I first want to thank everyone for their help. I posted my question on a
Sunday and was blown away by the number of responses I recieved by that
night. Thanks again
Someone asked me to post a hit for my question which was: I am a new LMS
and trying to prepare the collection for future automation. My problem is
that I do not have a shelf list for a good percentage of the collection.
The ones I do have will probably get weeded out. So, my question to you
is when creating a shelf list what is the LEAST amount of information
needed to facilitate the automation processes. As I am by myself with an
"occasional" volunteer I don't want to do unnecessary work.
Lori Goldman, LMS
Rockland Country Day School
Congers, NY
Title
Author
ISBN/LCCN
and if you know where the funding came from add that.
I had a similar situation: many books on shelves with little or no shelf
list information. The first thing I did was to check the collection against
the existing shelf list. I also weeded the collection at the same time.
There is no need to add materials to the databases only to remove them soon
afterwards.
I pulled any books without shelf list information and put them in a separate
area.
Then I found out exactly how much information my vendor needed to input data
for the conversion. We had Winnebago (now Sagebrush) and they wanted very
little (title, author, date of publication, publisher and ISBN if known).
Then I used an electric typewriter and catalog cards on a roll to input the
information for each book myself. I did not have a reliable aide and it was
easier and quicker to do it myself.
I had a large collection (over 13,000 materials) so I eventually got parent
volunteers to help with the checking against the shelflist. They didn't weed
but did pull anything that without a shelf list card. I was forced to use
parents because I was given the unreasonable time frame of three and a half
months to get the shelf list cards shipped to the vendor.
If I had it to do again, I would have done all the checking against the
shelf list and done the weeding simultaneously.
Good luck,
I would think you should weed first (and weed hard). Then spend the money
for a year's subscription to Follett Alliance or a similar program that will
let you download catalog records and work mostly from the books rather than
the shelf list. Most shelf lists are so outdated they're almost not worth
bothering with. Just my opinion, of course.
I'd say title, author, ISBN (which will identify the publisher, etc),
call number, and price... although the ISBN will identify everything
but your local call number.
Lori,
The bare minimum ...
call #
author
title
edition
publisher & copyright
isbn & lccn
title
Library of Congress number
and/or ISBN number
That is the least amount of information you need. It is, in 90% of the
cases, all
you need. When you're doing a retrospective conversion, you generally type
in the
Library of Congress number and choose the title from the list presented.
You don't
have to be complusive about publishers and page numbers. The point is to
get the
title and description into your new on-line catalog as quickly as
possible. There is
a whole lifetime later for changing and refining.
The ISBN number will get you a record for the exact book on your shelf,
but you
won't get as many hits using it.
Author, title, some kind of standard number, such as ISBN and/or LC number.
Technically the least amount would be the ISBN number but I don't think
that's realistic. Sometimes even LC doesn't have the ISBN number in it's
record. You should also probably have the LC number and the author and
title. That'll probably do for most books. If it's a reprint of a classic
you might include the publisher.
Good luck.
Author, title, copyright date, call number, ISBN or LC number should be
sufficient if you are upgrading your records via a company that will return
to you full Marc records. If not, then you do need to add subject headings,
notes, etc. for access points for patrons to find something. SAISD sent our
records out to be upgraded. Hand entering is a futile exercise... you won't
have enough time to enter all that should be available.
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