Minutes of the OCLC Enhance and Expert Community Sharing Session
ALA Annual Conference
Friday, 2017 June 23
10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Chicago, Illinois
The ALA Annual 2017 edition of Breaking Through: What’s New and Next from OCLC and the compilation of News from OCLC were distributed. Two items from the latter were mentioned: (1) Attendees were encouraged to apply or refer candidates for an open position as an OCLC Consulting Database Specialist (https://oclc.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/OCLC_Careers/job/Corporate-Office---Dublin/Consulting-Database-Specialist_R0000491), “responsible for complex evaluation, modification, and maintenance of data throughout its lifecycle, following appropriate standards and policies;” and, (2) the upcoming installation of the OCLC-MARC Update 2017, which includes the MARC 21 Updates No. 23 (November 2016) and No. 24 (May 2017), scheduled for some time between July and September 2017; an upcoming OCLC Technical Bulletin will announce details.
The floor was then opened for questions, answered by Robert Bremer (Senior Consulting Database Specialist, WorldCat Quality); Shanna Griffith (Database Specialist II); Charlene Morrison (Database Specialist II); Laura Ramsey (Section Manager, Quality Control); Robin Six (Database Specialist II); Jay Weitz (Senior Consulting Database Specialist, WorldCat Quality); and Cynthia Whitacre (Manager, WorldCat Quality).
US catalogers consult LAC for Canadian names; Canada will now participate in NACO directly LC/PCC NAF files will have to be reconciled. Canadian French authority records will become a separate file that will eventually become available via OCLC.
OCLC must wait for LC and the other NACO participants to coordinate these changes. OCLC will be ready to implement these changes but the NACO nodes must also be ready. The Bibliographic 647 field is part of the 2017 OCLC-MARC Update, so it will be available to the FAST Project much sooner than the set of authority fields.
We don’t retain the subfield $0 after the heading has been controlled. Once the heading is controlled, the subfield $0 drops off.
OCLC does use a program to control them. However, only qualified personal names (that is, those with dates or other distinguishing elements) can be safely controlled on an automated basis. Unqualified personal names are not safe to automatically control without human intervention.
No, we haven’t researched this specifically, but even if 90% were controllable, it would still not be a prudent or wise idea. Unqualified personal name headings must be controlled only by a human being conscientiously considering other possible headings.
When working online, catalogers are encouraged to control any controllable headings. Headings with dates should control automatically after the bibliographic record is available in WorldCat.
Records with one space were probably batch loaded and so are not validated.
We have been trying to automate as much of the validation as we can, but it is very hard to do. Possibly macros could be written to fix common errors like this.
We can add this to our list of things to fix.
No, some local systems continue to need both.
Authority record sh85075764 for “Legal stories” includes a 450 field for “Lawyers $v Fiction,” which means that an access point for the latter will change to the former when controlled. You can make a case for separating these headings and submit the request to the Subject Authority Cooperative (SACO) by following the instructions “Making a New SACO Subject Proposal in Minaret” at http://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/saco/Making%20a%20New%20SACO%20Subject%20Proposal.pdf.
Many fields in both LC and PCC bibliographic records may be added and/or corrected under Database Enrichment and the Expert Community. Details may be found in Chapter 5 “Quality Assurance” (http://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/quality.html) in BFAS. Allowing non-PCC participants to edit or add authorized access points, however, would jeopardize the very definition of a PCC record, which is that headings must be backed by authority records.
Not every heading backed by authority records can actually be controlled. Some subject headings, for instance, are backed by pattern headings rather than specific records. And of course, there is always a time interval between the creation of a new heading by a PCC participant and the distribution of the record for that heading to the authority file.
Not that we are aware of. The recently-defined Bibliographic and Authority 885 fields, which are part of the OCLC-MARC Update 2017, might offer some assistance in this, however. We’ll have to see what sorts of guidelines are established on the proper use of these fields, but they might provide some options.
Field 667 can be informative and useful in Authority records, but the field isn’t valid in Bibliographic records.
The rules that govern data transfer when records are merged do not allow the transfer of either 505 or 520 when the retained record already has one. In most cases, you have the ability to delete these duplicate fields under Database Enrichment and the Expert Community.
You may report an entire set of duplicate records that should be merged into one record with a single message to bibchange@oclc.org or through Action/Report Error. They don’t need to be reported separately.
This has been reported and we are working on a fix.
If we did, they would be based on the code in the subfield $b.
Report them and we will deal with them as you would any other duplicates you come across. Automated Duplicate Detection and Resolution (DDR) does try to resolve duplicates among records cataloged in the same language according to field 040 subfield $b. There is great variation in German cataloging practices, which may contribute to this problem.
This sounds like a local issue.
GLIMIR works behind the scenes for improving displays in OCLC discovery systems but in retrospect it may not have been a useful idea for cataloging interfaces. We aren’t able to remove the GLIMIR choice from the Connexion search box because there are not supposed to be any new versions of the Connexion client. At some still undefined point in the future, Record Manager will replace Connexion and it makes little sense to expend time or effort on fiddling with an interface that will be going away eventually.
It is certainly an annoyance. When you receive search results that seem to make no sense, making sure that the GLIMIR button isn’t checked should be the first thing you do.
No. The official word is that “The end-of-life for Connexion has not yet been defined.” We promise that you will be given ample warning ahead of time.
Please report such records to OCLC at bibchange@oclc.org.
If you have the time and the language expertise to make such corrections, you may do so, but please feel free to report them to bibchange@oclc.org and we’ll take care of them.
One can use the Connexion browser via any web browser, whether using a PC, a MAC, or other device. Connexion client is available only for the PC.
Announcement: The member merge project is expanding, with four more members. There are now nine participating institutions.
Respectfully submitted by
Doris Seely
University of Minnesota
2017 June 29
With edits by Cynthia Whitacre and Jay Weitz.
OCLC
2017 July 5