With much embarrassment and chagrin, I am belatedly offering this summary
of the responses I received to my previous uploading/OCLC union list
inquiry of 1/82. My abject apologies to everyone, especially Marsha Skoman and
Gail McMillan who perhaps, like Steve Murden, were waiting with baited
breath ("or, as Mork would have said, 'with a worm on my tongue.'")!
Background: The libraries associated with the Assn. of Big Eight Universities
(ABEU) have been working towards greater cooperation on collection develop-
ment. Serials union listing is one of the means which would facilitate this
end. Not being able to afford to do double check-in (once in our local
system and again on the union list) the Univ. of Kansas Libraries has not
moved beyond supporting in principle the union list. If we were able to
update our serial holdings through a tape load, we could actually participate
in the union list.
My original inquiry (1/6/92) was:
Is anyone out there currently uploading serial records from your serials
holdings system or online catalog to a union list on OCLC?
What we deduced about our local situation after George Gibbs, our Asst. Dean
for Tech. Servs., spoke with Rich Greene of OCLC, Inc.:
It became apparent, even before a reading of the OCLC Tapeloading Guide
supplied by Rich Greene, what our problem would be: We have so few
serials records with full OCLC records that we don't have any way to
connect what we've got with what they've got. We'd have to do a serious
conversion project before we could build in the basic connections needed.
The responses to the original inquiry follow:
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* I'm sending you a copy of the OCLC Tapeloading Guide that describes the
format and procedures for tapeloading local data records to OCLC union listing.
There are a couple of things to be aware of, though, that might be buried in
the Guide. Tapeloading serial union list records can only be done to create
the records in the first place; maintenance (deletion, modification) cannot be
done via tape and must be done through the online system. We have not yet
developed the capability to do ongoing maintenance through batch processing.
We expect that to be operational as part of our implementation of USMARC
holdings format in Prism; unfortunately, there is no firm schedule for that
yet. We have not tapeloaded records from very many libraries yet. In part,
libraries do not have data that will map well to our present implementation of
holdings. All of us implemented holdings well before ANSI/NISO and MARC stand-
ards were available. We have loaded a few files, though, in the last two yrs.,
including: Greater Midwest Region Medical Library Network (GMRMLN), Georgia
Tech, several libraries who participate in Florida Center for Library Automa-
tion, and a few Georgia universities.
Rich Greene / OCLC, Inc. / 800-848-5878 / rog@rsch.oclc.org
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* In response to your inquiry, I think the state of Kentucky is about to do
what you are talking about. What *they* are going to do is convert our living,
English bibliographic serial records and holdings now resident in the Kentucky
Union List of Serials (KULS) for use in the KLN (Kentucky Library Network)
OCLC GAC/UL (OCLC Group Access Catalog/Union List). Conversion is scheduled to
begin Feb. 1st <1992> with completion in about a year. (A highly optimistic
schedule, in my opinion!) I, myself, have nothing to do with the project. I
just know about it! Any questions concerning the project should be directed to
Charlene Davis at the Kentucky Dept. of Libraries & Archives, in Frankfort, KY.
Phone 502-588-5931. Hope this is what you wanted! Good luck, if so.
Genevieve Clay / Head, Central Serials / Crabbe Lib. / East. KY Univ.
606-622-1788 / LIBCLAY@EKU.BITNET
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* Virginia Tech has been working with OCLC for about six months to try to
eliminate the bugs in loading our MARC holdings records into the OCLC Union
List. Our MARC holdings records already have all the information required for
the union list and we want to avoid having to rekey this info into yet another
system. We have encountered several easily overcome problems (like making sure
the OCLC number is on the holdings record). However, the real problem is that
OCLC cannot generalize from our specific holdings. In my ongoing discussion
with Rich Greene, we discussed whether or not the UL should display just one
line of holdings (either an 866 or an 863 when there are multiple lines). The
OCLC UL system could probably be programmed to read the sequence control number
to know which line has the oldest or most recent holdings. However, this would
certainly be misleading information when holdings are perhaps consecutive but,
perhaps, broken by dispersed location; or there could, indeed, be missing
issues. We began to look into this process because our state library has a
networking project. You may want to contact Lyn Knoop at 804-371-7614 for
more information. I look forward to reading about what information you are
able to gather on this topic.
Gail McMillan / Serials Team Leader / Virginia Polytechnic Institute &
State Univ. / gmcmilla@vtvm1.cc.edu / 703-231-9252
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* We are uploading our serial holdings from SC350 to OCLC. We have been doing
this since March 1988.
Rose Robischon / US Military Academy / Serials Unit / 914-938-2373
ur6146@usma3.usma.edu
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* Our library is engaged in the project of uploading serials records from our
NOTIS system to OCLC. The person doing the project is Maggie Garcia, in the
library's Serials Dept. You can contact her at the following address:
Maggie Garcia / Library / Florida Internat'l. University / 305-348-3126
She does not have an e-mail address. However, if you wish to send her an
e-mail message, you can send it to me and I will forward. Good luck in your
project.
John Radencich / Library-Cat. Dept. / Florida Internat'l. University
RADENCIC@SERVAX.BITNET
