Alma Cataloging User Group - August 2021

August 9, 2021 – Academic Cataloging Group Notes

Attendees: Laurie McHenry, Katie Wenke, Amy Carson, Shelby Harken, Lisa Grover, Emly Wros, Michael Lewis, Staci Green, Tina Gross, Felecia Clifton, Jasmine Lee, Jenny Grasto, Craig Christianson, Linda Olson, Jason Bedsaul, Liz Mason

New Topics:

• Comments/Questions?
  • Laurie – Our 740’s transferred to 960’s, and when we add to a new record we only need to add the 960? Do we need to delete the 740’s, Shelby responded that she leaves them.
  • Laurie – bought a batch of ebooks, and she’s not cataloging yet because they have some contract issues. She doesn’t know how to import them into Alma. Laurie hasn’t checked the CZ yet. Shelby usually checks the CZ, and then checks for quality in the CZ records. Then she will check the WMS to see if they have them all. If you have a file, you would set up an import profile, and Shelby could help Laurie to set up an import profile. You can also add your local extensions in MarcEdit, and then import and you are done.
  • Tina says they have their import profiles set up by vendor, and they have not got MarcEdit interfacing with Alma either.
  • Lisa pointed out the MarcEdit has several training videos on YouTube.

Ongoing Topics:

• Network Zone: prepping for Merge and Combine Inventory
  • Brief record levels
    • There are two out of the box rules. One is based on record levels in the leader of the Marc record:
      • Level 10- leader 17 is , 1, L or l, I or i
      • Level 9- leader 17 is 4
      • Level 8- leader 17 is 8
      • Level 7- leader 17 is K or k
      • Level 6- leader 17 is M or m
      • Level 5- leader 17 is 2
      • Level 4- leader 17 is 7
      • Level 3- leader 17 is J or j
      • Level 2- leader 17 is 3
      • Level 1- leader 17 is 5 and anything that doesn’t match above
    • The other out of the box rule is based on record content:
      • Level 10- everything is initially set to 10
      • Level 4- when there are no 6XX fields
      • Level 3- when there are no 020 $a/022 $a fields
      • Level 2- when there are no 050 $a/082 $a fields
      • Level 1- when there is no 245 $a
    • We can write our own.
      • Discussion about the Brief record levels – OCLC has or will be eliminating the “letter” codes in leader 17. We all have many records using these codes.
      • Question - Will the elimination of the code with the correct number bring in a new record? Possibly but we don’t know when that will happen.
      • Question - When overwriting an order record with a higher level record does it assign the higher level brief level automatically or is that something done in the metadata editor? What happens to records when we make changes to them?
      • Tina is only interested in this in terms of merging duplicate bibs. Shelby does look at this in terms of overlaying a briefer order record with a new better record.
      • Question - Why isn’t it populating the brief level from the OCLC level when it comes in?
      • Shelby will send Liz some MARC files and Liz will set up a test for both rules in the Sandbox.
• Cataloger levels – in consortia with a network zone these can only be defined at the NZ level and distributed to institutions. If you do not want to use them in your IZ then you would assign the highest level to your catalogers.
  • Discussion – UND has catalogers of all different experience and levels cataloging. She would like to have cataloger levels, but at times it was more problems than it was worth in Aleph. So, she would like it to work well, but it may not, and since it is not what small libraries need. We will set it aside and discuss it again if it comes up again.

Future Topics:

• Network Zone: prepping for Deleting unlinked bibliographic records
  • write up instructions for identifying records with 774s and how to share them with the ODIN office.
  • research whether the “Identify records not used in the network” will exclude brief bibs, order/payment records, migrated order/payment records, JSTOR EBA, archival collections and series, and course reserves.
  • identify some representative records that we can check to see if they end up in the set to be deleted.
    • Shelby’s question about deleting unlinked bibliographic records from the Network Zone- They have an order record in the IZ and they are cataloging in the IZ, she has to remember to go and link the record to the NZ. What if they don’t remember to link it to the NZ? There will be an unlinked bibliographic record in the NZ that was brought in from OCLC.
    • Another point: About merging records - between JSTOR EBA, Project Muse single project titles, these duplicate a lot. Some are from CZ activation, and others are imported from OCLC. Liz doesn’t know how it would behave between CZ inventory and OCLC records. Shelby has one collection that is a mixture of CZ and OCLC records. Shelby has a music project where they have the OCLC records for music, but they have not attached holdings or items yet.
    • When does the CZ record get updated with the new OCLC number? The AVON record will have the old number. Seems AVON is about 3 months behind with the CZ records. NDI and UND are getting the CZ records for AVON, it looks like NDSU has cataloged OCLC records for AVON.

Next Meeting:
Scheduled for 2nd Monday of each month or as needed.
Monday, September 13, 2-3 pm CT - Submit any agenda items to Liz.Mason@ndus.edu or to ODIN-ACAD-CAT@listserv.nodak.edu