Weekly Bibliographic Record Exports from Orbis to OCLC Will Be Suspended for Several Months

We will suspend our weekly export to OCLC after this Sunday Sept 5, 2010. Any records staff flag between Friday September 3, 2010 and Sunday September 5, 2010 will go off to OCLC as normal.

  • Any changes to an Orbis bib record made between Monday Sept 6 (holiday) and approximately Friday Sept 17 will probably be the copy/version of the bib record we extract and send to OCLC for reconciliation

Why? From Tues Sept 7-Fri Sept 18 we will be reviewing the final list of bib ids marked for extraction or exclusion to OCLC to make sure the right bibs are listed. We then will modify a script to help create the OCLC file name and file labels and prepare the files of records to ftp over to OCLC. This will take approximately ten days(Sept 7-Sept 17), as OCLC can only accept a certain number of ftp files each day and we have to very carefully prepare each file to OCLC's specifications.

  • We need to stop sending weekly extracts to OCLC so they can process our reconciliation files. OCLC can't have multiple projects running at one time for us.
  • We will eventually start sending weekly extracts to OCLC once again when reconciliation is complete. We don’t have an exact date for that at this time. But it will be after we send them everything, after they process everything and after we load all data back in to Orbis. That could be Thanksgiving, maybe Christmas; not sure how long processing will take.
  • No changes or updates or new records or etc. will be "lost" or "forgotten." Once we have finished loading back in all data OCLC returns to us, we are going to process a "gap" file of Orbis bib records. This means we will identify any/all records that have been updated or added from a set date in Orbis.
  • After this "gap file" is processed by OCLC we will then resume weekly exports to OCLC.
  • Staff will NOT see anything different in the catalog client. That is they can still use the Cataloging with Export Q client workflow. In fact most will as they continue to flag records for MARS processing.
  • Records will continue to be sent to MARS each week during reconciliation. That workflow will not change. Staff should continue to flag what needs to go to MARS.
  • If staff want to keep flagging records to go to OCLC during this time that is OK. But the record won’t go to OCLC until we are in "gap file" mode--still several months out. Please remember you may flag records in Export Q to go to OCLC but you will not see them in OCLC or the changes you made. You will see the new records or changes/updates after Orbis “gap processing.” several months out.
  • If staff don't want to flag records for OCLC that is OK too. Any changes/updates they make in Orbis will still be found when we run a query to identify records for "gap" processing. We will use the cutoff date from when we started to extract records to send for reconciliation.
  • If I recall an earlier discussion correctly, you may want to remind staff of the process for deleting last copy bib records during this time.