Questions from the Floor
OCLC User Group Annual Meeting 4/4/2008

Q1: Why can’t OCLC open up the character set beyond MARC8?
A (Whitehair): The OCLC character set is in Unicode, but for the purpose of character validation, OCLC has agreed with other agents to limit the character set to MARC8 compatible so that it will be able to share with those whose system does not support Unicode.

Q2: What is the timetable to change MARC8 to unit code?
A (Whitehair): OCLC has already changed to Unicode. We did it five years ago. But OCLC only accept those validated characters that can be converted to MARC8.

Q3: How should we treat Waseda records? Are there any guidelines on how to edit the records?
A (Morimoto): They should be treated as regular records, by which it means that they can be edited, updated. There are guidelines on how to edit these records.

Q4: Should we or shouldn’t we create parallel records for Waseda records?
A (Morimoto): No, we should not create parallel records for Waseda records.

Q5: In RLG, some libraries, i.e. the Chinese Rare Book Project in Princeton, can go in and edit other libraries’ records, can they do that in OCLC?
A (Whitehair): OCLC does not currently support that functionality; however I will follow up on workarounds for you and will get back to you.

Q6: For Korean records with Chinese characters, it is not searchable using Chinese characters, is that a way to map between Korean and Chinese characters, so Chinese characters are searchable for Korean records?
A (Whitehair): It needs normalization to make it work, and there is no normalization in search function right now in OCLC, and it won’t come any time soon.  However, this is on our list of enhancements for possible future consideration.

Q7: Waseda records again. It takes a long time to clean up a Waseda record, sometime it takes longer than to create a new record, we feel pressured for the workload, we would like to know how helpful these Waseda records are, can vendor records treated as Institution Records and tied up to a master record instead? Are we going to have different guidelines for other vendor records?
A (Whitehair): IRs need to be tied up to a master record, so in theory, in order to treat Waseda records as IRs, we need to create master records first, otherwise, it won’t work. We hear people asking for more vendor records, but on the other hand, we hear people asking for better records, we need to do both, but not easy. You can use your enhance status or full level authorization to update these vendor records.

Q8: About enhanced status, what do you mean it is specified format by format?
A (Whitehair): The enhance status may only allow to do a specific format such as books, sound recordings, etc.  You can specify any format except serials.

Q9: To follow up with the enhance status, do we need to apply for a different login for different formats?
A (Whitehair): No, you can add multiple formats to a single authorization number.

Q10: If we are not allowed to change the Waseda records because we don’t have enhance status, should we ask OCLC to clean up the records?
A (Whitehair): You can always make changes to a master record and export it to your local system. If you do not have enhance status and the changes you need to make cannot be made with a full level authorization, you can send a request to OCLC to change the master record.

Q11: Comment on Waseda records: they are better, and do save catalogers time.

Q12: Since it takes a lot of time to clean up Waseda records, can we get credit for doing it?
A (Whitehair): No. I don’t expect that to happen.

Q13: For Waseda records, we are following the guidelines, what about other Japanese vendor records, do we use the same guidelines?
A (Hisako): Guidelines are for Waseda records only. It was developed in 1995 when WR are not compatible to LC rules and headings. Things have changed since. TRC records were in RLIN for years, and WR also include ATN, some are duplicates. The thing is these records are not intended for English users. That is where the confusion starts. These records are not Japanese version of OCLC records.  Consider WR, if your library likes the Japanese version of the WR. If your library does not like that, OCLC allow you to choose, but we need to be careful for duplicated records.

As for guidelines, it surely applicable, but not necessary apply to TRC records.

(Deng Shi): We always look for ways to do things efficiently; we need to look at what is the better way to deal with these vendor records. In reality, each of us is spending same amount of time to enhance same records. Why can’t we take data useful from WR to create a PR, so we can make better records, and English version and WR can be side by side? This is what we should do.

Q13: Do we have more information about CJK scripts in name authority records?
A (Whitehair): I don’t have enough information to report right now. We will be able to add to NAR and change existing NAR to add CJK.  OCLC is ready to support this functionality when LC sets the implementation date.

Q14: Do you make different authority records for each script?
A (Whitehair): No, you can add multiple 4XX fields to each record, so you can have multiple scripts in one record.

Q16: Will OCLC add authority records with CJK?
A (Whitehair): OCLC will add scripts to some existing records, but this will not cover all records.  You should not count on OCLC to add the script to all records, add them when you come across one, do your part. There is no date yet when LC will add CJK scripts.

Q17: For the WorldCat display, what is the order?
A (Whitehair): The WorldCat only displays master records and there is no way to go into IR unless you turn on the option to display the IR for a single match. The order of the display depends on the search. If you searched by title, it will display in alphabetical order of the Romanization of titles, (script is not useful). Also the order depends on selection. When the results are more than 100 titles, it will break down to years.

Q18: For each title, should there be only one record in OCLC, other than parallel records?
A (Whitehair): Yes, it should be only one record for each publication. When more records come into OCLC, the system will detect and will continually merge new data into the master record. The new OCLC functionality for duplicate detection will be able to identify duplicated records and fix them.
A (Sarah): For IR, it is possible for individual library to set up to choose if they want to see their IR or MR. LC records also have IR in OCLC.

Q19: For login level, does a library with full level cataloging can do new records and also update and replace its own master records (MR)?
A (Whitehair): Depends. You can change a master record if you have full level and the MR is created by your library only when there are no other libraries to put holdings on it. Once there are libraries put holdings on a MR  that was created by your library, you will need the enhance level to make change to it unless you are making changes that are supported with a full level authorization, such as adding a call number or subject in a scheme that is not already in the record, etc.

Q20: For IR, we found that some our IRs attached to wrong MRs.
A (Whitehair): OCLC is working on it. When you create a new one, then we don’t touch it.

Q21: If we want to update unresolved records at local level online, can we do that?
A (Whitehair): Unresolved Records are put in a file available to you on Product Services Web.  So if you want to fix the records online using Connexion, you can go ahead do that.  But when working online, please check to see if the record already exists. 

Q22: Is it true that LC records which are cataloged in the Voyager and loaded to OCLC, are not necessarily replacing the MR?
A (Whitehair): OCLC system will, when get records uploading, check for any existing records, if there is already a MR, the system will take the additional data from the coming records and add them to MRs and for LC records, the system will also mark them as LC. LC records do not overlay MRs.

Q23: For those unresolved records, we can update locally and load them back to OCLC, right?
A (Whitehair): Yes! You can:
--Change locally and batch load back to OCLC
--By doing that, it will not cause duplicates,
--If you have unresolved file, your main library should have received a notice. Contact your library first, and have your library to contact OCLC regional contact person to get it resolved.

Q24: For National Library of China, there are 1.5 Million records to load, do you have an idea what will be loaded?
A (Whitehair): We don’t load any duplicates. This is the first thing we do: we check for duplicated records. We don’t know how much duplicates yet, and how much more data will be added. We are working with NLC on adding Romanization to the NLC records. OCLC only scan Romanization for duplicates, if records do not have Romanization, we might load them all. We don’t have data yet. When data provided to us, we will evaluate.

Q25: We found that in OCLC, there are situations where same series sometime have different tag field (440, 490).
A (Whitehair): LC has stopped control series titles. You will see more 490 fields for series in more recent records.

Q26: Next Generation Cataloging Pilot project, are there more information available?
A (Whitehair): See URL in my presentation. More info will come in June when the pilot project completes. We have got some questions, but many of them are to do with the outcomes of the pilot project. Our next step will be the result of the project and analyze the results, discuss the outcomes and go from there.

(Compiled by Shuyong Jiang)