This past week, the initial Excel spreadsheet with identification information on the survey items was finished and loaded onto the library network drive. Jan and I finalized the fields and responses for the survey instrument and I added them as columns. I used the list feature in Excel to create drop-down menus for each cell. This is advantageous for our survey instrument because it limits responses and eliminates typos. In all fields we included a “No/None”  response as a means to visually confirm that an item had been completely reviewed.

Here is a screen shot of our spreadsheet:

Libby Chenault at the RBC provided call number, author, title, year, and geographic location for each of the ~200 volumes. In addition a “Type“ field has been included that assigns the item to a particular category, such as “Atlas“, “Travelogue“, “History“, etc. This information will be used at a later date to determine priority within the collection.

The survey fields are broken up into five parts. The first field is titled “Needs Enclosure“. The available responses for this field are “No“, “Tuxedo“, and “Other“.  Tuxedo refers to a quickly constructed style of four-flap custom enclosure that can be made by student assistants in the lab. Tuxedo boxes are appropriate for smaller, lightweight items that need protection and stability. “Other” refers to any other style of enclosure (such as corrugated clamshell boxes or drop-spine boxes) that may be required. This type of enclosure is appropriate for larger and heavier books.

For the next two fields, we separated the description of the condition into”Textblock” and “Structure”. The textblock field has three responses: “None”, “Minor”, and “Extensive”. The possible responses for structure are”None”, “Inner Joint Splitting”, “Outer Joint Splitting”, “Boards Detached”,” and “Major Treatment”. I plan to include photographs of items that exhibit each of these conditions as I come across them.

The fourth field, “PST”, stands for Pressure Sensitive Tape. The possible responses are “Yes” and “No”, indicating if tape is found on the binding or pages.

The final field is “Treatment Level” and identifies the level of training required to perform the repairs. The possible responses are “None”, “Technician”, and “Conservator”.

The next step in the survey process is to run a pilot on a small number of items as a way of checking the design.