One action that Mary Grenci didn't mention in her fine response to
Patricia Thompson was to consider sending a request to the system
vendor to modify the Web catalog software.

As Mary pointed out, it's not just 78X fields that can generate
links to nothing. Patricia's Web catalog handles the blind link by
defaulting to the place in the index where the link would occur. As
Mary points out, that isn't helpful to the catalog user. A better
default might give an explanatory message that the library either
does not own that title or has no record for it (and still default
to the place the link would have occurred in the index, if that is
considered helpful). The explanatory message could further direct
the catalog user to a user assistance contact, building more user
assistance into the Web catalog interface.

Joe
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Joe Altimus                            email: bl.cja@rlg.org
Dataloads Specialist                   voice: (650) 691-2287
The Research Libraries Group           fax: (650) 964-0943
1200 Villa Street                      email for MIME/attachments:
Mountain View, CA 94041-1100              jaltimus@notes.rlg.org
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