Summary Our previous system allowed downloading of records from OCLC in real-time. The transaction was handled by a central PC, but the operation was mostly transparent to the staff user. In the future, Smartport access to OCLC will provide similar, real-time downloading of records. Rather than using a file on the local PC workstation, we use shared files on the network server. Staff members select the appropriate export destination file based on the library for which they are downloading.
Work is batched by library, so that setting changes are kept to a minimum.
Since UVA does not edit records on OCLC, we do not add 949 holding codes to OCLC records before downloading. Files of downloaded OCLC records are saved on the server for several days, as a backup. Standard renaming conventions are used for each library. For example, 'arts.20' is renamed as 'arts'. The use of standard names allows us to run the bibload reports without manual intervention.