This is a question particular to those of you working with NOTIS.
Probably most of you who converted to 5.0 have realized the space
limitations on amount of vhld/mhld information that displays in the
OPAC.  This problem was documented on NOTIS-L and reported by several
institutions.  Recent reports indicate the problem has been
resolved in NOTIS 5.1 (which is still in beta testing).

For those of you who haven't heard or noticed, essentially,
the vhld/mhld records of 5.0, which may contain thousands of characters
of data in staff mode, are only capable of displaying about 850 characters
of data in the OPAC.  The result is large gaps in holdings displays --
and nothing in the OPAC to indicate that any holdings information is
missing.  This is driving our public services staff out of their
minds and they have asked us if there are any solutions ...

Our systems folks tell us we probably won't install NOTIS 5.1 for
another year or so.  The reports I've seen (from searching the
NOTIS-L logs about a month ago) indicate that at least one other
institution has decided to "grit <their> teeth and live with it."

I'm wondering if any other NOTIS sites on 5.0 have taken any
interim measures or arrived at any coding solutions (perhaps in the
MHLD environment?) to resolve these misleading holding displays??

We are still using vhld records and are planning to convert to mhld
in Dec. or Jan.  Is there a way to create summary level statements
for public display, while maintaining all the detailed holdings info.
in staff mode ... (in either in the vhld or mhld records) or some other way
to jerry-rig our holdings for coherency until we install "the cure" of
5.1.  Presumably, with MHLD, we could use the 866-868 *in addition to*
the enum/chron and captions/patterns (paired fields) to generate an
alternative display ... but is it worth it??  What are other NOTIS
sites doing?  Leaving bad enough alone and waiting for the next version??

Any insights would be appreciated.

Birdie MacLennan            bmaclenn@uvmvm.bitnet
University of Vermont       bmaclenn@uvmvm.uvm.edu