Hi,
Last week I asked to share experiences in implementing full MARC records
into OPAC.
Many sent me e-mails asking to summarize the responses, but I only received
one off list which I simply will copy below. Obvously there is a lot of
interest out there
in this topic and any additional advice would be appreciated, please send
it to the list.
Thanks
Kira Haimovsky
Head, Serials & Electronic Resources Dept.
Fordham University Library
441 E. Fordham Rd.
Bronx, NY 10458
tel: 718-817-3534
fax: 718-817-3530
haimovsky@fordham.edu
We began using SerialSolutions MARC records 3 months ago. We had been
loading vendor MARC or title record files for the ejournals in Infotrac,
Ebschost, Proquest, and Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe. In other words we
had a separate bibliographic record for any title for each service we
received the title from (eg. 5 separate records for ABA banking
journal). We are using SerialsSolutions to deal with these aggregators
now. There is no way we would be able to handle these aggregator titles
with the staff we have otherwise. Anyway, when we did our initial load
we did not remove the existing records from the catalog until we were
sure everything was OK with the SS records (it was). Since we already
had so much duplication, it didn't make that much difference and we
didn't lose any access during the process. Once the SS records were in
the catalog we deleted the individual vendor records in batch. Our
catalog is much cleaner now.
We are an Innovative site. Innovative's batch loading
processes
are fairly primitive. The loaders cannot handle the housekeeping byte in
the leader that indicates whether the incoming record is a new record, a
changed record, or a delete record. SerialsSolutions delete records
are full records (not bare transactions records like some). All the
records load. We update monthly. The new records load fine, the change
records match on 001 and overlay the existing records, and the delete
records match on 001 and overlay the existing records. We asked SS to
include a 910 so we could identify those delete records easily after
loading and delete them, which we do. The monthly updates are not that
large, so all of this goes pretty fast. We are happy with the records
and we have a lot better control of the aggregator titles than we had
before. (We could only update our files once a semester so we were
always out of date)
Hope this helps and is coherent.
Judy Hathway
Head of Technical Services
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
9201 University City Blvd
Charlotte, NC 28223-0001
Phone: 704-687-3476
email: jahathwa@email.uncc.edu
Fax: 704-687-2322
-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Kira Haimovsky
Sent: Friday, May 21, 2004 12:23 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Full Marc Records for e-journals
We are considering to subscribe to the Full MARC Records service from
SerialsSolutions (or maybe from EbscoHost, their Marc Records are much
less expensive). I am looking for comments from librarians that already
implemented this product (especially if they have Sirsi library system).
How did you prepare for it? Did you clean-up your OPAC before or after
the initial download (if you previously cataloged e-journals using print
records with 856)? Was it a messy process all together? How are monthly
updates handled, is it a lot of work? Is there something you wish you
have done differently had you known more about the process in advance?
Any do and don't tips? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Kira Haimovsky
Head, Serials & Electronic Resources Dept.
Fordham University Library
441 E. Fordham Rd.
Bronx, NY 10458
tel: 718-817-3534
fax: 718-817-3530
haimovsky@fordham.edu
