Loading MARC records...

["Barbara Szalkowski" <szalkow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

We will be acquiring a large microformat collection (18th century legal
treatises, remainder of 19th century legal treatises, if I understand
correctly). This purchase can come with "free" MARC records for all of
the titles.

We are still text-based at the present. We have never loaded MARC
records since our original load in 1995/transfer of records from
Innovacq in 1996. I am concerned that these "free" records may indeed
cost more to load them than to just add them as usual, and perhaps will
cost as much of my time to edit as I don't know anything about the
records.

Has anyone ever loaded any of these 18th/19th-century legal treatise
MARC records? How are the records?

Could anyone clue me in on the costs, if any, of loading MARC records if
we've never done it before? Can we just run them through our original
load table or do we have to make a new one (and I *know* that costs)?
Setting holdings on OCLC (batch upload I guess, like I said, we've never
done anything like this)?

Any thoughts, pro/cons, on loading records versus handling them
individually like everything else? We are a pretty small institution (1
professional, 1 paraprofessional/copy cataloger, Innopac database just
under 60,000 bib records) and I have no problem with workflow on things
like this -- I've already done a lot of the 19th-century fiche
individually (about 4400 titles) over the last several years.

Thanksz!

--
Regardsz,
--Barbara Sz.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
<< Barbara Szalkowski                 >>
<< Senior Catalog Librarian           >>
<< The Fred Parks Law Library         >>
<< South Texas College of Law         >>
<< 1303 San Jacinto                   >>
<< Houston, TX  77002-7000            >>
<< (713) 646-1724                     >>
<< Fax: (713) 659-2217                >>
<< e-mail: szalkow@xxxxxxxxxx           >>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>