A c t i o n f o r L i b r a r i e s — M a y 2 0 0 1

BCR netLibrary MARC Record Service to Cease:
Alternate Service Available

By Regan W. Harper

In December of 2000, OCLC made available the first batch of MARC records for the BCR consortial collection of netLibrary titles via the WorldCat Collection Set service. This first batch contained 3, 181 titles. Since then, subsets have been created to include records for all additional titles purchased since October 2000. Currently, there are two additional subsets, with more on the way as titles are added to the collection.

Previous to the availability of the WorldCat Collection Set, libraries could obtain their records either by copy cataloging the records themselves or contracting with BCR's netLibrary MARC records service. This service, though still active, will be discontinued on June 30. WorldCat Collection Set records for netLibrary titles are available at a substantially lower cost than regularly cataloged records and can be globally edited to meet your library's needs. For more information about the WorldCat Collection Set (WCS) service, visit the OCLC WCS Web page at: www.stats.oclc.org/ wcs_list.html.

Users who subscribe to the AutoCat electronic mail list may have seen a reference to issues with netLibrary MARC records on OCLC. Libraries have reported that fields are missing from some of the netLibrary MARC records received through the WorldCat Collection Sets service. In particular fields 6xx, 7xx and 830 are missing from some netLibrary records.

NetLibrary released this statement on the AutoCat mail list recently:

"The reported problem was caused by a programming error that affected records created in the early stages of our cataloging project. This has been corrected in our current set of eBook MARC records available through netLibrary and in all netLibrary eBook MARC records submitted to OCLC beginning in summer 2000. We are dedicated to creating quality records for our library customers to use, whether the records are obtained from OCLC or directly from netLibrary."

The number of records affected is currently unknown, but OCLC plans to run a macro to locate these records and correct the problem. Once the master records are corrected, OCLC will repost files for the netLibrary group sets in WorldCat Collection Sets. OCLC estimates that the master records will be corrected by the end of April and that they will post new files of netLibrary group records in May. Libraries should be aware that the problem affects netLibrary records obtained through WorldCat regardless of the method used to retrieve them.

Libraries using netLibrary records via the WorldCat database should be aware that any records they receive between now and the time these records are corrected may contain some of these problems. Please keep this in mind when placing any netLibrary MARC record orders. Users may wish to download the records now, then download the corrected file later on.

For questions about this issue, netLibrary or WorldCat Collection Sets in general, contact Regan W. Harper (rharper@bcr.org) at the BCR Aurora office.

BCR Publications | Table of Contents

BCR netLibrary MARC Record Service to Cease: Alternate Service Available

BCR netLibrary MARC Record Service to Cease:
Alternate Service Available