Different Departments, Same Goals: Improving User Experience through Collaboration

Abstract

The staff of Reference and Research Services at Edith Garland Dupré Library, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, determined that instructors and students of the School of Music & Performing Arts had difficulty locating scores for particular pieces of music due to no contents note in the catalog records.  Reference brought this to Cataloging’s attention and suggested editing the MARC record contents note in SirsiDynix Workflows themselves.   Cataloging considered the feasibility of this course of action as well as other alternatives, such as purchasing enhanced records from a vendor.  Ultimately, Cataloging discovered a workflow using MarcEdit and OCLC Connexion batch processing that automated the editing for some of the records.  This method had a fast turnaround time at no cost.  After this was done, Reference and Cataloging staff worked together to determine a workflow for manually enhancing the remaining records.  Partnerships between public services and technical services improve user experience and fulfill the mission of the library.