-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Coding records for electronic resources
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 08:24:16 -0500
From: "Caplan,Ellen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Maps-l (E-mail)" <[log in to unmask]>

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The following is a brief announcement one of my colleagues at OCLC
recently
posted to OCLC-CAT.  I thought those of you who enter records on OCLC
would
be interested in this topic.
Ellen Caplan, OCLC

OCLC recently scanned WorldCat to identify records for electronic
resources
that were incorrectly coded in the fixed field as non-electronic.  The
number we found was much higher than we had hoped for--almost entirely
from
online input, not batch processing.  Accurate coding of this data in
fixed
field element 'FORM (Form of Item)' is critical.  OCLC software uses the
code in two essential ways--(1) for indexing in FirstSearch; in the
future
it will also be used for indexing through cataloging interfaces; (2) for
duplicate detection, both when records are batch imported into OCLC and
when
software that dedups WorldCat is periodically run.  If code 's' is not
present, the record will not be indexed correctly.  Lack of coding is
likely, too, to cause duplicates to be ignored and some records to be
merged
together when they should not be.

Please review your practices and policies to incorporate code 's' for
electronic resources in FORM.

Rich Greene
Senior Consulting Database Specialist
OCLC, inc.
6565 Frantz Road
Dublin, OH  43017
614-272-1154
800-848-5878
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