Hi, Angie. Thank you for bringing this to everyone's attention. As current MAGIRT chair and as a map cataloger, this is definitely something that the whole map community should be concerned about. With your permission, I will forward this to the members of the MAGIRT Executive Board and also to the WAML chair.

If others have had this occur, I think we would all be interested in hearing it.

Beth


Beth Cox
MAGIRT Chair (2015-2016)
http://www.ala.org/magirt/

ELIZABETH J. COX
Associate Professor, Coordinator of Cataloging & Metadata

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From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Angela R Cope
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 3:24 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: OCLC incorrectly merging map records






I just discovered another record from my catalog that got incorrectly merged in OCLC. The map is an OSS map from 1943 with the same title as another map but each have different dates (months indicated in a 500 note) and different map number identifiers (also indicated in a 500 note). See oclc number 793401057 that was merged (incorrectly) with 701552600. The title and date fields (008 and 260/264) match but the 500 notes described what distinguished the two maps from one another. My library doesn't even hold the map that OCLC now says we hold.



Is there a committee from MAGIRT or WAML that is working with OCLC regarding this incorrect merging of catalog map records? Should we -  map catalogers, special collections catalogers - be keeping a record of these incorrect mergers as we discover them and then reporting them as a unified group? I'm sure for every one we discover, there are many others going undetected.



I've reported this error via OCLC's error reporting method. We need to express some concern about the frequency of this problem to OCLC. Why are we entering data into a shared catalog if it's just getting deleted by their computers?




-Angie

Angie Cope
American Geographical Society Library
UW Milwaukee Libraries
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