Page Comparison

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Recommendation

Resource Type provides the most consistent and descriptive option across campuses. For physical materials, the resource type would be pulled from use "Physical Items"."Bibliographic Details"."Resource Type".”

For electronic materials, the resource type would be pulled from use "E-Inventory"."Bibliographic Details"."Resource Type".

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Within Alma, Material type is an alterable set of fields, and so campuses have customized them extensively according to local needs. However, resource type come comes directly from the bib header fields in the bibliographic record (i.e., LDR and 008) and, as a result, tends to be much more consistent across campuses.

AASA members were provided developed a survey and requested to gather gathered feedback from their campuses on the impact of using Resource Type for the UCOP statistics.

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[1] Example from UC Irvine Law: 65 CDs that come with regularly-updated legal materials have the value “CD-ROM” in "Physical Items"."Physical Item Details"."Material Type", but “Book - Physical” or “Other Serial - Physical” in "Physical Items"."Bibliographic Details"."Resource Type.” Overall, however, the number of mis-matches is small. On the whole UC Irvine campus, for example, only ~315 CD-ROM items have an incorrect Resource Type of "Bibliographic Details". "Resource Type” values of or “Book - Electronic” or “Book - Physical”. In a system with millions of Electronic and Physical books, these differences are not significant.

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