This problem with OCLC goes way back and is a moving target. When I worked for the State Library of Pennsylvania, we has a slew of booklets all that had the same 5 initial and ending words, something like "The sunset laws for Pennsylvania ... within the commonwealth of the state" I entered a bunch of these in OCLC and because the first 5 words and last 5 words were identical in each document, OCLC merged them all into one record. Very annoying, to say the least. I believe after that OCLC began looking at the entire title.
Question for Angie: has OCLC provided any way for both records to exist in their system? I know their de-duping is automated, so I am guessing some change to a specific field (not a note) needs to be added keep the records from merging again.
Colleen
Colleen R. Cahill
Digital Conversion Coordinator and
Recommending Officer for Fantasy and Science Fiction
Geography & Map Division
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington, DC 20540-4650
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Fax: 202-707-8531
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These opinions are mine, Mine, MINE!
From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Elizabeth J Cox
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 5:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OCLC incorrectly merging map records
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
MORRIS LIBRARY
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SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY
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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]<mailto:[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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