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Date:         Tue, 13 Oct 1992 08:28:10 PDT
              <ADVANC-L@IDBSU.BITNET>
From:         "(Mitch Turitz)" <turitz@SFSUVAX1.SFSU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Documents & Authority Processing

This is in reply to a few of the questions Debbie Hackleman asked on
10/13/92:

>
>           3.   Have you done an authority cleanup of your Advance
>           database?  We are most interested in those who had an
>           existing Advance database, created a tape of the
>           bibliographic records, sent that tape to a vendor for
>           cleanup, and reloaded both the authority tapes and the
>           bibliographic tapes.
>
>           I would also appreciate hearing from anyone who has devised
>           a method of handling ongoing authority work using the
>           Advance system.  Do you do authority work as a part of the
>           cataloging process before filing records?  Do you do it
>           based on reports generated from the Advance system?  We have
>           had some difficulty with existing reports giving us the
>           information we need in a usable format.  Have any sites
>           designed their own reports for ongoing authority
>           maintenance?
>
>
>
>           Deb Hackleman
>           Catalog Division
>           Kerr Library
>           Oregon State University
>           Corvallis, OR 97331
>           (503) 737-2949, 3181
>
>           Hacklemd@cc:Mail.orst.edu
>

Debbie - Here at San Francisco State we sent our OCLC tapes to a vendor
(I will not name the vendor because we were not happy with the results)
to have the headings cleaned up before loading both the OCLC tapes and
the authority records into Geac Advance.  The OCLC tapes were loaded
several months before the authority records were, so we did not see the
results until after the extensive indexing of the system could be done
(which took several months).

   Overall, the majority of the headings were cleaned up, but we have
MANY incorrect and duplicate headings which should have been eliminated.
To find the duplicate headings (i.e. headings which are identical letter
by letter, but may differ by punctuation, tagging, or indicators) we ran
the canned report from the Cataloging reports (RF175).  It printed out
over 3,000 pages of duplicate headings and we are SLOWLY cleaning these
up.

  As far as ongoing authority control.  Every week we are now running
the report for new headings added to the database (RF261).  There is one
small bug in the report - when it asks if you want 1 for New or 0 for
Conflicting headings, it actually is the reverse (0 for the NEW
headings).  Other then that, it actually works!  It lists all the new
headings added to the data base as of the requested date, listing the
heading, MARC authoirty tag, MARC bib record tag that it comes from, the
LCN of the bib record that it came from and the LCN of the authority
record it came from.  Of course, this means several hundred new
authority headings each week which need to be regularly evaluated, but I
think it actually is beginning to work for us now.  The retrospective
cleanup is something which we can only do as time permits and so I am
doing it along with some help from the Reference librarians (those whom
are not terrified by MARC).

  If you have any questions about it call or e-mail me.
--
**********************************************
* Mitch Turitz, Serials Librarian            *
* San Francisco State University Library     *
* 1630 Holloway Ave., S.F., CA  94132        *
* Voice: (415) 338-7883  FAX: (415) 338-6199 *
* Internet: turitz@sfsu.edu                  *
**********************************************

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