« January 2008 | Main | March 2008 »

February 22, 2008

Local Holdings User Group - new webinar scheduled

OCLC has announced a new session of the Local Holdings User Group virtual meeting that was held on February 7th.  

This new session is intended as a make-up for staff at libraries that registered for the 2/7 session but were not able to participate due to the technical difficulties that arose with the audio portion of the meeting.  If you signed up for the original session and were not able to participate, you are welcome to attend this webinar/meeting, which will take place on the afternoon of 3/6.  By now, you should have received information from OCLC regarding this make-up meeting.  If you are among these libraries and have not received information you need, please contact the MINITEX MULS office.

If staff at your library did not sign up for the original February 7th meeting, we still encourage you to participate, but you will need a little more patience.  The new Local Holdings User Group virtual meeting will be recorded, and everyone will be able to listen at their own convenience once the recording is made available. 

 And lastly, we continue to encourage anyone who has questions or wants to share ideas about the issues discussed at the virtual meeting to follow the thread of our discussion entry on the MULS blog.  We'd like to know what you think.

Posted by linto001 at 9:57 AM | | Comments (0)

February 20, 2008

Local Holdings User Group discussion

In early February, OCLC invited interested staff members of libraries to join in a  Local Holdings Users Group virtual meeting, where OCLC staff presented topics related to Local Holdings Maintenance to those of us who do the work and often don't get the opportunity to participate in the semi-annual ALA meetings.

It was great idea, as one can tell from the overwhelming response: staff from over 400  libraries tried to participate in the virtual meeting.  Unfortunately, it was literally overwhelming; the group exceeded the audio system's capacity and - as some of you already know - many libraries who had registered were unable to connect to the audio portion of the meeting.  MINITEX was among those who could not get connected, so I know first-hand how frustrating it was to have access to a silent slide show.

But that's not the end of the story.

To begin with, OCLC is going to repeat the meeting and create an archived version, so those who didn't get to experience the meeting will have another chance to participate fully.  (Note: Invitations for the repeat session will be limited to those who registered for the first meeting, but the archived  version will be available for everyone's review.)  That's good news, and we'll certainly let folks know when the new session gets scheduled.

But beyond that, we have the ability to share our ideas, questions and answers right here!  And we are really encouraging you to join in.  These blogs can be more than just another venue for MULS to announce workshops or pass on notes to staff at our participating libraries.  They can be a forum where you can participate in discussions of ideas and issues that effect us all.

There's a lot going on right now in the world of Local Holdings, and we'd love to hear your perspective.  Consider responding to one or more of the following questions:

 

1)  Did you get into the Local Holdings user group webinar on 2/7?  What did you find out? 

 

2)  Were (or are) there questions you were hoping to have answered by the LHR user group webinar? What questions do you have that were not addressed? 

 

3)  Was there information that will change the way you do your work, or that helped you see new ways your Local Holdings Records can be useful either to your library internally or to other libraries?

 

4)  Did the information about batchloading change your ideas about it?  Is your library wanting to make use of batchloading to update holdings in OCLC?  What obstacles have to be overcome for that to happen?

 

And, of course, if there's a topic you'd like to discuss or a question you need answered, you certainly are encouraged to share it.

Thanks for sharing your ideas and questions!

 

Posted by linto001 at 3:53 PM | | Comments (0)

February 15, 2008

Local Holdings Offline Product details

OCLC has created a new Local Holdings Offline Product (LHOP).  For a general discussion of this new product see the blog entry OCLC Local Holdings Offline Product now available.

A Quick Reference guide is available on the OCLC website and covers the order process, how to download the file, and information on how to import the file into Microsoft Office Excel.

Individual libraries can order a file of their own holdings in WorldCat from the OCLC website.  The file will be current up to the day it is run, and you will be notified when the file is ready. 

Once produced, the tab delimited file will be available for download from the Product Services Web and can be imported into a spreadsheet, table or database.  Exact procedures may vary depending on your software package. If your library has more than 20,000 local holdings records, multiple files will be provided with up to 20,000 records in each file. There is no charge for this report. 

