Wednesday, November 29, 2006

ALEPH Questions

Any questions about ALEPH? Stats you are trying to run but can't? Items you are trying to catalog but are being stubborn? Post your questions here, and answer any that you can...

12 comments:

Kate Bessey said...

Librarians,

This is kind of an ALEPH question...

I'm hoping to get your opinions on a thought I had for improving the visibility of popular books, movies, and children's books at Eden Prairie. I've been tossing around the idea of pulling those items mentioned above out of the main circulating collection (cataloged with LC) and moving them to separate locations (diferent shelving units) and cataloging them according to Dewey. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? In addition, I'm looking to find out how to reassign call numbers on ALEPH. Please let me know what you think, or if you have any advice!

Thanks!

Heather said...

I think it might be too confusing to have a mixed classification collection. LC is the standard for academic libraries, and Dewey is usually used by Public Libraries. I keep my movies and special materials separate from the general collection, but still catalog in LC. Also, if any of these materials are switched to another campus, it would be confusing and more work later on.
I also believe that if we do bulk cataloging for items ordered, two kinds of systems of cataloging would be difficult to specify from the vendors.
I think we should stick to Library of Congress, although I am all for you moving the items to different shelves. Just be sure to have good signage to help people find what they are looking for.

Heather said...

I guess in the case of Aleph, I would like an easy way of automatically running overdues lists either every 2 weeks or at least once a month. I can never get that overdue list thing to work right.

Marie said...

Kate, at Eagan we have a separate "Child Care" section where we have those books separated out, but it is still in LC. Seems to work pretty well, although that section is always messy...

Chandra said...

I just tried to run an overdue report and it missed about half of the late items. Any pointers for me?

Kate Bessey said...

Thanks for the words of advice. Upon further consideration it does make sense to leave them cataloged according to LC. I guess I was just looking for ways to make our materials move more often, and I know most of our students are more familar with Dewey. Anyway, I will be working soon on starting those individual collections. Should be fun... (not really!)

Marie said...

Correct me if I'm wrong Emily, but the go-live date for Aleph 17 is January 6th right?

Marie said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Emily said...

January 5th is the go live date.

Kate Bessey said...

Can someone please explain how to edit records on OCLC? A couple of the records that I need to export to ALEPH have errors in them that need to be changed before I can export them.

Also, someday a lesson in original cataloging would be fantastic...(ahhh, we can dream..) Thanks all!

Emily said...

Beth....

Since we didn't input your Blackwell titles into ALEPH, I think that is a problem with either the transfer from OCLC into ALEPH or ALEPH itself. Surely there is a way to delete the copy of the record... Sara?

If no one knows, I'll send a help note to the ALEPH folks. They take longer to answer now because of the conversion, but hopefuly it will go through quickly...

Emily said...

Kate, there is an original cataloging workshop coming up soon through MINITEX. There is also some training already available online. I can set that up for you.