It’s been months since I wrote anything as part of the series Day in the Life of an Electronic Resources Librarian. What a better time to restart it than during #libday8 and talk about my week so far.
Even though it’s only Tuesday, I feel like I’ve had a long week….lots of ebook processing going on. Monday – I had to process a whole bunch of ABC-CLIO ebooks and come up with call numbers for each title. In our library catalog, we have it set up so that we include a copy record with any new ebooks that we acquire. This makes sense for us because this way, if we were to lose access to any ebook or ebook vendor, we could easily clear it out of our catalog.
Actually….let me back up a bit – how many people actually list their ebooks in the library catalog and add copy records for it? When I first got this job, I thought it was a bit silly to add copy records, especially once I looked at other library catalogs and noticed that they didn’t have copy records. Having dealt with them these past few months, it makes sense as a way to future proof our catalog.
Okay, back to the story – so I had to find call numbers for all of these ebooks. Man, was it a PAIN…I had to go through WorldCat and try to find a public library that had the ebook titles. Mainly because most of the catalogs that had these titles were colleges – while I wouldn’t have minded using LC…we’re a school library, gotta live in a Dewey world. Thank goodness I was able to find call numbers for each title.
Can you imagine….if I had to come up with these call numbers myself? YIKES! I mean, I love the idea of cataloging and stuff and building call numbers…but I don’t have access to OCLC…I would have had to use an abridged version of DDC13. *sigh*
One fun thing to come out of these adventures in ebooks is that I figured out the MARC field to add copies to your catalog! Go 852!
=852 \\$hCall Number$pBarcode
What up!
Definitely making dealing with the ebooks easier – before I used to just upload the records to the catalog, then go into each campus catalog and manually add a copy. Now? Only have to upload the records to each catalogs, which takes less time than having to add copies.
In the next installment…we will talk about what happened last October/November (because yes…it’s been that long) J/K – Already talked about my hard drive crash…up next..will be me talking about what I want to do with iBook Author.