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Re: LDRs Keri Cascio 23 Oct 2007 18:39 UTC

OCLC has it on their list of enhancements for batchloading Local Holding
Records to build the summary field replicated from the 866 field when
there is only one LHR for the library and there is only one 866 field in
the LHR and from the 852 $z when there is only one LHR for the library
and no other holdings fields exist.

This was originally scheduled for sometime this calendar year, but it's
been delayed. Hopefully we'll see an updated timeline at the Local
Holdings User Group meeting at ALA Midwinter in January. It's not going
to help your workflow now, but you might want to think twice about
completely re-arranging everything if a solution is not too far off.

Be aware that ILL staff _can_ click through to view your full holdings
statement when they see "Local holdings available." If there are other
summary fields with more information, they might just prefer using those
lenders instead of taking the extra click.

There is another function in play that might affect your numbers. ILL
borrowing staff can filter their requests by volume and/or year when
using custom holdings groups. The ILL system will first look at the
853/863 coded fields to sort the results display with lenders whose
holdings match this year/volume listed first. If there is no 853/863
data, the sytstem attempts to interpret the free text field 866 data. If
neither of those are successful, then the Summary field data is used.
Because the 866 and the Summary field data are free text, there is no
guarantee that the system will be able to parse the information there,
and the resulting display order might not reflect the actual holdings of
a library.

-Keri

Keri Cascio
Librarian/Trainer
Missouri Library Network Corporation
keri@mlnc.org
1-800-969-6562 x813
http://www.mlnc.org