News

Our Bibliographic Services team is planning a round of serials data cleanup over the next few months. We want to target item, MARC holdings, and serial control records that are no longer being used. Outdated item and MARC holdings records both present misleading availability to our patrons. Unused serial control records prevent the deletion of discarded items. To better target candidate records, we have created a brief survey on serials topics. We would like to have one representative of each member library fill this out: Serials Collection Survey. If possible, we'd like to receive your...

Many SWAN libraries have requested a limited or restricted user profile to assist their communities in offering library services to the housing insecure. A universal user profile, LIMITEDUSE, is available to ensure consistent services for these patrons. LIMITEDUSE User Profile This profile is available for all SWAN libraries to register patrons for limited use of library resources. The parameters of the profile include: 1 year expiration date Charge Limit = 5 Hold Limit = 5 Bill threshold = $10.00 Libraries may determine internally when and to whom these LIMITEDUSE cards will be issued. When...

SWAN’s OCLC holdings are now up-to-date, and we are back on our monthly cycle. With the migration of our three new libraries last fall, we used the SWAN-developed OCLC Holdings Manager (OHM) and the OCLC WorldShare Management tools to perform a reclamation of their holdings. This ensured the new libraries’ OCLC holdings reflect the SWAN catalog. We developed this reclamation process to avoid the time and expense of having OCLC perform it on our behalf. This work is now also complete. SWAN libraries’ holdings are current on OCLC up through March 3rd, the date of our last extract. The next OCLC...

More opportunities to connect, share, and learn have been added to the SWAN calendar. Register on L2. By registering in advance on L2, we can reach out before the sessions to target specific questions and topics of interest. Office Hours Open office hours are informal and intended to provide an opportunity for members to bring questions and work on problem-solving together. Staff will share their favorite tips and tricks during these sessions and will incorporate questions/suggestions received in advance. Directors' Coffee Hours (1 hr) - bi-monthly chance for Directors to chat with Aaron...

On March 2, 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that they would stop publishing and licensing 6 titles. And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street If I Ran the Zoo McElligot's Pool On Beyond Zebra! Scrambled Eggs Super! The Cat's Quizzer This news has caused an increase in holds being placed on these titles within SWAN libraries. The 2nd/3rd market prices for these titles are soaring. Libraries are making individual decisions on how to circulate these titles in the future, and many libraries have pulled these items to make them available for in-library use only. However, several of these...

In the past couple of months, we have noticed an influx of tickets with a common subject: inconsistencies in fully cataloged records with OCLC encoding level 8. The reported inconsistencies referred to incorrect pagination, omission of Roman numerals, illustrations, missing 007 tag in audiovisual materials, etc. Level 8 is a pre-pub level of cataloging, and while the records are generally good, they require a thorough examination and often some upgrading once the item is published. Therefore, we would like to emphasize the following points for when you encounter OCLC records with encoding...

The agenda for the meeting on Feb 4 is available. No registration is necessary. Thursday, February 4, 2021 - 9:30am to 12:00pm GoToMeeting Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone. https://www.gotomeet.me/SWANLibs/cataloging-users You can also dial in using your phone. United States: +1 (571) 317-3112 Access Code: 652-340-613 New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts: https://global.gotomeeting.com/install/652340613

Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning Subscribers: In the upcoming months, Lynda.com will be migrating active subscriptions to the new LinkedIn Learning platform. LinkedIn has informed us that the setup process for the new interface is self-service and must be performed by library staff for each subscription. Your LinkedIn representative will provide you with tutorials that should guide you through the process when your migration date has been scheduled. We have also already added the IP addresses for LinkedIn Learning on our network, so no additional network changes are needed. As a part of the setup...

The Cataloging Users meeting will take place via GoToMeeting on Thursday, February 4th, from 9:30 to 12:00. It will depend on the agenda if the meeting will last 2.5 hrs ; however, I will be available for the full duration if need be. Please submit topic ideas for the agenda or questions to claudia@swanlibraries.net. We will send out the agenda a week before the meeting. Please note you will also have an opportunity to ask questions or bring up topics during the meeting itself. I look forward to your topics! Cataloging Users Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone...

SirsiDynix will be performing planned maintenance on the Enterprise catalog server on Wednesday, January 27th at 11:00 p.m. This maintenance will require downtime throughout the process and is expected to take no longer than a half hour, so the impact will be minimal. We'll be posting a banner to Enterprise one day prior to the outage to alert patrons. Unless complications arise, no further communication will be issued for this outage.

Happy New Year! I would like to start by giving you an update on some of the projects the Bibliographic Services team is working on. These projects have been incorporated into our workflow and have become part of database maintenance. Serials Call Number training In November, we started some training sessions on serials call numbers with the purpose of minimizing inconsistencies in the way serials call numbers are formatted, thus improving the patron’s experience when placing holds. These sessions are exclusive for staff who work with Serials daily, and each session is small enough that people...