PROSPECTOR CATALOG/REFERENCE COMMITTEE

MINUTES
June 15, 2000

 

Present:  George Machovec, Helen Reed, Judith Heck, Bill Garrison, Vicki Nichols, Lois Jones, Sandy Arnesen, Carol White, and Joan Beam.

 

1.  Prospector Update.

 

Denver Public Library Load.  Everything appears to be working fine now. The test database was checked to be sure the overlays were working, 222 fields are being added to journal records for the journal title index and children’s subject headings are being restored.  These changes are made to the records going into Prospector, but not in the DPL database which remains the same.

 

DPL is between the academic sites and Jefferson County in the precedence table for purposes of record overlay.

 

DPL records will be all loaded in a month or so.  However, the document delivery functionality will not be operational until Fall. Therefore although the items are on shelf in the DPL system, they cannot be requested through Prospector.  Titles identified at DPL through Prospector should be ordered through traditional Interlibrary Loan channels.

 

ACTION ITEM:

 

As currently loaded into Prospector all the Denver Public Library records have a status on Prospector of "Local Use Only"  since they cannot be requested through the system although they are available for checkout to DPL patrons. The Committee discussed the implications of this including:  Should this status be changed?  Should new wording be created for “Local Use Only” records from all sites?

 

The Catalog Reference Committee decided that Denver Public Library records will have the status "Available"  if they are available at the time of the record load.  If a Prospector patrons request an item, the request will be denied. Each Prospector site should do staff and patron publicity/education to explain the  non-requestable status of DPL records until this Fall. George will put a notice near the top graphic on Prospector about the non-requestable status of DPL items with wording such as "Denver Public Library is joining Prospector. Items Requestable Soon.”  This notice will appear on the Help screens and Homepage too.

 

One further note is that the status of Denver Public Library titles will not be updated during the load process.  Thus, DPL titles may have an “Available” status in Prospector when their status has actually changed locally. They will be updated as soon as the load is complete and then will be updated on a continuous basis.

 

Database size 

The Prospector database is 9 million items. Denver Public Library will add 4.5 million items to this.  DPL has 675,000 bib records with 4.5 million items attached.  DPL did 11 million circulation transactions last year.

 

Load status

The Alliance will monitor the DPL load and watch for any backups in the transaction files. All sites' regular  transactions will be integrated into the flow with the DPL load so there should be little delay in updating records. 30-40,000 records a day will be loaded. The DPL Western History Photo Digitization records will be added last.

 

Regis University   

George Machovec will talk to Janet Lee at Regis about their load, location tables, profiling, etc.  She will be invited to attend the public service training at DPL to be held in August by the Catalog Reference Committee.

 

2.  Record Overlay Problems

 

There are records in Prospector which have duplicates but shouldn't since they are exact matches.  In Release 2000 Upgrade B there was a change to the matching algorithm.  It is now based upon:

 

the 001 and first three words of the 245 |a

 

Including the first 3 titles words in the algorithm creates more non-matches when the titles have been entered differently at different sites, even though the 001 and 022 may be the same.

 

Testing:  UNC and HSC will test the 001 plus first 3 title words match to see if changes in present records result in splitting up of previously matched bibliographic records, thus creating duplicate records.  The test will include whether an update to a record with different 245 |a and |b which had previously matched on 001 fields splits out now.

 

Future enhancement  If two records match on the 001 but not on the first three words of the 245 |a, could the system automatically check the 001 and the 022 for a possible match before creating a duplicate record?  Could the matching algorithm match the 001 and 022 and merge records on the basis of this match?

 

Bug identified earlier  When Ann Rakes attended the Committee meeting several months ago she had identified a bug in the matching algorithm that was causing additional duplicates.  George Machovec is checking on the status of the fix for this bug.

 

3.  Future Projects

 

We need to involve the Prospector Catalog Liaisons group in future cleanup projects such as duplicate record matching.  Cleanup of local problems (CUB has fixed 50,000 records so far) for better matching on Prospector would also be useful.  The Committee will discuss possible clean-up projects and how to accomplish them at a future meeting.

 

4.  DPL Training

 

Heck will get the original set of branch locations updated and sent to George. The DPL Catalog staff training at the Alliance went very well.  DPL Cataloging staff subsequently tested the preliminary load extensively and identified some bugs which were subsequently corrected.

 

Public Services Staff training is scheduled for Aug. 10 and 14,  8:30 to 9:45 am at the main library.  We may need additional sessions in September for those staff unable to attend in August.  Janet Lee and Carol White will also be asked to attend these sessions to get a sense of the type of training we can offer at those sites.

 

ACTION:  Send copies of your local sites' publicity and/or training materials to Judith Heck at DPL for her to use in DPL training and publicity.

 

5.  netLibrary

 

Some titles cataloged in OCLC have been pulled from netLibrary after publisher withdrew permission for them to be in the netLibrary database. OCLC does not update these records, so they are still in load. If  a patron clicks on the URL one of these titles they receive a message that they cannot access the title.   Bill  Garrison talked to netLibrary about having some method to notify sites using OCLC netLibrary records when this happens. 

 

On the netLibrary database, these titles are correctly identified but changes do not get made once the record goes into a site's own catalog.

 

The netLibrary titles will be loaded onto Prospector very soon, possibly by the end of  next week--June 23.

 

6.  Other Data Loads

 

CUB has also loaded into Prospector 36,000 records for the Early American Imprint Series (i.e. Evans) from the American Antiquarian Society. The collection is held on microfiche at CUB, and the Prospector record will include the fiche number with a designation of “Local Use Only.”

 

7.  Prospector URL Recommendation

 

Placement and functionality of the URL in records in the INN-REACH software is an ongoing discussion topic in the INN-REACH enhancement process.  Bill will have a Draft document on the Prospector version of this topic ready for the Catalog Reference Committee and will send it out on email

 

NEXT MEETING:  July 20th at the Alliance.

 

The agenda will include:

·         Possible Cleanup Projects for Cataloging Liaison group. Future meeting should invite members from this group to attend.

·         Best Practices List

·         Plan DPL training for Aug. dates.

 

NOTE:  The present Catalog Reference Committee will stay in place until Jan. 01, 2001

 

Submitted by Joan Beam with updates by George Machovec and Helen Reed