December 11, 2006
'K' Level WorldCat Bibliographic Records from Midwest Tapes
OCLC staff have advised member libraries that bibliographic records input by Midwest Tapes (TEFMT) for sound recordings, like the similar (but usually more detailed) TEFMT records for videorecordings, are created from prepublication data. These data are often incomplete and frequently are different from what one finds on the final published versions of the resources.
When the videorecording or sound recording record has only the symbol TEFMT in field 040, the data have been entered by Midwest Tapes, working from extremely preliminary information. When a subfield $d containing either RCS or TEF has been added to field 040, it indicates that OCLC TechPro staff have upgraded the record with additional information supplied by Midwest Tapes.
OCLC strongly suggests that users not take the data in these records at face value and to err on the side of upgrading the records when you have the resource in hand. This is precisely why they are input at Encoding Level K, so that most users can lock, upgrade and replace them with the correct, published information. OCLC asks that when you have such an item in hand that you take the opportunity to upgrade the record, change the Encoding Level to I and receive Minimal-Level Upgrade credit. The increased Encoding Level will also be an indication to other users of WorldCat that the data in the record reflect the published resource rather than the faulty and incomplete prepublication data.
