[693] in ad-lib
Re: serial items in opac
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ellen Finnie Duranceau)
Thu May 25 17:49:59 1995
To: Patricia Flanagan <patf@MIT.EDU>
Cc: efinnie@MIT.EDU, opac-lib@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 24 May 1995 16:03:16 EDT."
<9505242003.AA26955@rotch-ref-1.MIT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 17:49:31 EDT
From: Ellen Finnie Duranceau <efinnie@MIT.EDU>
Pat, Thanks for your comments and questions. I think we all
need to get the opac group and other public service
staff together with serials catalogers and serials
acquisitions staff to talk about serials issues in general, but let
me reply here for now. My comments appear within your message.
Ellen
|>
|> Ellen,
|>
|> I'm confused by many things having to do with the serials check-in
|> issue. Mostly by what a copy set will consist of, whether many or just
|> one will apply to each journal title, and when they are coming into
|> existence.
A copy set is essentially a subscription: it is a run of issues
connected to a bibliographic record, which all belong to one
subscription, one copy, of a serial title. If we own two
copies of a title--let's say Rotch and Dewey both subscribe--
then there would be TWO copy sets hanging off the same
bib record.
Copy sets will be created over the next year or so, as we
go into Advance with piece in hand and set them up, either
by generating a serial order (which automatically creates
a copy set) or by actively creating a copy set in the
serials module (which we expect the processing staffs will
be doing for many orders at first, since no orders will
exist in the system at first).
I do like the new screen that provides/will provide the holdings
|> and individual item listings. I liked the way the holdings for Cell
|> appeared. I figured that even though they are a little jumbled, you can
|> still follow them.
|>
I'm glad you do not find the holdings list too awful--this is
a good sign that perhaps it's not as bad as I thought.
|> I checked a couple of other titles, Newsweek and Library Journal.
|> I looked at many others, but none were barcoded, I guess - they had
|> no check-in info at all. As is, the system indicates that both
|> Dewey and Humanities have Newsweek from Feb., 1995 *only*. Within the
|> Humanities list of items, there is one item for vol. 127 no. 1-12,
|> Jan-dec. 1995, bound, which can't be possible. Library Journal has no
|> holdings listed, but indicates that the last issue received was
|> December, 1994 - I would also question this.
|>
I'm afraid the current Advance system is full of strange things
caused by our testing. For both Newsweek and LJ, we've been
banging around doing odd things just to try out features,
such as making something appear as "bound," for example.
The summary holdings statement that starts with 1995 was automatically
generated by Advance--this is an option we have now turned
off and will NOT be using, for many reasons. So you will
NOT see a similarly formatted summary holdings statement
in the real Advance when we go live. This means, of course,
that you won't have ANY summary holdings statement in that
position on the top of the record until someone puts one in on the copy set.
This is one of my concerns in terms of public service. The item-level
summary holdings statement will appear within the list of items,
but we don't know if it will appear first.
I hope these comments also address your concern for inaccuracies
noted below. I think our major problem is confusing accurate information,
not inaccurate information.
|> I haven't checked a very big sampling, but my concern is less that we
|> will be providing jumbled information than that we will be providing
|> innaccurate information. If the Newsweek and Library Journal records
|> are at all typical, it would have a big impact on public service, and
|> particularly on PR. Do you have any indication of what is causing these
|> innaccuracies to appear and whether this is tied to the copy set
|> problem? Is the correction of these sorts of things also indefinate,
|> also, timewise?
|>
|> Pat
THANKS again for your questions and comments and for taking
the time to really look at this. I hope we'll all be talking
more in the near future.
Ellen
