[553] in ad-lib
6 char BK leader
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Celeste)
Fri May 5 12:59:27 1995
To: ad-cat@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 05 May 1995 12:59:02 EDT
From: Eric Celeste <efc@MIT.EDU>
I just got this word from Matt on the 6 char BK leader (every other leader
is set at 24 characters). I'm not going to do anything more about this for
now, its good to confirm that at least this is not accidental.
...Eric
------- Forwarded Message
Date: 5 May 95 09:46:08 U
From: "MattG" <mattg@clsi.us.geac.com>
To: efc@MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: BK leader length
Reply to: RE>BK leader length
Eric,
I'm sure you thought I was doing nothing about this, but have been asking
around to different people. As best any of us can ascertain, this change to
the Leader length for BK was made a couple releases ago because we started
having trouble in upgrades of it inserting a null character. Indeed th is
makes sense to me, because when my library was on 3.0 we had sent a tape to
OCLC of test records to load and they were fine. Then after we had upgraded to
4.0 we sent the actual tape and they were garbage. I had to write several
PROCs to fix them, one of which involved getting rid of a null character in the
leader. Our assumption is, it would be ok to switch this back now, but (and
your not going to like this) like the first mate said in Hunt for Red October,
"not recommended" -- by me that is. This would need some serious testing which
I don't have the time for now. I think it needs to be passed to the LAD for
final say.
Matt
- --------------------------------------
To: mgoldner@geac.com
Subject: BK leader length
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 11:34:16 EDT
From: Eric Celeste <efc@MIT.EDU>
Matt,
We've got the BR/BK conv. on the fly thing worked out (thanks), but I
noticed an oddity while setting up the BR leader...
The USMARC format specifies that the leader's length shall be 24
characters, regardless of format. Every format in our Advance database has
a 24 character leader _except_ the BK format. Do you have any idea why the
BK format has a 6 character length on our system?
I made BR similar to the other formats (5 elements, 24 characters long)
instead of similar to the BK format. But I'm still wondering why the BK
length is so short.
...Eric
Eric Celeste / MIT Libraries / 14E-210A / 617-253-0633 / efc@mit.edu
------- End of Forwarded Message
