May 2011 Archives

You may have seen an announcement from LC about the "Bibliographic Framework Initiative." As most titles go, this one isn't necessarily as straightforward as it could be, but the initiative itself will likely be a Big Deal.

As highlighted in a recent Library Journal article, this initiative may signal the beginning of a move away from the MARC format. (Did you just feel the earth shake?)

Take the time to read the LJ article, at least. If you want to follow the progress of the Initiative, check in on their website at:
http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/index.html

I'm sure we'll be communicating more about this in the future. Any changes will be a while in coming, and gradual when they do, but they will be significant.

But, hey, we're used to change, aren't we?

Connexion Client 2.30 includes an enhancement that gives us the option to export workforms without adding records to WorldCat and setting holdings on them and without adding OCLC numbers to them.

A new checkbox called 'Allow export of workforms' has been added to the Tools/Options/Export tab. The setting defaults to unchecked. If checked, the Action/Export command is enabled if the active record is a workform.

This option could be used when you want to use the editor in Connexion to create the record and then export it into your local system, but you don't want to add it to WorldCat.

Another reason is that you might want to pull records from Aleph, do some sort of global change and then bring them back into Aleph. Not having to mess with getting the 035 number properly formatted into a 001 field so that Connexion sees it and allows export is a big help.

Minitex has scheduled a webinar on Connexion Client 2.30
Rigister here.

Genre headings are being used more frequently by libraries in bibliographic records to indicate the type of material that is being described in a record. The Library of Congress plans to reissue all their genre/form authority records in the near future. This will mean changes in the way LC genre terms are tagged in MARC records.

OCLC is offering a webinar, presented by Linda Gabel, which will cover not only LC's planned changes, but also usage of other genre/form vocabularies in MARC records.

This session is free but please register so OCLC knows how many to expect.

Thursday, May 12
9:00 - 10:00 AM Eastern
Register Here