What did you do with your LHOP?
Since February, over 60 institutions in the MINITEX region have ordered a free OCLC Local Holdings Offline Product (LHOP) file. [end test]
Since February, over 60 institutions in the MINITEX region have ordered a free OCLC Local Holdings Offline Product (LHOP) file. Each file provides a complete list of the library’s Local Holdings Records (LHRs) in OCLC, which the library can download and use for a number of purposes. The file could be formatted and arranged to provide a printed list of serials, or to use as an online database of holdings information, supplementing the library catalog.
Of course, one of the most likely uses for the file is to make sure that holdings records in OCLC are accurate and ‘in sync’ with your current holdings. Not only can you check to see that each item in your catalog has the proper holdings in OCLC, you can discover if any items you’ve withdrawn are still lurking in the OCLC system, or if items you’ve added locally are included in your OCLC LHRs. Thirteen of the libraries that ordered an LHOP file have already ordered another, suggesting that they used the file to update holdings and then ordered another version to see (and perhaps to double-check) the updated LHRs.
If your library has ordered a Local Holdings Offline Product, we’d like to hear about how you are using it. Are you using it to update LHRs in OCLC? What else might you do with this information? Did you find any surprises in the file?
Write a comment to this post and let us know what you've done - or plan to do - with your LHOP file.