My original post read:
Has any institution attempted to convert their Local Holdings 866
Textual Holdings information to linked pairs of 853 Captions and
Pattern/863 Enumeration and Chronology fields?  Were you able to
'automate' any part of this process? Did you have to 'manually'
convert all of the information?
______________________________

I was asked by a number of folks to summarize responses on this
one, so here goes. Half of those responding wanted to know more
about this process themselves. Of those institutions who have
converted or are converting 866s to 853/863 linked pairs, all are
doing so or did so 'manually', one record at a time.

One respondent noted that although their 866 fields contained
standard punctuation and formatting, it wasn't possible to do a good
job of automating the process of converting this information to the
linked pairs 853/863.

A number of respondents indicated that they are not making a
priority of this conversion, but are doing so as they touch the
records for other reasons. Student assistant help was indicated as
being invaluable due to the many shelf checks needed to obtain
caption/pattern or issue specific enumeration/chronology
information.

One respondent indicated that they did NOT convert any 'existing'
866 information, and that they only create  853/863 fields to
generate items for check-in and claiming purposes. Once a title
ceases or is canceled, they suppress the 853/863 fields and display
an updated summary holdings statement using the 866 field.

Another respondent recommended that when holdings records are
touched for any reason, an 035 containing the OCLC number should be
added to the holdings records in order to facilitate automatic
uploading of local holdings information to OCLC.  They also
recommended adding ILL policies to the 008 if your system allows.

One respondent wanted to know what our ILS was. It is Ex Libris'
Voyager.  IF we make any progress with automating any part of this
process, I will post a summary of our experiences to the list.

Thanks to all who responded!

Robin Williams
Database Maintenance Coordinator
Continuing Resources Cataloger
Western Michigan University Libraries
1903 West Michigan Avenue
Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5353
phone: 616 387 0689
fax: 616 387 5193
email: robin.williams@wmich.edu