Re: Upgrades to OCLC bibliographic records? Anne Miller 13 Feb 1998 15:10 UTC

  I'm not sure what you mean by "upgrade."  The main problem for us
serials catalogers, as I see it, in using pre-AACR2 records, is their
use of latest issue for cataloging, as opposed to earliest issue, which we
currently use. This makes it hard to use these records at all. Generally
we don't here. However, if a record is earliest issue cataloging, and just
happens to have, say, an older style of bibliographic
description/punctuation, we would use as it was, and just update any
headings or subjects. Does that answer your question?

  As far as reclassification goes, we generally don't do that, unless some
of the volumes are already mislabeled, or have two sets of call numbers,
or some other pressing reason. We'd like to, but our processing staff is
small and stretched pretty thin already. We've always fully cataloged and
classified our serials and periodicals, so I think we're doing pretty well
right there.

  --Anne Miller
    Boston University
    <amiller@BU.EDU>