-------- 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]> ------------------ 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 [log in to unmask]