Quick Cats: Best Practices
We need your help!
Please read on to see what help we need to keep the OPALS catalogs looking fresh. It takes a village, and we need all of our OPALS users in the WSWHE region to help us fix, tweak, and synthesize things for later, especially in the event of a future change in automation systems. Thanks!
Fun fact: Believe it or not, SLS does not have the ability to apply a change across OPALS catalogs. (We wish we did.) We have to apply changes individually to 63 catalogs. Anything you can do to assist in your own catalog would be wonderful.
Local Holdings (spine labels) in the 852 field
Which subfields do I use?
Within the 852 field in MARC holdings, here are the fields that are working the most smoothly:
- 852k: prefix and/or genre
- examples: FIC, E, "Graphic Novel", "REALISTIC FIC"
- 852h: Dewey number (such as 599.5)
- records delivered by vendors often have FIC/E in the h field. That's okay. Please do not input new records with multiple bits of info crammed into this field. (So, try not to put "E Smi" all in one subfield.)
- 852i: Author cutter (first three letters of author's last name)
- 852c: Location. This is optional, but some folks like to use this to say "ELEM" or to genrefy, or show location in the library ("blue bin").
Don't forget the ISBN on books! That's one of the most important parts for us. (You'd be surprised how many books are about dinosaurs, or the Titanic.)
Q: Can I edit a Quick Cat after I've entered it?
Q: How do I add holdings?
If you want to add holdings to titles you already have, you can click to go into the record, click "edit", click on the holdings tab, and add a holding to the holdings tab. (Always click 1 to add one holding at a time, or else it will automatically add consecutive numbers to your first barcode.)
Q: Can I change the series? Or add a series?
Make that series what you need to to make it work for your catalog.
Series is found in the 490 field. 490a is for series title, and 490v is for the number. Keep it consistent (with capital letters and spacing) so that when you click on the series, it brings up the whole series.
Example: Dog Man: Unleashed
490a Dog Man
490v book 2
It's okay to group edit a series to make the series labeling consistent. Holler if you need assistance with that. I do try to improve consistency of series labeling when I happen to catch them. Hoping that the "top down" capability that OPALS is working on for SLS will make that easier for us.
Occasionally you may see that you have put a number in the title, and we have taken it out. Other than Manga comics, the number isn't usually part of the title, but part of the series.
WSWHE BOCES SLS
Email: libraryservices@wswheboces.org
Website: http://slslibguides.wswheboces.org/sls/home
Location: 267 Ballard Road, Gansevoort, NY, USA
Phone: 5185813700