Language of Cataloging in the UC NZ

RM-CMOS Policy:

When adding new records to the NZ, catalogers should, whenever possible, prefer records with 040 $b eng (English language of cataloging). (Exception: CZ records, which have their own policies.)

Migrated records with 040 $b other than “eng” are allowable.

When a non-English language record already exists in the NZ, catalogers may:

• Import a new English-language record even if it duplicates an existing non-English one in the NZ

• Flag these for deletion as needed (note that they will not be deleted if they have other campus inventory)

Campus catalogers may not:

• Merge these records in OCLC or in the UC NZ

• Add OCLC numbers for the English-language record to the 035 of the non-English language record

Background:

There are thousands (and thousands) of records in the UC NZ that are not English-language cataloging records. They are valid OCLC records but do not necessarily conform with current best practices. That said, there are valid reasons why campuses have historically used these records and many of them have inventory attached. These records are not allowed to be merged in OCLC and are not easily merged in Alma since the inventory would wind up on the wrong OCLC record (see considerations below). The workload associated with cleanup, even done on an “as-encountered” basis, is far too high to recommend system-wide action at this time. Instead, the records will be treated as allowable duplicates unless there is a pressing reason in Primo to revisit this policy.

Options Considered:

Allow catalogers to merge & combine records in Alma (decision: do not do this)

• Inventory will be merged onto a new OCLC record

• Unlike with an OCLC merge, there is no mechanism for actually updating the OCLC holdings since the OCLC records won’t have changed

• Thousands of campus records, in particular RLF records, could wind up out of sync with OCLC holdings

• No campus bandwith for this kind of cleanup