Removing brief level consideration in the NZ OCLC Integration Profile

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Status

Decided

Description

 

Decision summary

Connexion exports will not take the “brief level” into consideration

Owning group

RM-CMOS

Approver

N/A

Consulted

 

Informed

SILS cohort

Decision-making process

 

Priority

 

Target decision date

 

Date decided

Apr 13, 2023

Recommendation

We recommend disabling the consideration of “brief level” during OCLC Connexion exports into the NZ. There are many occasions where the Alma record is “less brief” than the OCLC copy due to batch updates. However, RM-CMOS feels that if campus catalogers and metadata staff are manually exporting a record from Connexion, it can be assumed that they doing so intentionally and have made a decision to use that copy. They should not have to work around an encoding conflict with Alma to do so.

Background

Alma only allows for a single “brief level rule” to calculate the brevity of records coming into the system during various imports. The current UC rule relies on the encoding level in the record and while RM is considering changes to that rule, it is impossible to draft a rule that accommodates both manual cataloging via Connexion and batch cataloging using import profiles.

M-level records are a particular area of concern. OCLC batch loads often mean that records are assigne encoding level M while they may actually be blank, I, or 7 in Alma. While catalogers may change the encoding level in Connexion to enable the export, not all campus staff work with that data during routine cataloging processes. In addition, the workaround to change the encoding level on the Alma side is less than ideal and doesn’t always work consistently.

 

Options Considered

 

Option 1

Option 2

 

Option 1

Option 2

Description

Adjust brief level rules

Eliminate brief level consideration

Pros

More granular control

Eliminates a source of frustration

Reflects trust in cataloging and metadata staff

No extra rule editing

Cons

Too many variables/situations to consider

Could potentially be problematic during a batch export

 

Action Log

Action/Point Person

Expected Completion Date

Notes

Status

Action/Point Person

Expected Completion Date

Notes

Status

RM-CMOS discussion

Apr 13, 2023

 

done

 

 

 

 

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