[669] in ad-lib
Lists of serial items in OPAC
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ellen Finnie Duranceau)
Tue May 23 17:24:36 1995
To: opac-lib@MIT.EDU
Cc: efinnie@MIT.EDU, efc@MIT.EDU, btraves@MIT.EDU, standish@MIT.EDU,
gyoung@MIT.EDU, mgm@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 17:24:20 EDT
From: Ellen Finnie Duranceau <efinnie@MIT.EDU>
Today I was exploring resequencing of serial item records
and discovered a "feature" of Advance that I would like to bring
your attention.
BACKGROUND: When we have created items in CIRC for bound periodicals,
these items will migrate to Advance "unlinked" to any
copy set. They will appear in the OPAC as an unsorted
list of volumes (items). We are also going to have the summary
holdings statement currently located in our bib records migrate to
become one of these items "unlinked" to a copy set,
but attached to the bib record. What this means is that the patron
will see a holdings display of an unsorted list
of volumes, among which there will appear a summary
holdings statement, with the distinguishing feature
of "serial" in the status line.
Once a copy set is created, all of these items need
to be linked to it, or they will not be visible
in the OPAC any longer. The linking process is
quick, but complex when we have more than one
copy of a title.
IMPACT: It IS possible to rearrange the list of items to
appear in chronological order (or, I imagine you
prefer, in reverse chronological order). BUT
the resequencing is VERY cumbersome. It must
be done item by item, telling the system where
to move a given item in the list. For titles
with enough items to run onto more than one
Advance screen, this will be VERY labor intensive.
Thus, we as a system probably won't be able to
resequence the items early on in the process of
implementing Advance. Having summary holding statements
in the copy set (which would appear at the top of
the screen and stand out for the patron) would
help, but we also won't be able to instantly
create copy sets and summary holdings statements.
So the bottom line seems to be that for an indefinite
period, patrons are going to be confronted with
some unorganized serial holdings information. They
will NOT have the bib record's holdings information
available to them where it stands out (say at
the top of the list of items) unless someone
has gone in and moved it there, or unless it
happens to migrate to that position during the
second GMA. (Grant, do you know if it will?)
This seems to me to be a problem from the public
service point of view. I would appreciate it if
you could look at an example of what I mean
and let me know -- or Grant know-- your impression
of what the systemwide impact will be. You can
look at Cell, for example, which is LCN 10295906,
issn 0092-8674. I have moved the top line and the bottom
line, but otherwise the list of items for this
title is representative of what the patron would
see before we created the summary holdings statement
in the copy set and/or resequenced the list. There
would also be a summary holdings item somewhere
in the list. You can also look at any other longstanding periodical
title for a library that has been barcoding its serials.
This is difficult to describe in words and if I've
been confusing, please call....
Thanks, Ellen Duranceau
