The
Prospector Cataloging/Reference Committee met at the Alliance on Thursday April
19, 2001 from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Present were: Helen Reed, Florence Jones, Lois Jones, Judith Heck,
Cynthia Wilson, Sandy Arnesen, Tom Moothart (substituting for Joan Beam),
George Machovec, and Bill Garrison.
1. Updates
Prospector/CARL
Question The question was raised
regarding why Prospector title information does not appear in CARL patron
records. George briefly explained that
programming constraints made this feature too difficult to implement.
Endeavor George told the group that as of April 19 there was
still no letter of confidentiality from III to Endeavor.
2. Match
algorithm/overlays revisited –
Florence Jones reported that one bibliographic record that Auraria
loaded in March overlaid the wrong record in Prospector, so the matching
algorithm is not perfect.
3. The
implementation of new MARC encoding levels: With INN-Reach Release 2001,
the new OCLC encoding levels 3 and 4 are included in the encoding level
groups. Once Prospector converts to
release 2001 each local library must find records that already exist in their
system by using the Create List function:
M>
MANAGEMENT information
L>
Create LISTS of records (choose an empty file)
2>
Create new file
3>BIBLIOGRAPHIC
list
@Sp Field, 3>008,004> ENC LEVL = 4 OR
@Sp Field, 3>008,004> ENC LEVL = 3
S
to START search
Once
Prospector converts to Release 2001, each library may queue any records that
already have encoding levels 3 and 4 to the central system using the Create
List file created above:
A>
ADDITIONAL system functions
O>
Send a group of records to Prospector
B>
To use a BOOLEAN review file
Send the file created with the
strategy above
This
will cause records with higher encoding levels to overlay records with lower
encoding levels on the central system.
3. netLibrary
MARC records – Bill Garrison picked up a file of bibliographic records from
netLibrary and began a test load. The
records do not have an 049 field, so the loader must set the location
code. The call numbers are in an 050 or
090 MARC field and are not indexed.
Bill loaded twenty-seven records to test his loader. Users on the Boulder campus are driving 75%
of the netLibrary usage. The other
Alliance libraries split the remaining 25% of netLibrary use. Other Alliance libraries that want to load
netLibrary records will either have to buy a special loader, modify an existing
loader or send someone on their library staff to a loader training class at
Innovative.
CSU
sent the following questions about loading netLibrary records. The committee's responses to the questions
follow each question:
1. Have the
netLibrary files been removed? Bibliographic records for all
netLibrary back file titles are in
Prospector now. They all have an 856
with a new |z and the |3 has been removed.
2. Are there
plans to make records available in the future on the same basis as this (i.e., free)? Yes
3. Will
future records be made available individually (e.g., new records after a
certain date) or will the entire set be updated and made available (so instead
of 26xxx records being available, 27xxx records will be made available for
loading)? We do not yet know.
4. Will
records be updated if they must be corrected or URLs changed? Will these updated records retain the same
record number (as in 001 nL330)?
netlLibrary will re-send the records.
Bill Garrison will ask that
netLibrary create a separate file of changed records.
5. The |z in
the 856 is quite long—any plans for change?
That has already been changed by
netLibrary.
4. INN-Reach
Enhancements – The committee went through the INN-Reach enhancement list to
see if the committee wanted to change priorities for enhancements. A session at the Innovative User Group
Meeting in May will allow INN-Reach libraries to discuss enhancement requests
and vote on priorities (one vote per INN-Reach group—Helen Reed will vote for
the Catalog/Reference enhancements fo Prospector). The final list of enhancements will be made available after the
III Users Group Meeting.
5. URL
Checking – Florence Jones raised the question regarding the fact that the
III link-checking program repeatedly goes to sites that excludes all robots
from the site. She asked if the
committee thought is was a sufficiently serious problem to warrant turning off
the III link checking (hoping for a future modification to the program), or
would it be better to just exclude certain sites from verification? This is a decision that needs to be made by
each local site.
6. 245
Skip characters for non-English language materials – Skip characters for
searches in Prospector are only defined for English language materials. (Note: Skip characters are words that are automatically ignored when entered
by a patron at the beginning of a search.)
Defining skip characters for foreign languages creates as many problems
as it fixes. Words that are articles in
some languages are not in others.
Examples of problems caused by defining skip characters for foreign
languages are Los Angeles and Los Alamos.
Prospector does use the filing indicators as set in each bibliographic
record.
7. AVS
Searching – Helen inquired who had purchased or intends to implement AVS
Searching. George will ask Anne Rakes
the implications for Advanced Searching in Prospector if all Prospector-member
libraries do not implement this feature locally. He will have more information at the next meeting.
8. Electronic
Resources Best Practice – discussion was tabled until the May 17th
meeting.
9. Other
– Cynthia Wilson reported that holds placed in Prospector sometimes result in
two copies of the same book being sent to the user. The most common cause of this problem is that staff sometimes
forgets to check out a book before shipping it to the requestor. The solution is more staff training. Judith Heck is teaching several classes to
circulation staff at DPL. The
additional training should help eliminate the problem.
Submitted by Helen Reed