Draft Acorn Bibliographic Content Policy

March 16, 2006

Criteria for adding bibliographic records to Acorn:

1. 1. The library has purchased the material or someone has selected it
2. 2. Material will not be cataloged at the article or chapter level, unless it has been created as a separate entity
3. 3. Individual items from our own locally created digital collections will not be cataloged in Acorn, with the exception of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD’s), which are added to OCLC
4. 4. For large collections, if electronic records are available, we should make an effort to identify, acquire, and load them whenever it is reasonable and practical, i.e., the process would not be overly time consuming or costly, and/or the value of the collection makes the effort worthwhile. In some cases it may be necessary to postpone adding records until they become conveniently available.
5. 5. Quality of the records must be reasonably good. Sample records will be reviewed by catalogers before loading.
6. 6. Cost—the records must be included with a collection, available at no cost, or funds must be available for their purchase.

Considerations when batch-loading records:

1. 1. Impact on users of the catalog
2. 2. Impact of load on the size of Acorn, considering milestones for when charges from Sirsi increase. This is not an obstacle to loading records, but it is important to remain aware of and plan for an approaching cost increase.
3. 3. Impact on processing resources of Acorn servers (It may be necessary to break large loads into smaller groups of records)
4. 4. OCLC update, whenever feasible, with ILL availability as the major consideration
5. 5. Marcive authority processing should be routine, but the cost should be taken into account.
6. 6. Impact/timing for authority work
7. 7. Integration of records between Acorn and any companion product, such as an e-resource management system
8. 8. Acorn reindexing schedule timing so records from big loads will not appear at the top of searches
9. 9. Any edits to all records that can be made in advance of loading
10. 10. Record numbering, overlaying of duplicates, and creating unique identifier for a collection

The request form for batch-loading records is available at https://secureforms.library.vanderbilt.edu/requests/batch.phtml. Judgments regarding record-loading criteria will be made through consultation among the AUL for Tech Services, CAT, LITS, the Metadata Committee, the Collections Committee, Research Services Committee, and others as necessary.