AnALEPHaDay

August 15 -- LTI Update
Of the 119,576 LTI records, 89,899 LTI records loaded. Bill is hoping that the remaining 30K will be loaded by Wednesday night.

August 13 -- Manually Claiming an Order
A quick reminder: If you want to manually claim an order (via the Claims node in the Orders tab), please use Letter Format '01 - Claim (no vendor notes)'. This is the only letter that has been formatted so far. Please do not use the other choices in the drop-down list. We hope to have the other letters formatted soon. We'll keep you posted!
**Please note: This instruction is for claiming ORDERS only. It does NOT refer to claiming serial issues in the Serials tab.

August 7--Loading of LTI records
Bill Jones has loaded approximately 35,000 of the 115,000 LTI records; he expects that the remaining 80,000 LTI's will be loaded by Friday August 15.

August 6 -- Orders for Non-Book Materials
Please be advised that ALL-CAPS Bibliographic records created in association with monographic or standing orders for non-book materials (e.g., CD's, DVD's, etc.) generated since July 14 in ALEPH will have incorrect Leader and 008 values. The system is providing default values for these bytes as if they are print materials. Please be sure to correct the values when cataloging these materials. This may require the use of the "Change Record's Format" command in the Edit menu. We are currently working with ExLibris to resolve the problem.

August 4 -- Community Macros (Deadline for Submissions)
We've received many terrific suggestions for text-string macros (see Update of July 29). Keep them coming. But please try to get them to Matthew (matthew.wise@nyu.edu) by Friday, August 8. The Cataloging Working Group will be discussing the suggestions soon thereafter.

July 31 -- Arriving Cat Sep and Analyzed Standing Orders
New documentation is available for Acquisitions. "Arriving Cat Sep and Analyzed Standing Orders" is now available on the TSD ALEPH Implementation wiki page: http://wiki.library.nyu.edu/x/FgDw . Scroll down to "Documentation", then "Arriving and Invoicing" section). If you receive standing orders and would like to schedule a training session, please let Meg know meg.manahan@nyu.edu .

July 31 -- Binding Migrated Serial Items
Procedures for processing serial volumes sent to the bindery during the freeze period has been posted on the Wiki. Serials Post Migration: Processing Bindery Returns for Migrated Items is available at: http://wiki.library.nyu.edu/display/TSD/ALEPH+Implementation

July 30 -- Loading of LTI Records
-- Bill Jones has started loading the 115,000 records in small batches
-- So far he has loaded about 10,000 records
-- Right now loading is slow because he is trouble-shooting some problems; but he hopes to pick up the pace. This week Bill is at the ExLibris ELUNA conference, but is still trying to load records remotely
-- The 115,000 records with the LTI code are all records created (either as acquisitions or cataloging records) between February 26 and May 9
-- Records with the OWN=LTI field cannot be edited, so we are all anxious to have the remaining records loaded. We will send out updates on the loading

When a HOLdings record is created from a vendor record, it will add a call number if there is text in the 050 or 090. Eddie had one today with "class" in $h and "item" in $i; I've seen that text in 050 on Yankee basic records. Aleph will just help you out by putting whatever's in 050 in the HOLdings. Eddie also reminded me that the call number won't show if the Temporary Shelf Location box is checked. It should be unchecked if the book is ready for end-processing (labeling or bindery).

August 21 -- Common Text-Strings
A few dozen common text-strings have been added to ALEPH to make it easier to add a note like "Includes bibliographical references" or common subdivisions like "-- New York (State) -- New York." If you're adding a 504, just type the tag 504, tab past the subfield a, hit the tab key again, and a dropdown menu with two choices (with and without index) will appear. Highlight the one that you want, click "OK", and the text will be added to your record. Multiple subfields are marked by "$$" and will reformat correctly, e.g., New York (State)$$zNew York.
Note: You can also use the $$ shortcut to add multiple subfields in a horizontal string, rather than using F7 to add a subfield below the current one.
For a complete list of the available text-strings, please consult the "Common Text-Strings" document on the wiki (http://wiki.library.nyu.edu/display/TSD/ALEPH+Implementation), under Documentation -- Cataloging -- General. This document will be updated as additional text-strings are implemented.

Remember that F3 = SEARCH IN CURRENT BASE is probably most effective as your first hotkey search on a heading you're trying to verify or add. It gives you a response of all occurrences of your heading and nearby ones. Especially good for subject headings. It does tell you if there's an authority record for the whole string (in the codes to the right) and you can "expand" to see the authority record. While the text-strings are good for repeated text, they do not replace a hotkey and selecting the heading from the heading browse.

Further Search shelves:

Patrick checked with Ron and Ron approved moving the items on the Further Search trucks onto what were the Further Search shelves of old, before they were used to store unarrived ALEPH items during the freeze. The first three shelves all the way to the left nearest the door, have items that were received (as we used to say) in GEAC, so, although they are Further Seach with ACQ Items, you will have to depart slightly from the Further Search script because you will edit, rather than create, holdings/item information. You will be doing this for all items received in GEAC, such as those sitting in the "old" hold, so if you need help with this, let me know. [susan]

Duplicate barcode shelves:

I [Susan] have created a few shelves right opposite my office for books that have offsite barcodes, but which, because they are being cataloged for BMAIN, now need barcodes duplicated. We are going to ask Brenda to take this on as one of her routine tasks. Since many of these books will be riding down on cards, or barcode backing, to the bindery, Andrew suggested that we resume the practice of writing the barcode, minus its 31142 prefix, on the t.p. verso in pencil. I know it sounds deja vu all over again, but, he's right, barcodes can fall out, and we would have a verification that a certain barcode was associated with a given title. I'd appreciate hearing what anyone has to say about this before we officially adopt it (again) as our policy.

We were hoping that by Wednesday night the remaining 30,000 LTI records would have been replaced so that they could be free for editing. The good news is that the 30,000 LTI records were indeed replaced, but the bad news is that Bill Jones has discovered there are an additional 25,000 records with the OWN=LTI code (and it seems that it is just those 25,000 that everyone is looking for!)

Bill is analyzing where the 25K records had been hiding and he expects to get them ready to load very soon. He can't load them into Aleph until Corey Harper finishes some work on Aleph that has to be done in order for us to move to version 2.0 of Primo. Corey expects to be done with that work over the weekend, so that Bill can load the remaining 25,000 LTI's Monday night.

I know this is very frustrating and disruptive to workflows, and I am very sorry that the load is taking so long. Let's hope Tuesday morning they will all be loaded.

[Arno]

... is on wiki under documentation/cataloging/labelling [Arno]

http://wiki.library.nyu.edu/display/CAT/Procedures

This isn't really Aleph-related but I thought it was interesting. OCLC has been fine-tuning its system to improve performance. One of the things they're doing is processing new records in parallel streams. This means that as you create records, the assigned numbers may not be consecutive or sequential. Glenn Patton assures us they will be unique. This is from a message on the OCLC-CAT list.

It appears that all of the remaining records with an OWN code of LTI are now unlocked. We now return you to your regularly scheduled cataloging and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. [matthew]