Ted,
I second Martha's suggestion of getting the III
Automated Authority Control module. Your quarterly reports are already is
limited to only the authority records represented by a bib heading in your
catalog (it would be much, much worse if you were getting a report of all
changes made to all authority records). However, if you have the Automated
Authority Control module, you don't need to look at changes where the 'old'
version is in a 4xx.
We have also decided that there are too many changes for us
to track changes in non-1xxr fields (4xx, 5xx, 670, etc.). Therefore, I have the
reports limited to only cases where the 1xx has changed. Unfortunately, OCLC is
running a macro to update obsolete values in 1xx second indicators and
unneccessary final periods in the 1xx fields. Since these are changes to the 1xx
field, they are included in the report, but there's nothing we need to do for
those changes. These macros are likely to continue running until about next
spring. (BTW, please add your voice to mine in request BSLW add a routine to
ignore changes in the obsolete indicators and in final punctuation -- it would
make the reports much easier to deal with).
Bob Thomas
Integrated Systems Librarian & Principal
Cataloger
Western
Washington University Libraries
Bellingham, WA
360-650-7458
++++++++++
"Information that is hard to find is
information that will remain hardly found."
Has anyone
developed/discovered any techniques to speed up cleanup for the quarterly
authority updates from BSLW? We get a list of 6,000 changed headings
each quarter that have to be reviewed after loading the changed MARC authority
records. Our III system replaces the changed authority records but we
have to change the headings in bib records manually. There's no
way to automate the process (Global Update for individual headings helps a
little), but is there a way to speed up the review of headings in the
reports? The vast majority of headings don't require updates, as we
know, but I would like a way to quickly zero in on those that do, like the
headings where a death date is added. It's frustrating to have to review
6,000 headings when only 150 bib. records need changing.
In other
words, I am looking for a way to quickly identify the few changed authorities
that also have headings in our bib. records that need to be changed.
I
refer to the updates as quarterly, but others may get them more or less
frequently.
--
Ted Waller
Carlyle Campbell Library
Meredith
College
Raleigh, N.C.