Hit: Marc clean-up MITINET & Magician

["Sands, Michele" <MSands@ECFS.ORG>]

Thanks to all who responded to our question about cleaning up Marc records
on Follett.  Here are the results.
Michele
Michele Sands
Media Technology Librarian
Ethical Culture Fieldston School
New York, N.Y.  10023
msands@ecfs.org




I've enjoyed using MITINET/marc and am looking forward to the release of
MARC Magician.

I saw a demonstration of MARC Magician at our state conference and it will
have even more global updating abilities.

The product is easy to use and the tech support has been prompt, friendly
and very helpful.

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I use MITINET/marc and am somewhat happy about it.  I can't figure out how
to do some things and hope to learn at ALA, but for basic MARC clean-up
it's really easy.

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MITINET/Marc is the DOS version, soon to be replaced by MARC
Magician which is Windows version.  It's just finishing up
Beta testing and will be ready this summer.  I've used
Mitinet for about 5 or 6 years through many various
versions.  Mitinet (and Marc Magician) will correct 008
fields, indicators, and Magician has a spell check and will
convert all caps to regular type.  You can customize it to
flag records with errors in any fields.  I think it's great
and it's easy to do original cataloging with it.
I'm using it with Follett, and have cleaned up vendor disks
from Follett, B&T, Brodart, and Mackin BEFORE I import them
into the Follett system.
You can make specialized templates to fit your own needs. I
think it is well worth the price.

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   Our county uses MITINET/marc and I love it.  It allows me to check,
clean, globally edit, and manipulate my records from vendors before I
download them into my Follett Unison system.  It's a gem to use - offers
prompts/examples for each tag, inserts the appropriate
punctuation/spacing, and automatically changes indicators for you.  I
also "originally catalog" my gift and freebie items in MITINET so I can
double check before slipping them into the system.  You can print shelf
list cards (for those that need them).  And I use it to import my
existing records from Follett to clean 'em up.
    Sorry if I'm rambling... we've only 3 more school days and WE'RE
OUTA THERE!  I'm going buggy with inventory and end-of-year reports.
Happy Summer!!!!
Debbie

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I use Mitten Marc and it is great.  I don't have the newest version, but
I was trained on it.  I can download he records from the districts
catalog system and remove all the owners information and place me as an
owner.  This makes it easy when I forward my disk for additions to the
master catalog system.  It is great and easy.


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Saw your question about a product to help with database cleanup.  I've used
MITINET/marc for several years, & started doing training for them a year
ago.  When I began at my present school in 1998-1999, I inherited a
collection that had undergone a very poorly-done autorecon, in addition to
just being poorly cataloged.  I used M/m extensively to work on the database
& try to get it up to my standards.  I also use Follett (will upgrade to 4.1
next week).  Since M/m is a standalone product, MARC records can be
imported/exported between the 2 easily.  Importing records into M/m will
automatically correct punctuation and indicators and provide an 008 field
(with default values). How you'd use M/m depends on what problems your
database has & what needs to be done to it.  For items that are missing
information, there's nothing to do but find the items & fill in the missing
information into the correct MARC fields.  M/m allows you to create a group
of records based on your specified criteria & edit them globally.  I used
this to change call numbers for my biographies from an assortment of 92s
and 921s to B.  Since I was migrating from another system to Follett when I
began at this library, I used M/m to globally delete a MARC field that was
used in the former system, but not needed in Follett.  With M/m, you can
(either globally or to an individual record) add or delete fields or
subfields, find & replace text, force text into an empty field/subfield,
change control fields (the 008), and change a record from one template to
another (e.g., from book to videorecording).  The new Windows version, MARC
Magician, will allow for even more possibilities for use of the global edit
feature.

If I can answer any specific questions, or you want to know if it can do
such-and-such, I'd be glad to try to help.  Good luck!

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MARC magician is the Windows version of Mitinet/MARC. Go with the Windows
version if you have Windows 2000 because Mitinet won't work without DOS and
Win2000 doesn't support DOS programs.


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I an responding to your LM-Net for two reasons.

1.      I am not sure what you mean by clean-up

2.      I "fill-in" and there by clean-up via Alliance, a Follett product.

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I use Mitinet/marc on a daily basis and I love it. (Version 5.2)  They will
be
coming out with a Windows version soon, they did have a special sale price
for
5.2 with a free upgrade to Windows when it is available.  I have the
Mandarin
system--Mitinet was imbedded in the old version, but, in the Windows version
of Mandarin,  I found that it was easier to use Mitinet and then import my
records.

I guess that it depends on what features you need but Mitinet has been good
for me.  If you have specific questions, I'd be happy to help. Gladys

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Michele,
MARC Magician is the best you can get! I have used the DOS version of
MITINET for 5 years now and have just done the beta test for the MARC
Magician. It is great. I use this program all the time in my media center
for cataloging new items, globally editing my records and for importing my
vendor disks into to get them cleaned up before I import them into Follett.

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I have MITI net MARC and I have Follett software, I love it, it integrates
perfectly and sometimes even cleans up errors on orders cataloged from
Follett!  Good Luck


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  I used MITINET Marc with Follett's UNISON and am now using it with ATHENA.

So far I have used it for  cataloging at a workstation or at home, and then
uploading.  It seems simple and user-friendly and I have never had any
problem with it.  When I purchased the program to use with ATHENA at my
current school it came with the promise of a WINDOWS version upgrade.  I
haven't received that yet so can't comment.
  I would like to use it to check MARC records which come as part of next
year's orders.  I haven't tried that yet, and don't know if I will have time

to.


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