OCLC Holdings Symbols Task Group

To:                   Linda Barnhart (UCSD, lead), Sara Layne (UCLA), Xiaoli Li (UCD), Virginia Moon (UCB/NRLF), John Riemer (UCLA, Implementation Team Liaison)
From:               UC-OCLC Implementation Team
Subject:           Request for Assistance (Charge), OCLC Holdings Symbols
Date:                May 18, 2007


As you know, the University Librarians have given us the go-ahead to explore the feasibility of using the WorldCat Local service as the basis for a Next Generation Melvyl and to work toward the creation of a pilot for evaluation system-wide. They have appointed an Executive and an Implementation Team charged with coordinating the effort and asked us to proceed without delay.  While the Implementation Team is sufficiently resourced to guide the process, it is clear that we will need additional expertise to analyze, plan, implement, and evaluate the complex bibliographic and technical issues and workflows involved in the creation of this pilot. Moreover, given the tight schedule and UC’s wish to embrace the concept of rapid development, we need to develop an organizational structure that is capable of working in parallel and providing the above teams with rapid analysis and feedback in an iterative manner. In keeping with these objectives, we have broken the project into discrete tasks and assigned each to a small group of individuals for rapid study and response.

As recognized experts in the field, you have been selected to act as UC’s expert team on OCLC holding symbol usage in UC.  Linda Barnhart will be the lead and John Riemer will be your Implementation Team liaison to facilitate communication and filter questions that may have to be answered by OCLC. Your team may call on others for help, as needed, provided that the above caveats about rapid turnaround time and flexibility are kept in mind.  We also need to ask all groups to remain as flexible as possible since priorities will shift as details of the UC-OCLC collaboration emerge.  The details of the tasks and the charges may change, and new tasks may arise that need to be addressed.

For this team, the project tasks we’ve identified so far are listed below, in priority order, with target completion dates.

Charge: Call to mind all past and present OCLC symbols used by UC cataloging units and projects. Define which symbols equate to which institution. Develop any needed plan to clean up the holdings symbols in OCLC.  Articulate issues related to holdings symbol usage relevant to the UC-OCLC collaboration.  (Note: Implementation Team discussions with OCLC staff have clarified that the variable final character associated with an institution’s OCLC symbol is irrelevant to your work.)

For pilot:  Which symbols correspond to which institutions? Is clean-up required?  For Shared Cataloging Program or UC Shared Print materials, should a single system-wide symbol be set or do we need up to ten individual campus holding symbols?  How should Tier 2 resources be dealt with?  For materials stored in the NRLF and SRLF, what is the current pattern of holding symbols present in WorldCat?  Are any changes in our current practice warranted?  In using a new separate symbol for material that UC campuses share in common, what are the implications for resource sharing, Request, links to the local ILS and links to circulation information, the use of the OCLC Collection Analysis tool, post-reclamation-project tech services workflow, etc.?  In submitting a search for resources available at a particular campus, should we also expect to retrieve records with UC-wide holdings?
During pilot: Determine whether any holdings symbol clean up is needed in local systems and how it could be accomplished.  For Shared Cataloging Program serial records, should the separate record technique be adopted?  Determine any implications of changing holdings symbols, e.g. to reflect the output of mass digitization projects carried out on UC holdings.

Target Completion Dates: Compiling list of OCLC symbols currently and previously in use within UC: June 8; Addressing remaining “For pilot” issues: July 9.