As we’re now live on UC Library Search and using the shared Alma system with other UCs, this seems a good time for the Cataloging and Metadata Services Department to update our library colleagues about what we’ve been doing during the remote working period to prepare our catalog data for UC Library Search.
We have prepared a couple of blog posts which give a brief taste of some of our efforts—one from Kelsey Rico about creating holdings statements that make it easier to understand exactly which volumes we have on our shelves, and one from Alyssa Hernandez explaining some of what we have done to preserve local data in our catalog.
These are just two examples of what we’ve done to prepare for this migration. The past year has been an excellent opportunity for us to focus on data cleanup to ensure that we were as prepared as possible for the migration to a shared catalog. We’ve also taken the opportunity of remote working to complete other data cleanup work. For example, Hiro Minamino worked with music scores with accompanying material to ensure that each score or part has a single item record and barcode. This eliminates extraneous item records and barcodes, simplifying the record display and removing unnecessary information from both Alma and UC Library Search. All members of the cataloging department have done various aspects of clean-up over the past 15 months—these are just some examples.
As we’re returning to campus, we’re now able to finalize other tasks that we started earlier in the remote work period: for instance, identifying material on the library shelves that require additional cataloging work, appear to be duplicates, or are missing some crucial information (such as barcodes).
As you all know, one goal of UC Library Search is that patrons have more and better access to library resources than when each UC campus had its own library catalog. This means benefits not just for patrons but also for those of us who work in the catalog—we are able to profit from the work and collections of our colleagues throughout the system. But it has also meant that we’ve needed to adjust some of our procedures and workflows to ensure that our catalog information displays to those it’s relevant for (locally for UCI-specific information; more broadly for general information). It’s been a lot of work, but we’re very excited to start using the SILS and cataloging within the Network Zone!
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