At the November PoCo meeting OCLC announced that plans were in high
gear for moving to a relational database management system for
WorldCat. As a result the PoCo asked that BIBCO and CONSER
participants brainstrom and develop a "wish list" to be sent both to
OCLC and RLG. At the recent ALA conference the BIBCO-At-Large meeting
Jennifer Bowen led a "visioning exercise" designed to create the "wish
list" that BIBCO participants would like to see utilities provide. The
following list is given in order of priority, #1 being on top.
1. Authority validation (Linked authorities)
2. Record distribution, i.e., record sharing, between utilities
3. Batch overlay, i.e., tape loading ability that will overlay lower
level records
4. Online SACO record contribution and ability to save SACO records
in the utilities
5. BFM (Bibliographic file maintenance)
6. Numerical file sorting of Series numbering
7. Import capabilities directly into the utility from remote
databases
8. Online classification record contribution
During a discussion of these items at the PCC Participants Meeting
later Sunday, others added
1. Better functionality from the fixed field coding in 007/008:
a. codes should be searchable
b. codes should trigger display constants
2. The ability to see all in process authority records in OCLC, as
members can do in RLIN
3. Ability of RLIN members to do CONSER work
4. OCLC credits for BIBCO members who provide a classification number
to records that did not contain a number in that system
5. ISSN records available in the utility databases
Full summaries of the BIBCO and CONSER meetings can be found on their
respective websites.
Time is growing short for formulation of a final wish list to present
to OCLC. Feel free to present further thoughts for discussion on the
matter to the list, or directly to me, at [log in to unmask]
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