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Date:         Sun, 4 Oct 1992 15:13:30 -0400
From:         "JUDITH HOPKINS AT SUNY BUFFALO" <ULCJH@UBVMS.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: OCLC tapes converted by BNA, Why?

    To find out what BNA did to your library's original OCLC tapes
you need to read the specifications that the library prepared for BNA.
They form a contract showing what you asked BNA to do and what they
contracted to do.

    To generalize there are several basic services that BNA offers.  One
is a deduping service.  If your library is like just about all others
there will be multiple versions of the same record on your OCLC tapes
(e.g., your original use of the record, addition of new copies, copies
for an additional location, corrections, etc.).  BNA will choose one
of those record uses (usually the first or the last, depending on what
you specified) and delete the others.  It also will deal with deleted
records and other special situations.

   Another service that BNA can offer is to update the headings on your
records by checking them against the LC authority files and updating
older forms of headings to the currently-valid AACR2 forms.

   BNA can also update MARC coding by changing all uses of certain tags
(which are now obsolete) to the currently-valid tag.  The same applies
to indicators, subfield codes, and fixed-length field codes.

   In addition to these changes to your bibliographic records BNA can
provide you with tapes of the authority records that matched headings
in your bibliographic records, and with minimal authority records consisting
of the heading in your bibliographic record and default coding for headings
for which thre was no matching LC authority record.

   As for why you are receiving more BNA output tapes than you supplied
input OCLC tapes, that too would be based on the output you contracted
for in your specifications.

  Of course BNA is the not the only vendor providing these services but
it was the one specified in the original question.  These general comments
would apply to the services provided by any tape-processing vendor.

   As for what NOTIS can load, it has been several years since we loaded
our records (which had been processed by BNA) but if my memory is correct
NSI can loadpure OCLC or RLIN tapes as well as those processed by BNA
or other vendors, but with different loaders as the vendor processing
introduces some changes in the records, e.g., location/copy/stamp information
from an OCLC  049 field is moved into a BNA 090 field with different
subfield codes.

   To summarize: read your library's BNA specification document.

========================================================================
Judith Hopkins                            VOICE: (716) 645-2796
Technical Services Research and Analysis Officer
Central Technical Services                FAX:   (716) 645-5955
Lockwood Library Building
State University of New York at Buffalo   BITNET: ulcjh@ubvm (OR, ubvms)
Buffalo, NY  14260-2200              INTERNET: ulcjh@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
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