SWAN will soon begin the process of having our members' OCLC holdings reset.
Earlier this year, OCLC offered members an opportunity to reset their WorldCat holdings free of charge. Because SWAN uses a local software solution to manage this process on behalf of our membership, we asked that members refrain from accepting this offer because it could upset our regular updates. After meeting with representatives from OCLC and other Illinois consortia, we have devised a plan to take advantage of the reset offer as a group.
The WorldCat holdings reset is a four-step process that OCLC will perform:
- Create a backup of Local Holdings Records
- Remove existing holdings for all institutions in the SWAN group
- Use a fresh report to set holdings for all existing materials in the SWAN catalog
- Restore Local Holdings Records for materials libraries still own
The result is a cleaner representation of holdings on WorldCat. Over the years as projects and changes to holdings maintenance processes took place, holdings have gradually drifted. ILL staff may occasionally receive requests for materials your library never owned or discarded in the past. This reset should help lessen the frequency of this.
We are unsure of the exact timeline, but the reset will take place in the next couple of weeks. We will provide more details as we discuss this with OCLC. The removal and reset together should take no more than a day. You may notice a brief lag in ILL requests as this happens, but all ILL operations may continue otherwise. You may be asked to cease maintenance of Local Holdings Records on OCLC for a brief period. We will inform you if this is the case.
Let us know if you have any questions about this project by submitting a ticket to help@swanlibraries.net.