 

All LHOP files will contain the same data elements in a tab-delimited file.  Below is a brief list of the data elements that will be include in the file.

From the bibliographic record:

OCLC Number
Title of Item from the bibliographic record (245 $a)
ISBN/ISSN (020 $a or 022 $a) - the data will be preceded by a label identifying it as either an ISSN or ISBN
Place of Publication (260 $a & $b)
BLvL - code from the Bibliographic Level element in the bibliographic record
Form - Code from the Form of Item element in the bibliographic record
SrTp - Code from the Type of Serials element in the bibliographic record

From the Local Holdings record

LHR Summary - Note: There is only one summary per bibliographic record per institution regardless of the number of LHRs that the library has attached to that record.  If a library has multiple LHRs attached to a single bibliographic record each LHR will appear on a separate row and the summary field will be repeated in each row.

LHR Leader – Note: Each element from the leader will be preceded by label that identifies the item. Data will always appear in the same column for all LHRs in the file.

LHR 007 – Codes from the Physical Description field.
LHR 008 - Codes from the Fixed-Length Data Elements General Information . The complete set of 32 characters from the 008 will be included.

For ease of sorting, in addition to being included in the complete 008 field, the Lending (008/20) & Reproduction (008/21) policy codes and the Date of report (008/26-31) will be broken out into separate columns.

LHR 852 (Location) – The field tag, indicators, and all subfields will be included as they appear in the LHR at the time the data was extracted.  Subfield delimiters will appear as ‘$’

Holdings Information – Fields from the LHR that describe the library’s holdings including Electronic Location (856) and Holdings Data (853-878).  Each field will be in a separate cell and will include the field tag, indicators, and all subfields from the field.  Repeatable fields will appear in separate cells (for example if there are two 863 fields each 863 field will appear in a separate cell within the file). Subfield delimiters will appear as ‘$’ Position of the data will be dependent of the fields that are contained within the LHR.

 

 

Posted by linto001 at 3:42 PM | | Comments (0)

OCLC Local Holdings Offline Products now available

OCLC has announced the availability of a new Local Holdings Offline Product (LHOP), available to any library with Local Holdings Records in OCLC. 

This new product is the first successor to the old Serials Union List Offline Products (SULOPs) - what some libraries referred to as their "MULS printouts" -  that many of our libraries used to monitor their holdings in OCLC or to provide printed lists of periodical holdings info to their staff and patrons.  While there are many differences between the old SULOP products and the new LHOP, two features stand out as distinct improvements:

1)  A library can order them at anytime throughout the year -- unlike the old SULOPs, which could only be ordered on a set, semi-annual cycle.

2)  THERE IS NO CHARGE FOR THIS PRODUCT!

The other major change in the LHOP product is that OCLC will supply the library with a standard electronic, tab-delimited file of the holdings data, which the library can configure, format and publish in whatever form it wishes.  The same file could be used to create a printed table the library staff uses to compare their Local Holdings Records in OCLC with the holdings data in their local ILS, and could also be used to create a searchable database of serials information for their web page.  Each library, rather than receiving a print list or a set of microfiche in a predetermined format, can decide how to arrange and present their holdings data.  At the same time, this increased flexibility may require additional support from the library's IT staff to translate the file into a form the library finds useful.

There are some other differences between the old SULOP output and the new LHOP file.  In the past, a library could select certain fields to be included in the SULOP output; now all LHOP files will have the same data elements and it will be up to the libraries to decide whether and how to display the data.  Previously, some libraries had created combined lists showing all the holdings for a group of libraries; the LHOP is currently limited to providing the holdings of a single library.  Creating a shared list now would be a project for the libraries' IT staff involving multiple LHOP files.

See the blog entry Local Holdings Offline Product details for more information about what's included in the LHOP file, and links to a Quick Reference guide and the LHOP online order form.

If you have further questions about how the new Local Holdings Offline Product could be useful to your library, or questions about the ordering process, please feel free to contact the MINTEX/MULS office and speak with Dave Linton or Cecelia Boone.

 

Posted by linto001 at 3:21 PM | | Comments (0)