Expedite label printing with easy customization

As the only technical services librarian at Gateway Seminary libraries, Jessica Kruppa spends a lot of time in WorldShare^® Record Manager, which is included with her WorldShare Management Services (WMS) subscription as well as with an OCLC Cataloging and Metadata Subscription. She’s responsible for “everything in WorldShare Record Manager, from creating new bib records to printing the call number labels,” she explained. And “that means I have a workflow that tries to minimize the number of times I have to handle a single book and how many times I'm switching tabs or modules in WMS.”

When she took her current position, Jessica inherited the library’s tons of “a specific label type that … are just unique enough to be annoying… . I couldn’t print directly from WMS to my labels without my call numbers creeping off into the margins.” She explained that this seemed to be because the “default setting expects your labels to be a full one inch wide and [touch] the one next to it, but mine, of course, don't.”

Thanks to recent Record Manager enhancements, however, “now we can actually tweak the individual labels, and it will account for any of the weird settings that your specific labels might have. Adjusting this setting resolved a lot of my label 'creep.' My call numbers now print in a uniform way,” she said.

To keep from wasting expensive labels, Jessica created a label template in Microsoft Word. Then, she would “test different settings in WMS, and print test pages using the fake labels.” She also advised checking the “fit to print” option and test printing with it selected or unselected. “My favorite part of the main update … [is] if I have seven lines of data, but we only use three, then the suffix isn't hanging out by itself at the bottom of the label,” said Jessica.

As a result of these improvements, Jessica spends less time printing spine labels. “What the new features have done has relieved some of the pressure on me by automating repetitive, menial tasks and making it so I'm not duplicating effort” by constantly reconfiguring label settings. With this saved time, “I have been able to dedicate more attention to existing and outstanding projects,” she reported.

Jessica is happy that “the label printing feature has become a lot more robust… . I've already seen how the new process has improved accuracy, lets me spend significantly less time per label, has reduced pressure on me by freeing up some of my day, and even improved my general feelings towards the process,” she said. Even better, “I am confident that the cataloger who comes after me will not have to fix hundreds of books mis-shelved due to typos.”

Already use Record Manager? Join the OCLC Community Center and hear Jessica explain her label-printing process in more detail.

Location

• Los Angeles, California

Library at a glance

• Supports one of the top ten largest seminaries in the United States
• Provides access to over 230,000 materials, including 70,000 e-journals and 35,000 e-books
• Maintains five libraries across the western United States