[930] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
RE: Notes in opac records
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (JUDYK@LIB.TECHNION.AC.IL)
Wed Aug 5 19:40:05 1992
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1992 18:27:27 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
From: JUDYK@LIB.TECHNION.AC.IL
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
We use ALEPH, not NOTIS, so I'm not sure how relevant this is to
Kathy's request; but it may open an interesting comparison between
systems so I'm writing anyway.
Problem: to put a note in the authority file, e.g. one under "NASA
Contractor Reports" directing the user to search also in STAR.
For me this is trivial; I put a note in the authority file. Basically
I have two options:
a) Put a note in the authority record itself; in this case the user,
who searches for "NASA Contractor Reports" and gets a window to
the authority file, starting with the line before the one s/he
requested, doesn't see the note but sees an indication that this
entry has notes/references, which s/he may then request to see.
Notes may be "open", i.e. seen by everyone, or "librarian only",
i.e. seen only by those with relevant passwords. Obviously, things
you want to tell your users are "open" whereas "librarian" notes
are where we keep the "housekeeping" information on that record
(source, LC eval., date last checked, etc. etc.)
b) Make the note an "entry" in the authority file directly, so that
the user searching for, e.g., "NASA Contractor Reports" will see
it on-screen. The text of the authority entries on-screen might
look something like this (I am not attempting to show the full
info. you get on the screen, only the text of the entries):
NASA Bulletin [screen starts 1 entry before string requested]
NASA Contractor Reports
NASA Contractor Reports: the library has many reports not
included in the online catalog. Please search also... (etc.)
We prefer this approach since our users tend not to request to see
the notes/refs. for an item, being used to automatic see-references
that retrieve the records attached to the heading referred to --
so the users never have to know if the entry they're looking at is
the "real" authority heading or a reference to it, nor do they have
to note what the correct heading is and search for that. So they
rarely bother to look at references and would probably not ask for
concealed notes either. However, it has its problems. For instance, it
can be a problem to get the two lines to file correctly -- in the above
e.g. it's no problem, but there are cases where you want the note
to file *before* the real authority entry, e.g.:
NASA Contractor Reports: see following entries and also under: (etc.)
NASA Contractor Reports
This especially happens in the subject authority file (we use UDC
and have our own thesaurus of more-or-less natural-language see-references
to the numbers; perhaps libraries using LC, which is supposed to
provide most of the references along with the headings, would have
less of a problem).
The one thing I would *not* do is to put a note in the bibliographic
record, since again, users would not see it unless they asked to see
the full bibliographic record (when they ask for the records attached
to an authority file entry, they get a short format which does not
include notes, but gets several records onto one screen. To see the
full bibliographic record they have to ask for it.
Most users go straight from the short format to the holdings
screen and skip the full record entirely.) In version 3 of ALEPH
you can set up multiple viewing formats (up to 99!) for records
and the user can define which one is his/her personal default
format, but if the user doesn't, the system displays the default
chosen by the library, which will always be a short format since
most people don't want/need to waste screens paging through complete
records. It takes a user considerably more sophisticated than our
average undergrad. student (or professor, for that matter...) to
request a format different from the default, and how many would
decide they it should be the full format because there might be
interesting notes in it? Besides, what do you do when there are
several/several hundred records attached to the series authority
heading? Put the same note in all of them? How do you know which
record a user will ask to see the full text of?
However, Kathy's comment that by her they're thinking of solving
the above problem via a note in the bib. record suggested to me that
she can't, in NOTIS, put notes easily into the authority file.
Did I understand correctly? Seems very strange to me. Where do
NOTIS users put their "housekeeping" information? Or why can't you
enter into the file an "authority record" that's actually an
explanatory note?
Sorry this is so long, folks!
-----------------------------------------------------
| Judy Koren, |
| Head, Technical Services, Elyachar Central Library, |
| The Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology, |
| Haifa, Israel 32000. |
| |
| Email: judyk@lib.technion.ac.il |
| or: lbjudy@vmsa.technion.ac.il |
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