The following was a conversation between myself and one of the school district's cataloguer. After completing the first assignment, I was intrigued to know the process of obtaining MARC records for resources.
My question:
What is the process of obtaining data for MARC records? Are the records purchased through Follett or copied from The Library of Congress?
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Response:
Hi Mike
Good question!
Most of our MARC records we import from Follett. These are accessed through their Alliance Plus service. These are often the most complete records and require very little "touching up" from us.
We also import records from: AMICUS (Library and Archives Canada), SDM (Services Documentaires Multimédias) for our french records, Vancouver Public Library (VPL), Prince George School District, Gulliver (french again), and US Library of Congress. The Library of Congress uses LC subject headings, (we use Sears) so this is often not our first choice.
Lastly, we do also create original records. For these we use a variety of resources to numerous to mention, but our first source that we check is the OCLC WorldCat library. We are not able to download records from this library, but we can reference them for information.
Once the record has been downloaded/saved to our database, then we polish it up (add Dewey numbers, check name authorities, remove/add subjects, correct spelling mistakes , add summaries, etc. etc. etc.
My question:
What is the process of obtaining data for MARC records? Are the records purchased through Follett or copied from The Library of Congress?
--------------------
Response:
Hi Mike
Good question!
Most of our MARC records we import from Follett. These are accessed through their Alliance Plus service. These are often the most complete records and require very little "touching up" from us.
We also import records from: AMICUS (Library and Archives Canada), SDM (Services Documentaires Multimédias) for our french records, Vancouver Public Library (VPL), Prince George School District, Gulliver (french again), and US Library of Congress. The Library of Congress uses LC subject headings, (we use Sears) so this is often not our first choice.
Lastly, we do also create original records. For these we use a variety of resources to numerous to mention, but our first source that we check is the OCLC WorldCat library. We are not able to download records from this library, but we can reference them for information.
Once the record has been downloaded/saved to our database, then we polish it up (add Dewey numbers, check name authorities, remove/add subjects, correct spelling mistakes , add summaries, etc. etc. etc.