The MassCat Mews

Volume 1, Number 3     (January 20, 2004)

The MassCat Mews, is a newsletter containing news and information of interest to the membership of MassCat.  This newsletter is published via email on an irregular basis.  Every issue of The MassCat Mews will also be published on the MassCat Website at the following address: http://www.masscat.org/links/masscatmews.htm

In this issue:

ILL Calendars need updating

Help maintain record quality in the MassCat database

ILL Calendars Need Updating

It is a new calendar year and everyone should take a few minutes to update the ILL Holiday Calendar.  The ILL holiday calendar needs to have current information regarding any extended closings at your library.  The ILL system reads this calendar information and determines whether or not to send a request to your library.  If your library is closed for more than four days, then the system will skip your library and pass any pending ILL requests to libraries that are open.

Note to School Librarians:  When you are entering your summer vacation dates, you should begin the summer vacation 3-4 weeks earlier than you are actually scheduled to close your library.  This will allow time for any loans that are circulating among MassCat libraries to be returned before the end of the school year.

To update your ILL calendar, follow these steps:

1.       Login to MassCat using your library code, username and password.

2.       Click on the “Staff Menu” button on the toolbar.

3.       Click on the “Maintain Participant Record” option on the menu on the left side of the screen.

4.       After a moment, the participant record form will appear in the right side of the screen.

5.       Scroll down to the “Holiday List” section of the form and enter the dates your library will be closed.  Use the following format: MM/DD/YYYY  (NOTE: You must include the slashes)

a.       Enter the first day of the holiday in the “Start Date” box.

b.       Enter the last day of the holiday in the “End Date” box.        

c.       For single-day holidays, enter the same date in both the “Start Date” and the “End Date” boxes.

6.       Click the “Update” button at the top of the screen.  Wait a moment for the record to be updated.  You will see the message: “Participant Record Successfully Updated!” appear at the top of the form.

7.       Close the window.

Visit the “Training” portion of the MassCat Website to obtain a copy of this training sheet and training sheets covering any other function of the MassCat database.  The Website address is:

http://www.masscat.org/training/training.htm

Help Maintain Record Quality in the MassCat Database

I need everyone’s help to maintain a database of high quality records in MassCat.  Here are several things you can do to help maintain a clean database for MassCat:

Duplicate Records:

If you find more than one record for the same title, please notify the MassCat Cataloging Center.  An online form to report duplicate records can be found at:

http://www.masscat.org/cataloging/catlinks/problemsandduplicates.htm (Click on the “Reporting Duplicate Records” link.)

You can also report duplicate records in an email message (email to: cataloging@masscat.org).  However, if you choose to send me an email message, YOU MUST BE AS SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE regarding the records you think are duplicates.  Provide me with title, author, publication date (if available), and ISBN (if available).  I need as much information as possible so I can find the records in question.

Poor-Quality Records:

If you find a record that seems to be of poor quality – very few fields of information, no subject headings, empty spaces within the record, etc., you can do several things:

If you have CatExpress, you should login to CatExpress and search for a better record.  If you find a better quality record in CatExpress, please catalog and download that record.

If you do not have CatExpress, you should notify the Cataloging Center regarding the poor quality record and ask to have the record upgraded.  You can send email to me at the Cataloging Center: cataloging@masscat.org

It is very important that everyone take the time to notify me of database quality issues.  I cannot solve these problems unless I am made aware of them, and I need your help in order to know about these issues!

Thanks Everyone!