The GIST Team at the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo College
has released a free and innovative open-source tool called the GIST Gift
& Deselection Manager (GDM). It is designed to manage and streamline
library work-flow for processing gifts and evaluating materials for
weeding.
GDM will dramatically improve upon a time-consuming activity by:
* Automating the gathering of data for evaluating donations
including holdings, comparison of editions you hold, full-text,
and other data,
* Streamlining the work-flow; recommending “keep or do not keep”
according to your collection building conspectus file, and if you
keep an item, GDM can open and search the work in OCLC Connexion
so you may attach holdings and download a record;
* Automating donor letters with lists of donated items – no more
keying in title information for acknowledgments and the data is
now be stored in GDM’s database;
* Evaluating data for weeding title by title or batch titles en
masse GDM automatically creates a spreadsheet for evaluating tens
of thousands of titles (we found that over 13% of our 31K items we
evaluated were available full text in the Hathi Trust); GDM also
works for evaluating journal titles across consortia.
How does GDM work?
GDM uses several APIs (application programming interface) to leverage
important data about items so you don’t have to
manually look them up in various web browser searches. GDM does all the
searches when you wand in an ISBN or search by
title, and gathers the data you need to the streamline your work-flow
and make effective decision making.
What GDM data and information are important for gift and deselection
evaluation? GDM version 1 includes;
* _Holdings informatio_n: your holdings (FRBRized), # of holding
libraries in your local, consortia, and/or state,
* _Item information_: your ILS item record to compare imprint,
Worldcat link to see more about the item, Hathi Trust and Google
Books full-text, Better World Books acceptance as library discard,
* _Recommendation information_: GDM automatically recommends "Keep"
or "Do Not Keep" based on a customizable subject conspectus – and
override or recommend review are options too.
* _Custom data_: import library enriched book lists to flag you with
notes if the item is an award-winner or on some core title lists,
Caldecott and Newbery awards are already loaded in the copy you
download.
*The Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) projects focus on optimizing
work-flow by leveraging systems to do more work while reducing the staff
time necessary to make informed decisions and process materials. *
GDM Version 1 has been released today, August 16, 2010.
For more information, documentation, and to download, please visit the
GIST Toolkit website: http://gist.idsproject.org
<http://gettingitsystemtoolkit.wordpress.com/gift-deselection-manager/>
GIST Team
Tim Bowersox, Cyril Oberlander, Kate Pitcher, Mark Sullivan
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____________________________________
Mark Sullivan
Systems Administrator for the College Libraries
1 College Circle
SUNY Geneseo
Geneseo, NY 14454
(585) 245-5698
