RE: OCLC Authority Control

["Stephen McLaughlin" <sMcLaughlin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

We are going through the authority control process for the first time on
Innovative right now (we used to have a DRA, where authority control
worked very differently, so we decided to start fresh with our new
system). Here are a couple of things I've learned the hard way....

1) We have some bib records with many items attached. Cases in point
were _Something About the Author_ and _World Book Encyclopedia_, where
we have multiple editions at multiple branches, so the total number of
volumes zips up into the 1,000+ range. We also have "generic" bib
records for uncataloged materials (mass-market pbs, magazines) with
1,000+ items attached. Since the Innovative output program creates a 945
field for each item, OCLC found some of our bib records too big to deal
with. In addition, since I was unfamiliar with this (still being a
newbie to Innovative), when we designed the load-table for the authority
control project, we did not exclude the loading of these 945 fields, so
now our bib database has some huge records with hundreds or thousands of
945 fields, and in some cases these are causing broken links between the
bib and item records (a problem I've been working through with the help
desk -- it's kinda nasty).

Upshot: See if you can avoid extracting and loading 945 fields!

2) Remember (as I failed to do) that Vietnamese records need to be
loaded through a different load table due to their special diacritics.
We have a substantial Vietnamese collection (5,000+ bib records) and we
lost a lot of the diacritics when we extracted and then overlaid the
processed records. I'm looking at ways to recover the lost data now
(fortunately, we seem to have most of our Vietnamese records in their
original state on our test server, so now I just have to figure out how
to get them copied from the test server to the production server. Ideas
are welcome...) As far as I know, Vietnamese is the only language that
requires special handling; were I doing the authority project over
again, I would exclude Vietnamese records from this processing entirely.

3) Design your process carefully and review the OCLC documentation
closely. We discovered that we had asked (without realizing it) OCLC /
MARS to do more than just upgrade our authority headings -- they also
did a wide variety of MARC updating and fixing (e.g., transferring data
from obsolete fields to the current fields, fixing non-filing
indicators, etc.). This not only led to many more records being
processed than we had anticipated, it also meant we had to redesign
(rather quickly, due to the fact that our catalogers were waiting for
the "release" of the frozen catalog) our load-table, which I had
ever-so-carefully designed during a load-profile clinic.

4) Make sure any special fields you use (9xx or whatever for local data)
are included in your load table, or are protected from being overwritten
by the data when you get it back from OCLC.

I hope this sad catalog of rookie mistakes is helpful; if you have any
question that I might be able to help with, let me know.

Steve McLaughlin
San Francisco Public Library







-----Original Message-----
From: Amy Moberly [mailto:alm@xxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 8:01 AM
To: innopac@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: OCLC Authority Control

We are considering sending our database of bibs to OCLC for authority
control.  No one here has ever done anything like this before, and I was
wondering if I could get some input from those of you who have done this
with the Innovative system.  Are there any red herrings or avenues of
peril we should be aware of prior to signing the contract to go ahead
with this?

Thank you ever so much for your advice.

--Amy

_____________________
Amy L. Moberly
Reference Librarian / Innopac System Coordinator
California Western School of Law
225 Cedar St.
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 525-1421
alm@xxxxxxxxxx



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