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During the process of identifying a Brazilian university library with the potential to join the Partners Program, the Biblioteca Central (Main Library) of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) became one of two libraries under consideration. Once the Project Chair determined there would be sufficient funding to support two Brazilian partner libraries, UFRGS remained in the picture. Rejane Raffo Klaes, the library director, expressed great interest in joining from the start of my contact with her and sought approval from her administration to participate. Agreement: Ms. Klaes accepted the agreement's conditions but explained that the Pro-Reitoria do Ensino (Pro-Rector for Instruction), the office to which the UFRGS library system reports, would require us to include the university's official wording added to all contracts. Since the agreement would then be reviewed for approval at another office on campus, I should not expect to take the signed copies away with me that week. We met with a representative from the Pro-Reitoria so that I could explain the ARL Project's organization and activities. The representative noted that the agreement's wording that project membership would last indefinitely could not stand. We agreed this would be changed to five years in duration with the possibility of renewal. The agreement is still under review in Porto Alegre but when the signed copies are returned by mail to me, I will forward them on to Duane Webster for signature. |
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Journal Selection:
The UFRGS Main Library decided to begin its journal assignments with titles published on campus. I examined the
preliminary list of UFRGS journals provided by Ms. Klaes and eliminated some that were either already assigned
elsewhere or only appear in electronic format. That left a total of thirty-three titles as potential assignments. Of
these thirty-three, twelve do not have records in the OCLC Worldcat database which generally means they are not held in
US libraries. Only four are held in more than nine libraries per OCLC records. A range of one to four libraries own the
remaining seventeen titles. In general, UFRGS is contributing a group of Brazilian journals that are lesser known or
not well disseminated in the US when compared to journals published in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The journals cover
the disciplines of education, local history, veterinary medicine, architecture, art, science, pharmacology, accounting,
engineering, music, gerontology, philosophy, library science, educational technology, information science, physical
education, botany, geology, agriculture, law, dentistry, nursing, sociology. The UFRGS Main Library is agreeable to
adding titles published elsewhere in Brazil in order to expand its title assignment in the future.
Training/Inputting: Sonia Fiorin Falcetta, department head of the Processing Unit in the Main Library, will be responsible for coordinating LAPTOC inputting with two of her staff members. After receiving training, Ms. Falcetta and her associates began inputting TOCs from their assigned titles. I reviewed their work and remained available during the week as questions came up.
Prior to my arrival in Porto Alegre the Project Chair requested an estimate of how many TOCs the library would be likely to add by the end of the grant. I used the UFRGS online catalog to do a rough count of the holdings of their list of journals and came up with a possible 345 TOCs that they could do with their initial assignment. That may not be an accurate figure since the way some holdings were listed made it unclear if the title was actually comprised of single volumes (vols. 1-5), or if the numbering included single issues (vol. 1, nos. 1-3 through vol. 5, no. 1-3, for example). I suspect the latter is true for some of them so that it is possible they will reach their maximum of 500 TOCs.
Computer Equipment/OCLC ILL Subsystem/Brochures:
Since the UFRGS Main Library could not directly acquire the computer equipment specified in the grant, I made
provisional arrangements that my ARL liaison would be able to authorize a credit card purchase with a vendor in Porto
Alegre for the computer, printer, and scanner. Ms. Klaes subsequently notified me that such a purchase would be
regarded as an export purchase because of ARL's location in the United States. We agreed that she would arrange for the
university's support foundation to make the purchase and then be reimbursed by ARL. I stressed the importance of making
this purchase in a timely fashion in order to dispense grant funds by the end of September 30, 2002. She remained
confident that the equipment purchase would not be delayed due to university red tape. Since Ms. Klaes had to attend a
meeting off campus at the end of the week, she would not be able to begin this process until late June or early July.
The copy of Ariel version 3.1 designated for the UFRGS Main Library had not come by the time of my arrival in Porto
Alegre. There was a Brazilian customs strike in late May that may have delayed the order but I am also contacting
RLG/Ariel staff regarding the outcome of the order.
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Since the UFRGS Main Library did not use OCLC, I contacted the Resource Sharing Division of OCLC to have the library join the ARL Project GAC and receive its holding symbol (UFBCL) as a selective member. I explained to Ms. Klaes that there was still uncertainty on how the library would operate in document delivery with the OCLC ILL Subsystem since we were still waiting to determine what the consultant hired to deal with ILL/document delivery would recommend. During my visit in Porto Alegre, I became familiar with the Comut, the national bibliographic exchange system used in Brazil for document delivery of articles to research libraries. I gathered contact information about Comut in the event that it would be desirable to explore its compatibility with LAPTOC and the OCLC ILL Subsystem as a substitute delivery mechanism for Brazilian libraries in the Project. I turned over a small batch of the new Project brochures in Portuguese to Ms. Klaes as well as a master copy to be used in the future for duplicating more. Ms. Klaes agreed these will be useful for campus publicity. |