The Library currently has about 5,000 electric books attached to print records where the url has simply been inserted into the record for the paper copy. Many of these are government documents. It is our intention to bring down separate records for the electronic versions. In future separate records will be created as a matter of course, as is the practice of Te Puna and OCLC.
The participation of the UC Library in the OSMOSIS project necessitates, to some extent, these changes being made now.
There are numerous benefits to our users: Firstly there will always be a separate record for the electronic version. This will remove all of the confusion of a mixed model. If the use of format icons is implemented, the electronic version will be very evident. If faceted searching is introduced, having the separate record will allow searching for e-only. It will also have some benefits for us. Weeding the paper copy will not impact on the electronic copy.
5000 ‘electric’ books?
Great! some good weekend eReading
I’m a bit suprised by the statement that there are advantages for our users in splitting the electronic and print records for books.
Usability testing in the past few years would indicate that our users don’t like separate journal records for print and electronic – they don’t like separate records for different life spans of the same journal either. This surely must apply to books as well. I think that more than one format on a single record is less confusing than 2 separate records. A single record per item would also reduce the number of hits in any search, helping to reduce confusion that way as well.
At the most recent usability testing most participants did like icons to indicate the format of an item, but I wonder if it is necessary to split the records to include icons.
Catherine Jane
The next iteration of the Cataloguing Standard, RDA (Resource Description and Access) will recommend the use of a separate record for each manifestation (a FRBR term meaning http://www.collectionscanad… The technique of using a single record for all manifestations was developed as a way of presenting a library’s holdings of a particular title to users in a usable and meaningful display. Although the practice of describing multiple manifestations on a single record is widely used, it prevents libraries from sharing data effectively.
If you’re interested, more on RDA… http://www.collectionscanad…
Sorry, my comment was added inadvertently, before I’d made it comprehensible!
Try again: Links
Links to FRBR http://vocab.org/frbr/frbr-…
and OCLC info http://www.oclc.org/researc…
On second thoughts, I’ll leave it to you to untangle; this is the stuff cataloguers are grappling with at the moment!
In sum, if we use a FRBR-like display (as seen on WorlCat) for our Catalogue, we will need separate records. The National Library project OSMOSIS has shown that the separate records model leads to far less confusion and is necessary for individual libraries to identify exactly what they have.