Does anyone else view those Baker and Taylor level 3 records with dread when they come up on an OCLC search? Do you then do a title search to try and find a better record? There's a whole discussion going in in AUTO-CAT about this. Here is a short summary of the discussion. Here is Glenn Patton's official OCLC response.
I'd almost rather catalog from scratch than use one of those records. OCLC says they are there to be upgraded by member libraries, vendor cataloging staff, etc. What are your thoughts?
Submitted by Jana
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3 comments:
I used on the other day to help us verify a book existed and to place an order with another vendor. It turned out the book didn't exist, so the record does not even stand for an actual published item.
It seems like you might as well start from scratch with book in hand.
I don't mind these records. Yes they can be confusing but I basically think of them as records that need original cataloging. Anytime I lock and upgrade the record in OCLC I count that in my statistics as an original work of cataloging. Most of the time these records are full of inaccurate information but hey doesn't level 8 contain information that is wrong, too? You just have to consider the source and make the appropriate changes. I don't know if we get "brownie points" for every record we upgrade but I think of it as helping out someone else.
Yes, this is the right opinion. The records are to measure to the amount of something. Here it is not measured accurately. The best way is to keep our counting in our own hand.
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peter
Oklahoma Treatment Centers
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