Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>> I don't think it's really a vendor-specific thing. If you have an
>> OCLC number in the fairly standard place in the MARC record, I think
>> any vendor's software will 'serve it up'.
My experience has been that different systems and libraries put the
number in different places, and that some still store the old format
("ocm..."), and that few include "(OCoLC)". However, I'm always looking
at records that have been exported from systems, and it's quite possible
that the export function doesn't handle them well.
> One place where this is especially a problem is with records purchased
> from a for-profit vendor -- an _increasingly_ common phenomenon. These
> will almost NEVER have an OCLC number attached, because the vendor
> does not provide one. In fact, even if the vendor _wanted_ to do the
> extra work to attach an OCLC number, they'd probably have to pay OCLC
> to do so! Note to OCLC, you are working at cross-purposes.
Yes, it's been my understanding that most libraries that are OCLC users
have a number of records in their catalogs that aren't in OCLC, for
various reasons. OCLC has been loading up records from libraries that
want to use WorldCat Local, so they would need to do so for any library
that wants to use OCLC as its catalog. At that point, the
vendor-supplied records become a real issue, along with records that
have been enhanced (say with ToC's).
kc
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Thu Apr 23 2009 - 17:56:45 EDT