Cleaning up the catalog: getting your data in order

1. Cleaning up the catalog: getting your data in order

2. Start early If you are preparing for a system migration, it is best to do as much cleanup as possible BEFORE the migration. You’ll be working in the system you’re used to, and advance cleanup will make the migration process go more smoothly. Some of the major migration issues that happen can be prevented with some advance cleanup. Start as soon as you know you will be migrating.

3. Cleaning up: getting started • Determine your goal • Bring all staff in on the project • Find any resources available to help • Determine a timeline • Get very familiar with your library system’s reporting function • Start a list of known problems

4. How do I find problems? • Don’t worry, problems will find you! • Never assume a problem with one book is a “fluke” • Deliberately look for problems: • Run reports • Investigate all issues, even ones that seem small • Ask staff about any unusual things they have seen • Library shelf inventory • Use MarcEdit to validate and check records

5. Where to begin?

6. Weeding Removing unneeded books from the collection is a very important step. Time spent cleaning up records of these types of items is time better spent elsewhere.

7. Choosing what to weed • Age of item • Usability: items such as VHS tapes or laser disks • Multiple copies • Number of uses • Accuracy and currency of information (computer books from the 80’s??) • Does it fit into your collection development?

8. Other data to “weed” • Patron records: expired patrons • Patrons who owe money from many years ago • Unused collections • Unused locations • Unused material types • Lost items that have been lost or missing for an extended time

9. Revealing hidden problems Data problems can cause all kinds of issues, even if you’re not facing a migration: items may not display correctly in the catalog, or may appear in the wrong place or not at all. This leads to perfectly good items not being used. You know your data probably has issues. But how do you go about finding the problems with your data?

10. As mentioned earlier, sometimes problems will pop up and find you. If you find a problem with a record, you can think of ways to check if there are more like that one so you can fix them all. The best way to find problems with data that aren’t immediately obvious is to run lots and lots of reports. This is where getting familiar with your reporting function will come in very handy.

11. Catalog record problems • Long bibliographic records (especially 520 and 505 fields) • Call numbers with extra punctuation • Open orders • Diacritics in authority and bibliographic records • Unlinked items or short MARC records • Long and/or complex call numbers

12. Reports you can run: • Items with default barcodes • Duplicate titles • Bibliographic records with no holdings attached • Bibliographic records with no items attached • Items with no holdings and/or bib record • Items missing 245 field • Items with duplicate non-repeatable fields (such as 245) • Items that are not attached to a collection/location

13. Items by material type • Items by collection/location • Items with missing or incorrectly formatted 035 field • Suppressed records • Items in process statuses such as missing, lost, on order, technical services • Items on reserve • Items with non-standard format fields (049 field for example) • Items with no barcodes • Items with multiple copies (copy numbers: to use or not to use?) • Bib records with multiple holdings

14. If you are an OCLC user, consider a reclamation project. They will compare your catalog to your holdings in OCLC and point out discrepancies between the two. They will perform this service once per library for free. You can have it done again for a charge.

15. Priorities: what to do first? Problems that affect the function of the system things that can affect finding the item on the shelf The most obvious and easy-to-find problems may turn out to not be as important.

16. Pre-migration preparation • Identify which fields are local notes, make sure they will migrate • Electronic & print items on the same record: will they need to be separated? • Verify how call numbers will be mapped: call number in record should match physical item • Normalize data: data such as call numbers should be in a consistent format (same spacing, punctuation, etc.) • Check how the new system handles holdings records: holdings and items may need to be split pre-migration

17. Run as many reports in the old system as you can. Best to do as much clean-up as possible in the old system as that is what you are familiar with. • Document workflows: what will you need to be able to do in the new system? • Clean up electronic resources. Bring link resolvers up to date. • Make policy change decisions before rather than after migration if possible, then configurations in new system can be right from the start • Look at authentication options • Bring IT team in early

18. Making changes Depending on your ILS, you can most likely make batch changes to catalog records right in your system.

19. Using MarcEdit (FREE software!), you can make changes to records in batch. This can help when doing things like normalizing call numbers.

20. Marcedit resources • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0EmWxP2geg • http://marcedit.reeset.net/downloads • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP4x-4hcVQ4

21. If you have a large cleanup project going on, the work doesn’t have to all belong to the catalogers. This is an area where others can definitely pitch in. Some of the things our library did: Librarians shared the duty of weeding decisions Professors from different areas weeded books in their area Circulation manager weeded old patrons and old fine data Librarians helped withdraw books from the catalog SDLN made batch changes to catalog records Student workers did shelf inventory Cataloger fixed catalog records with problems

22. Post migration • Many of the same reports talked about earlier will work to find any issues with migrated records • Test configurations, checking out books, test everything! Have everyone test the things they will be doing in their position and report any problems. • Continue to involve everyone in training, decisions, and testing

23. Special thank you to Glenn Kerins, SDBOR Systems Librarian, for his help with MARCedit.

24. Questions?