Libraries are now working on clean-up of Serials order records. An open serials record not attached to a Bibliographic record is not going to have a clear purpose when we eventually migrate. It is also unclear today for staff working in Aleph.
At one library (just before Thanksgiving 2017), we found 262 open serials orders. Of those, 154 orders are not attached to a Bibliographic record. The order creation dates range from 1994 to 2008. Setting those orders aside, this leaves 108 orders (41%) attached to a Bibliographic record where there is a clear journal title.
Now, we know that those ‘unattached’ orders were not all for budget transactions. We do not know which are the ones still being used as a dummy record.
For an order used for ordering / budget transactions purposes having an attached Bib record (with STA=SUPPRESSED) provides better identification. Since it is a suppressed record, never to be displayed to patrons. It would be more direct and maintainable to keep track of how the orders are intended to be used. Anytime staff look at a record to figure something out, people will want to naturally look at the title.
Consider the purely hypothetical record, with
STA SUPPRESSED 245 Ebsco Melbourne Scholars Package
Without knowing anything else about this example, you already know what the record’s purpose is.
Also, the Bibliographic record should have a brief holdings and item record. The Item record should be set to Item Process Status = NA (not arrived), SU (suppressed), WD (withdrawn), or CA (Order Canceled). These are the Item Process Statuses that will result in the ‘Title’ being suppressed from patron view.
WD might be a good idea if you do not want the record to be migrated, but this would also depend on how you weed Bibliographic records that have these statuses. It will have an implication depending on which software we use to replace Aleph. If you do not weed by IPS, then it frees your hand in choosing an appropriate IPS.
Orders being closed should be marked as Order Status = ‘CLS,’ Invoice Status as ‘Complete,’ and depending on the type of order as ‘Arrived.’ One would also want to look at any related Subscription records. (No reason to show items as still being expected then they are not.)
Please contact OLS for help with specific questions.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
