AnALEPHaDay

Changing a Record's Format
Remember that if you ever need to change the format of a Bibliographic record, be sure to change both the ALEPH FMT code (under Edit -- Change Record's Format) and the Leader byte 06 before attempting to save the record to the server. You'll get an error message if the FMT and LDR are out of sync.

BIB System Numbers
It has been officially decided that when we are speaking or writing about a Bibliographic record's system number, it will be more efficient to omit the leading zeros. For example, if the 001 field has "000529628", we will say or write only "529628". [matthew]

Here's the BIBCO narrative that I submitted to the Program on Cooperative Cataloging:

NYU has now migrated from Geac Advance to Ex Libris Aleph, with Day One on the new system in mid-July 2008. While we were able to catalog titles entirely new to the database, many cataloging workflows had to cease for a time between early May and late summer. Some things are now becoming routine and some are less so but we hope that BIBCO contributions will increase soon. Our principal BIBCO cataloger has been working on a special project that is mostly not BIBCO-able.

Our participation in other PCC programs was also less during the migration but we are mostly back on the NACO, CONSER, and SACO path.

Our normal workflow includes taking much copy from OCLC WorldCat and a recent discussion on the PCCLIST talked about the nature of minimal records and BIBCO standards. We collectively need to have a model that allows us to do some of the building of BIBCO records mechanically or through accretion of metadata from institutional records or other record loads. OCLC already does considerable building of the master record from incoming records; what we need is something more like the metadata that is becoming usual in NewGen environments. If someone adds a tag or review or picture, that becomes available in the master cluster. Not a BIBCO record, but a BIBCO cloud of metadata for a particular manifestation of a work/expression.

Do not worry about the Character Coding Scheme in the Leader. Records that came over from Advance are coded "a" for Unicode. Records that are imported from OCLC are blank. The value will be fixed to "a" when the records are exported from Aleph. All of our records are in the Unicode scheme.