked to take on responsibilities outside our routine work. What types of "special duties" have you taken on? Often during initial phase of a transition to a new environment such as the ILS, practices for dealing with certain material types are still in flux. Over time, practices settle and errors become more apparent. In the case of one project I worked on, there were many serials issues had already been bound, but the holdings records of the bound volumes reflected locations that were out-of-date. Our team troubleshot and resolved these system errors. I was also detailed to a conversion team that picked up where the contract employees left off, performing some of the trickiest serial holdings migration in the Library's collection. Sometimes this required investigative work in the stacks! After mastering your own skill, you have been asked to pass that knowledge on by training others. Tell us a little about that. I was chosen to perform one-on-one training for new people who come into the unit due to a job opening up or having been transferred into a new area. I have also done group training, primarily for the overseas operations offices, on how to do serials check-in.
