[DCRM-L] local data in OCLC

[Noble, Richard]

I agree with Will, though the most useful "assists in identification of a
manifestation" notes are often those that account for variants found within
the set of copies that constitute a manifestation.

In some cases one can provide a fairly comprehensive note--e.g. what I'm
about to do with the early offprints of Röntgen, *Eine neue Art von
Strahlen*, where a series of Auflagen are properly treated as impressions
within the issue, differentiated by a edition statement or note (I'm of two
minds about which) "[1. Auflage]. 2. Auflage-5.Auflage" (thought the first
has no title page, only a caption and might best be treated as a distinct
issue). I have not only copies of all but the 5th, but also a very detailed
set of descriptions in H.S. Klickstein's 1966 bibliographical study of the
early editions of the work. A 500 note of this sort needs no $5.*

If, however, I am aware of a variant which one can judge to exist in
multiple items within the manifestation, though I cannot confirm it, then
my evidence is quasi-general, and the 500 note, which must contain explicit
reference to the item(s) in which the evidence was seen, gets a $
​5 (to which I rather wish I could add at least my initials​
​, since 500 notes of this kind are footnotes, really--510 selfies--and
ought to be properly sourced; this is the extent to which master records
can be, let us say, "crowd-sourced").

*I've discussed this case with an OCKC database specialist. The master
master record (among the various dups) represents a merger of records that
included descriptions of individual Auflagen (a class of variant which OCLC
doesn't want to distinguish as manifestations) but still with a 250 for the
3rd. The record needs to be made less specific, but needs a specific note
to be properly understood (people pay good money for the lower numbers ...).

RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY
BROWN UNIVERSITY  ::  PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912  ::  401-863-1187
<Richard_Noble at Br <RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU>own.edu>

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 9:15 AM, Will Evans <evans at bostonathenaeum.org>
wrote:

> I agree with Francis. Unless the note assists in the identification of
> manifestation, which would appear in a 500 note anyway, I don’t think item
> specific information relative to provenance, condition, etc. would be
> helpful. As Francis notes, it only would create more work in terms of
> deleting irrelevant notes, and should such notes slip through quality
> control (it happens), it could only lead to confusion. I can see one of our
> reference librarians storming into my office demanding where to find John
> Hancock’s signature in a particular volume, only to find out the note in
> our catalog relates to a copy held by AAS.
>
>
>
> We are not an IR library, but I rely on those records almost daily to sift
> through the dross in OCLC, especially in locating hidden editions, variant
> states, etc. I will certainly miss having access to those records!
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Will
>
>
>
> *From:* dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] *On
> Behalf Of *Allison Jai O'Dell
> *Sent:* Sunday, August 30, 2015 12:46 PM
> *To:* DCRM Users' Group
> *Subject:* Re: [DCRM-L] local data in OCLC
>
>
>
> Granted, we're talking about MARC records, so I'm not sure that "proper
> data modeling" is a consideration available to this conversation.  :-P
>
>
>
> Given the environment that we're in, Francis, I think your two major
> concerns are solvable:
>
> 1)  If OCLC user interfaces (WorldCat, FirstSearch) displayed the MARC
> data "Blah blah blah $5 abc" as "Blah blah blah (ABC Library)"
>
> 2)  If you don't want to import other people's local notes, set your
> import scripts to strip out anything with a $5 that's not your library.
>
>
>
> On the flipside, when you *do* want access to other people's local notes,
> they're all in one place.  To me, the $5 is the best way *in MARC* to
> build aggregated access to local information.  It's a simple stop-gap
> solution *for now*.  Moving forward (post-MARC), we can create proper
> parent-child (master-local) relationships.  (And all the more reason to
> kill MARC quickly?  MARC has never worked well for rare materials.  This is
> just one example.)
>
>
>
>
>
> Open to counter-arguments,
>
>
>
> Allison
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 9:54 AM, Lapka, Francis <francis.lapka at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> I think it would do more harm than good to expand the use of 500 ‡5 and
> other non-local note fields for our local data.
>
>
>
> From a practical standpoint – I’ll spare everyone my objections on the
> grounds of proper data modeling – my primary objection to using 500 ‡5 in
> this context is illustrated by the *Plexus* screenshot in Deborah’s
> initial email. In that record, there are three notes concerning the SIU
> copy that are presented (in Worldcat.org) as information concerning the
> Manifestation. There’s no indication that the information applies to a
> single copy. That’s disastrous. Even if OCLC corrected its display to show
> that this is item-specific data, do we really trust it to present the
> item-specific information in a coherent manner if **multiple**
> institutions have recorded local information?
>
>
>
> Consider also the impact from the standpoint of cataloging workflow. For
> as long as we’re importing records from OCLC to our local catalogs, I’d
> rather not have to do more weeding out of local information that doesn’t
> apply to my copy. Let’s endeavor to leave Master Records free of
> copy-specific information.
>
>
>
> Francis
>
>
>
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