Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Coming Soon to a Library Near You


(Assuming you live in Orem, that is.)

29 comments:

  1. .

    You are a hero.

    I haven't gotten my libraries to pay the cash yet.

    Does having it show up somewhere in WorldCat help future purchases?

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  2. Wahoo! Congrats! I hope they get the subject headings right. :S (Maybe I'll add better ones if they don't.)

    Th. - I don't know. My guess is that it makes more of a difference if it's available from a vendor.

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  3. Th.: What she said. Also, OPL doesn't really do WorldCat. We download from OCLC, but that's it.

    Katya: I'll see if they'll let me catalog it, since I'm somewhat familiar with the subject matter.

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  4. M.Fob - Are you saying that you don't upload new records to OCLC?

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  5. Yup--as far as I understand, anyway. OPL kind of prides itself on being an island unto itself, as far as the rest of the library world goes.

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  6. Huh. So, if you did the cataloging, it would just be locally, for the OPL OPAC?

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  7. Dude. Send me the MARC record when you get it worked up and I'll add it to WorldCat. After I add it, OPL can attach their holdings to the record. That way, it will (1) be in WorldCat, which will help any other library that decides to acquire it and (2) be available for inter-library loan through ILLiad. (Assuming that OPL isn't too much of an island to participate in ILL.)

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  8. Hm. You know, OPL does participate in ILL, so I guess that must mean their stuff is on WorldCat, right? I'm not sure how all that works; I just know that when I catalog DVDs I don't do any kind of uploading, and I don't see OPL holdings when I do a WorldCat search, but it's possible the records are uploaded in batches, and that I'm just not searching for the right things.

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  9. Well, there are a few possibilities.

    (1) It's possible to upload holding to WorldCat without uploading records. (That's what we do when we're doing copy cataloging -- we don't have to upload a new record because the record already exists, but we do have to let all of the WorldCat members know that we have the book, too.)

    (2) If you're searching Open WorldCat, you don't actually see all of the libraries that have holdings because OCLC is stupid and charges an extra fee or something to see the holdings. So you have to log in using FirstSearch or whatever the ILL folks use to see ALL of the holdings.

    (3) It's possible to do ILL without going through WorldCat / ILLiad. E.g., UMaine can do ILL through URSUS (the University of Maine system consortium), MaineCat (the the statewide consortium that includes a lot of public libraries as well as some private colleges), or WorldCat. So it's possible that OPL is a member of a local consortium and does ILL that way, but isn't at all affiliated with WorldCat / OCLC.

    Maybe I'll log into FirstSearch to see what I can figure out about OPL's holdings.

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  10. Next time I'm in, I'll ask and report back to you.

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  11. I couldn't get into the OPL catalog on Sunday, but I was able to get in yesterday and find some semi-obscure books held by OPL. Unfortunately, I didn't see any OPL holdings when I searched on those same books in WorldCat (through FirstSearch), so I'm led to believe that OPL doesn't have any association with WorldCat.

    Now I'm debating if I should still add the book to WorldCat, even though there won't be any holdings. I guess it can't hurt, right?

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  12. Might as well make it easy for future libraries that purchase the book.

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  13. True. And I could include a 505 note, which would be useful.

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  14. Yes, it would. Can you create an authority record for me, while you're at it?

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  15. Alas, no—we're not a NACO library. What would you want it to say, out of curiosity?

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  16. More specifically, I noticed that you wrote as "Ben Christensen" for Dialogue, but as "B. G. Christensen" for the Fob Bible (although you're back to "Ben Christensen" as an editor). What's your preference?

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  17. I would want my authority record to say that I'm a fabulous person.

    The switch to B.G. Christensen (I can't believe you revealed my secret identity on my blog!) was because the cult in the series of books I'm writing is called the Friends of Ben after a character named G.C. Benefield, and I wanted to simultaneously create a parallel between the character's name and mine, and not draw attention to the fact that my name is Ben. Also, when I was a kid I thought it would be cool for my pen name to be B.G. Christensen. And heck, it works for Jo so why not?

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  18. "and not draw attention to the fact that my name is Ben."

    Why?

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  19. Because that makes the fact that I named this fictional religious society the Friends of Ben look like a vanity thing. The fictional society is named after the real world writing group--which was kind of a vanity thing, but in a joking kind of way.

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  20. Ah, OK. But not because you're concerned that people will figure out the same person who wrote the articles in Dialogue also contributed to the Fob Bible, etc.

    Also, BYU thinks your first name is "Clay": http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/367950001

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  21. Nope, not at all. If I were publishing the essays now I'd do it as B.G. Christensen.

    That's funny that some BYU cataloger concluded that I and this Clay fellow are one and the same, and attached me to his authority record. I should probably correct them--if nothing else, for his sake.

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  22. That's funny that some BYU cataloger concluded that I and this Clay fellow are one and the same, and attached me to his authority record.

    Could've also been a bad authority file upgrade. I've seen a few of those in our catalog. But yes, please contact them and ask them to fix the OCLC record, as well, for the sake of the children, or something.

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  23. Erm, the cataloging information is in it and it is available from Ingram catalog, which is SOP (as far as I know). Is that the cataloging you're talking about?

    Also? It's been ordered straight from the printer, so I'm betting it's Orem Library.

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  24. Oopsie. Post in haste, repent at leisure.

    I have realized I have no idea *what* kind of cataloging information you're talking about, so I should've waited to post until I read the rest of the posts.

    I panicked. Total paranoia going on here. :D

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  25. No, you're right -- it does have CIP data! I didn't see a record in WorldCat and didn't think to check the physical copy, I think because I'm so used to Library of Congress CIP data, which is always in both places.

    It would still be easier for some libraries to add the record from WorldCat than from Ingram, I think. (Now I'm out of my depth, because I really don't know much about the cataloging info provided by publishers.)

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  26. As a micros publisher, I only qualified for the LCCN instead of the CIP. (IOW, I got shuffled off to the kiddie table at Thanksgiving.)

    I found a service that builds the catalog block. I haven't been interested enough to find someone to help me with it or learn how to do it myself. Just easier to pay for it.

    However, as you know, my first consideration is to make it easy to get, and I've done the best that I can with what I've got. :/

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  27. Oh, you've done a fantastic job of making it available, E. The cataloging Katya and I are talking about is the kind of detailed a record a library would make after adding the book to their collection--hopefully much more detailed than anything you'd see in CIP. Most libraries that do this kind of cataloging would upload the record to OCLC/WorldCat so that other libraries don't have to repeat the work, but Orem Library apparently doesn't.

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  28. The cataloging Katya and I are talking about is the kind of detailed a record a library would make after adding the book to their collection

    That was why I said "oops," because I finally figured out it wasn't about that little block thingie. :D

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