Tracking Jobs in the Lab

There are two basic types of jobs: media and archives. Media jobs originate from people who walk in the door with their own material, which they want us to reproduce for them in some way. Archives jobs are for reproducing material held in the library. This means that usually if someone walks in the door and wants an archives photo, they have to go to archives for it even though we will be doing the work. We do sell a few of the most popular archives images through our website and those orders can be done completely here. The various type of jobs are tracked differently but the basic work is usually similar.

All jobs are tracked in the job log on the front counter. They must be entered in the log when they are received and updated in the log when they are done.

The lab operates as cost recovery (also called recharge), meaning that what we charge for our work pays for our salaries, equipment, and supplies. Thus, all our work is for pay. We charge the patrons directly for media jobs using invoices. The archives handles all the billing for the archives work.

Media Jobs:

• Identified by an invoice number. The actual invoice is kept with the job. There should also be a sheet of paper detailing the type of work to be done.
• All the files for the job should be in one folder identified by the invoice number and patron's name, ie. 127854 Jones.
• When the job is done, put it on Kim's desk so it can be totaled up and the patron notified.
• Most patron jobs are eventually completely deleted from the computers. We rarely save any masters, but we do keep them around for a while in case the patron loses something or has questions.

Archives Jobs:

• There are two type of archives jobs: patron orders and collection development. Patron orders are patron-selected images and tend to be a mix of different collections and type of originals. Collection development (aka CD) is ordered by the archives itself to aid in preservation or increase accessibility. These jobs are for reproducing entire collections or albums.
• The white sheets on the tops of the job boxes are for lab tracking purposes. Please initial each step that you complete and note anything that is unusual. The blue sheets are completed by archives staff. The pink sheets with each image have the most detailed information and are filled out by either the patron or archives. If there is a discrepancy between the blue and pink sheets, remember that the pink ones came first, but it is a good idea to ask if something is not clear.
• Archives job folders are identified by the archives job number and patron's last name, 04-068 Harris, or collection name (for collection development) with the CD indicator, 04-135 CD Waugaman,
• Scan the blue sheets at 1000 pixels, 100 dpi, and save as JPEGs so they can be referred to later. Name them like this: 04-068 Harris list.jpg. If Harris has more than one blue sheet, it would be 04-068 Harris list page 1.jpg, etc.
• The masters for archives jobs are filed on the server. For patron orders, look on the server first to see if a master has already been made and if it has, download it into the job folder. If the job is collection development, we will do the whole thing regardless of any existing files so don't bother to look.
• Evaluate any existing masters to make sure they are of high enough quality. Not all the dates on the server are accurate, depending on how the files were loaded, so you must look at the file. Examine the histogram to see if any clipping has occurred. Some files created early on have pretty severe problems due to no one really knowing yet how to handle them. If a file needs to be rescanned, leave it in the folder and add the word RESCAN at the end of the filename before the .tif. 1972-0071-00465m RESCAN.tif. This way you can name the new scan correctly and it will not overwrite the old one in the job folder.
• Scan or rescan as necessary. All scans will be eventually loaded onto the server and will replace any old scans.
• Starting summer 2004, we began adding the format of the original at the end of the filename: ie 1958-1026-01256m_print so we would know what kind of original we scanned. (see the file naming guidelines )
• When the job is completed, write the date on the white sheet and put the box on Kim's desk so it can be updated in the database.

September 15, 2004