Linda Visk's comments certainly make good sense for the long term, however
NOTIS will not be supporting public display from 853/863 fields in the
initial release of MFHL, so putting a lot of effort into those fields
may not pay off for quite awhile, since you will need to put holding
information into 866 or 899 for public display. NOTIS MFHL will support
the input of data into 853/863, but the conversion programs for VHLD
will send your information into 866 or 899 (a NOTIS defined field).
We at the University of Buffalo expect to load our VHLD data into 866
since it is at least part of the MARC structure, and then see how we
might move into 853/863.  It has been suggested that retropsective
holdings remain in 866s and the newer holdings go to 853/863 because
of workload. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. In the meanwhile
we have been creating ANSI standard holdings statements at Level 4 for
our VHLDs.

Susan Davis unlsdb@UBVM
Head, Periodicals/State University of NY at Buffalo