[DCRM-L] Subfield $5 / Several cataloguing questions

[Eric Holzenberg]

Katy,

At 02:22 PM 1/10/2007, you wrote:
>The issue of OCLC is one that I keep coming back to as I read 
>messages on this list. Aside from my own personal misgivings about 
>OCLC as the single national catalogue, it also affects our 
>cataloguing decisions. We are currently not a member of OCLC and do 
>not submit records, but I have no doubt that will change sometime in 
>the future. Do we want to record our copy-specific notes on 
>inscriptions, ownership, etc. in field that may upload to OCLC? Is 
>that appropriate? My instinct is to keep copy-specific notes in 
>fields which would display only in our own system (or use a subfield 
>5 and have them stripped out). But is that then removing information 
>that might be useful to a researcher? Because I do not regularly use 
>or catalogue for OCLC, I do not have a real sense of what is 
>expected, or approved of, or what is "normal" practice. I have a 
>general feeling that I am missing something... Or perhaps the whole 
>OCLC/RLIN issue really is just that confusing.

I would urge you to create, display locally, and upload to OCLC any 
and all copy-specific notes of the type you mention. Presumably the 
book was purchased for your institution partly (or wholly) because of 
these copy-specific qualities: binding, provenance, or what-have-you. 
If these notes contain information important for your own 
constituency, they are at least potentially of interest to the 
scholarly community at large. As I understand it, "normal practice" 
in OCLC will change with the merger of the RLIN database, resulting 
in something closer to RLIN practice in the treatment of 
copy-specific information. But whether or not that happens, I would 
take the high road, provide as much copy specific information as 
possible, and let researchers and other institutions decide what is 
useful to them, and what is not.

Regards,


Eric Holzenberg
Director
The Grolier Club
47 East 60th Street
New York, NY  10022
phone: 212/838-6690
fax: 212/838-2445
e-mail: ejh at grolierclub.org
website: <http://www.grolierclub.org/>www.grolierclub.org
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