Collections Committee Proposal Project Team for Adding OCLC numbers to ACORN records
July 2008
Summary/Abstract
As a result of several projects and anticipated projects, it has become problematic that a significant number of records in ACORN do not have an OCLC record number associated. Both the OCLC Cooperative Collection Management Trust Pilot Project (CCCT) and the Worldcat Collections Analysis product are interested in loading circulation data from our collection. To match our extracted data to the OCLC databases requires an OCLC number from our data. It appears there are over 100,000 records in ACORN with no OCLC number resident in the record. OCLC has offered to do a batch process to match records from our system with OCLC master records. There may well be some records that may not need an OCLC record associated with them. The task force will need to identify which records to include or exclude.
Timeline
•August 2008 October 2008
Statement of Need
In addition to the two projects noted above, it appears the OCLC record number will be necessary to address issues associated with diacritics in records when we convert to Unicode in SIRSI. Historical factors and past practices may account for why records were added without OCLC numbers. Given that OCLC is willing to provide the data to overlay this information into ACORN records at no cost, it seems prudent to identify as many records as possible to update.
The project team will deal with such issues as:
- Understanding the various projects and issues (both current and near term prospects) where manipulation or extraction of records from ACORN may need to key on the OCLC record number.
- Identifying records lacking OCLC numbers, and categories for which it may not be necessary or desirable to add OCLC numbers.
- Identify the method by which data will be overlaid into SIRSI, and insure no adverse impact on existing information occurs.
- Establish a standard field in which the OCLC number should be stored for consistency across the database.
- Consult with stakeholders about categories of records that may be problematic. (e.g. do we include items not yet cataloged? Do we include records for electronic copies or only physical items?)
- Consider the possibly related issue of whether OCLC records are tagged as held by Vanderbilt even if no OCLC number exists in the local record.
- Consult with Law and Eskind to see if TJL and TJM records should be updated as well?
Project Champion/owner
The project owner is the Collections Committee, which will coordinate with other committees as needed.
Project leader/coordinator
Zora Breeding
Documentation and Reporting
The project leader will report project activities to the Collections Committee as significant issues arise. The leader will also report results of evaluation/assessment measurements for this project.
Other Personnel involved/required
(suggested)
Nancy Boggess-Korekach
Zora Breeding
Bill Hook
Jared Ingersoll
Gypsy Moody
Dale Poulter
Carlin Sappenfield
Related Project(s):
OCLC Cooperative Collection Management Trust Pilot Project
Budget
No additional funding needs are anticipated for this project at this time.