Reconciling OCLC
and Orbis
Managing a Bibliographic and
Holdings Synchronization
Between Yale University Library
and WorldCat
Melissa A. Wisner
Purpose of Presentation

Describing the process
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What is involved?
Staffing required
Timeframe
Programming required
Are We Done Yet?
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No!
Why do you want to come to this
talk?
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For any size collection a reconciliation is a detail
oriented project, planning, pre-processing,
OCLC processing, dealing with returned data,
maintaining the data
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Why do this?
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Living with your own standards—good or bad
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What is your database of record?
YUL Background
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Voyager ILS since 2002
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Approximately 8.5 million bibliographic records
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Member of (former) RLIN
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OCLC Participant—add pcc records, create IR
records in WorldCat, weekly holdings update,
some cataloging directly in Connexion, ILL
lender
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Early 00’s YUL did retrospective conversion with
OCLC
Standard Workflow between Voyager
and OCLC
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Weekly export to OCLC (staff flag records to
send as needed)
Sporadic OCLC Batch Matches over the
years
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Local program to identify “candidate” records by
encoding level and “UNCAT” status; send out to OCLC
as separate project; filter and reload any 1, 4, or 7 el
returned records and overlay the original
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Run LC Match once a month-similar process against
local copy of LCDB
Arcadia Grant
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Cultural Knowledge grant
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March 2009-March 2013
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$5 million/$1 million per year
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Cambodian Newspapers, Khmer Rouge
Genocide documentation, African language
materials and more…
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Layoffs and re-staffing
What Records to Send or
Exclude?
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Divided up by locations for staff review
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Uncovered some data problems we knew about and
didn’t know about…e.g. locations with no holdings in
them; locations that still had holdings we thought
had been migrated to new locations
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Most significant…outdated MARC tags, outdated
format codes, practice different from OCLC, dual
script records
What Records to Send or
Exclude?
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Sending approximately 6.7 million out of 8.5 million
bibliographic records as UTF-8
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Excluding:
 MARCIVE
 E-resource records
 Suppressed bibs
 Unsuppressed bibs with suppressed holdings
records
 In Process/On Order records
 UNCAT records**
Tracking our Records
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MySQL database created
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Bib IDs
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Exlcude Project ID (local tracking)
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OCLC Project IDs
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Reload Dates
Tracking our Records
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Used this to QA the results of the queries run
to identify all potential records
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Used this to push out files of bib ids by OCLC
project ID to be used later to extract correct
records to send to OCLC
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Tracking was/is a big effort of reconciliation!
Tracking our Records
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As records are prepared for loading back into
Voyager this MySQL database will be
updated with those date(s)
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OCLC will produce crossref reports and other
processing reports per each file, but these
are not concatenated into any form of a
relational database
Building an 079 Index in Voyager
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Ex Libris contracted to generate and update
Voyager indexes
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Created in both Production and Test
environments--took less then a day each
time; downtime required; $ for service
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Added 079|a and 079|z left anchored indexes
Building an 079 Index in Voyager
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Updated SYSN Composite Index to include new 079
indexes:
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019|a
035|a |z
079|a |z
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Indexes were mostly to assist staff in searching, but
also for bulk import profiles for ongoing loads
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Exploring how to use the new indexes in ongoing
EOD or e-resource loads from vendors
OCLC Pre-Processing
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OCLC IBM Mainframe limitations
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Sending records in 100MB limit/90,000 records
per file AND only 15 files per day
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Separating records with 880s from those without
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Additionally, OCLC is splitting out PCC records
from the YUS files
OCLC Pre-Processing
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Each set of files sent as a “project” with
unique ID
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Creating label files, tracking via spreadsheet
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Suspended weekly exports to OCLC
(9/5/2010-12/20/2010**)
OCLC Pre-Processing
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Deleting YUL IR records in WorldCat
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Why? Easier matching?
5.7 million removed total
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EBScan software process
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Match routines set:
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Example: match on this field and that or ….
Cross Ref Reports and Stats
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Sample
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Adding in prefixes of ocm and ocn
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Other statistical reports
Loading OCLC Numbers back
into Orbis
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Basic Process:
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Retrieve crossref report to be used as input
Script to de-dupe crossref reports by name*
Extract MARC record using Voyager API
BIB_RETRIEVE and crossref as input
MARC4Java Open Source to parse and update the
MARC record*
Remove any version of *OCoLC* *ocm* *ocn* in 035|a
Insert new IR number from crossref report with a prefix
of (OCoLC)
Loading OCLC Numbers back
into Orbis
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Basic Process:
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Comparing 079|a to crossref report—if same, move on,
if new, just add and move on, if different, update with
new one and report out old one
Remove any 079|z and report out
Prepare new file of MARC records for bulk import
Report out log summary of process, errors
encountered, discrepancies in 079|a
See handouts!
Loading OCLC Numbers back
into Orbis
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Will also be our new permanent workflow
post-reconciliation—maintenance of these
control numbers!
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Cornell, Columbia and Stanford all used
similar processes…
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Original hope was to load 250,000 records
per day 4 days a week=estimated 6 weeks to
reload everything back into Orbis…
Loading OCLC Numbers back
into Orbis
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All depends on timing…OCLC process 80K records
in 1-2 days for 6.7 million bibs it is 1.2 million/month
or 2.4/month or 3 to 6 months total to process our
data!
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We can keep pace with loading updated MARC
data, but waiting 6 months is a big deal
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Need to keep 1 day a week for all other load activity
in Orbis
Loading OCLC Numbers back
into Orbis
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Run a keyword regen once a week—even
though keyword index not being updated
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Program to extract and update MARC records
can process 80K records in 15 minutes
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Bulk import run no-key takes 2 hours to load 80K
records
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Minimize the loss of any staff changes
Handling Errors
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Reports from OCLC with no match records
(validation errors)
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Correcting anything in OCLC?
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Correcting records in Voyager then resubmitting post-reclamation?
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See handouts!
Processing a “Gap” File
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Suspended weekly exports to OCLC 9/5/2010
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Extracted a version of the bib record between
9/8/10 and 9/10/2010
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Identify and extract all changes and new records
from 9/8/10, that have an 079|a and the last
operator in History is not OCLCRECON
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Send to OCLC as another one-off project
What Staff Will Do During
Reconciliation
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No processing of holdings in OCLC
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ILL OK
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Will not create IR records so as not to affect
matching
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Work in Orbis as normal otherwise
Modifications Needed to Resume
Weekly Exports to OCLC
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Two file streams needed-one for archival
materials and one for everything else
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PCC records will be split off once at OCLC
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YUM records split off once at OCLC
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New process/program created
Lessons Learned So Far
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Consistent application of standards across
cataloging units (Suppressed, Suppressed!!!, In
Process records, etc.)
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What is your database of record?
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How much time to spend on fixing records so they
can be sent?
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Maintenance of the control numbers long term
Questions?
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Thank you!
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melissa.wisner@yale.edu