Decisions made during migration to Aleph
MCM in the 852 field
Date: Wed Nov 21 2001For anyone creating or editing holdings records in Aleph, it's okay to leave $a MCM out of the 852 field (okay to leave it if it's there).
793's
Date: Wed Sep 19 2001Many of us have been encountering 793 fields in Aleph bib records. These are title entries that were created automatically from order records attached to full bibs when they were migrated from Advance to Aleph. The result in the record is the title as it was ordered (i.e. in the same form as the 245), along with request and po numbers in a subfield g. The decision to have these 793s created accommodated a need of SerAcq to retain the original form of the title by which a SERM was originally ordered.
As catalogers and data base maintainers, we might encounter these for a variety of reasons, but one instance would be when we must move the order and its attendant item to a newly created brief record because the order had been attached to the wrong bib record. Depending on how many orders have been attached to the original, full bib record, there could be one or more 793s (these will appear in the Nav map in the OPAC module, as well as in the bib record in CATALOG module). When the full catalog record is "duped" to provide a new brief for the order and item to reside upon, the 793(s) will not only remain in the original full bib, but also in the newly created brief. The questions posed by Ray and me at the BasAcq meeting were simply these: should we worry about leaving or placing these (by duping) in this or that record, and, if so, what should we do about them?
The answer is simple. If you do see 793s, don't delete them; and if you don't see 793's, don't add them. Most importantly, if they appear in a continuation that happens to be a SRRM, it's imperative that you leave them be.