Yocalcat OCLC WorldCat Local – the story so far

June 4, 2010 at 2:41 pm | Posted in yocalcat | Leave a comment
Tags: jiscLMS, outputs, yocalcat

The JISC Yocalcat team members

 

Our project to implement OCLC WorldCat Local as the resource discovery interface to our catalogue has been underway for some time.  In fact we are behind schedule in terms of the overall project timescale that has had to be readjusted to take account of the technical issues encountered.  For a small library with limited technical resource and knowledge implementing a product that is new to the UK has proved quite a challenge.  It is probably fair to say that the OCLC team in the UK have learned also from the experience of dealing with delivery of a product across different timescales and a different market.       

As WorldCat Local is based on the WorldCat catalogue and subscribers to the product have to become cataloguing members of OCLC the initial phase of the project meant extracting bibliographic data from the existing library management system, SirsiDynix Symphony, and sending to OCLC for matching with WorldCat data.  This initial load matched approximately 100, 000 records from a total of about 130,000, meaning that a large number of records did not match on a first pass.  It was thought that we would have to upgrade these records ourselves in order to produce a match, a task that would have been impossible for a library of our size with limited staff resource.  Fortunately OCLC were able to help with further matching based on format and MARC tags, eventually leaving us with only 1100 non-matched records that have yet to be resolved.       

Once the matching was completed, we then had to load the records back into our system, complete with OCLC number, in order for WorldCat Local to be able to retrieve records via the Z39.50 interface.  This proved somewhat of a challenge in that the automated matching system in Symphony would only match on items with an ISBN and so was unsuitable for the large number of items that did not have an ISBN.  At the time OCLC were unable to help us with the problem so advice was sought from a reference site in North America, the University of New Brunswick in Canada.  Systems staff there sent us Perl scripts that could be used to extract the relevant data from the cross-ref files containing the data to be uploaded, sent to us by OCLC.  They also sent details of how to use the Symphony API to insert the data into the records, since we had not had API training in doing this ourselves.  We tested the process on our test server, itself a difficult process since we do not have direct access to the server, being on a shared system with City of York Council, and having to rely on CYC staff to download additional MARC:PM and MARC:BATCH software to complete the process.  Once this was proved to work effectively, the repetitive task of loading the data back in in relatively small batches began, and took approximately 2 weeks on and off to achieve.  Thanks to Gareth in IT who gave us the tip to use BASH to interrogate the system as it speeded up the process somewhat.       

Whilst this was going on OCLC were busy trying to get the Z39.50 connection to work.  As we share the system there were some firewall issues, but thankfully problems there were resolved by OCLC working with the City of York Council IT staff.  In order for the process to work correctly there was some setting up to be done in SirsiDynix Symphony, and quite by chance the discovery that there was a FAQ on the SirsiDynix customer care site on implementing WorldCat Local helped enormously.  All did not go smoothly however, and required some input from SirsiDynix support, plus some rebuilding of indexes so the required holdings data would be retrieved in a Z39.50 search.       

The next stage in the process has been the configuration and customization of the web interface.  OCLC rely a lot on webinars and conference calls and because of the time zone differences we weren’t able to take advantage of some of the general configuration webinar opportunities.  However, OCLC responded by providing webinars just for us, so we were able to see how the configuration worked, and once they had set things up for us were able to play around with it.  A problem with an interface to SirsiDynix Symphony is that the holdings configuration is taken from Location description policies rather than item types as we had at first surmised.  It should not be the same for other library management systems using WorldCat Local.  A second webinar helped us to get our heads around the configuration a little more clearly and a test version is in existence – York St John WorldCat Local (#yocalcat).        

The next stage is setting up some qualitative tests on the data retrieved via WorldCat Local, then some preliminary usability tests to gauge initial responses and to grab some student volunteers before they leave for the summer.  We shall embark on full usability testing at the end of June/beginning of July and are in the process of planning and recruiting for those.   Amazon gift vouchers are always popular with students!     

In addition to the setting up of the user interface we also have to revise our acquisitions and cataloguing procedures to take account of the new cataloguing processes via WorldCat.  There’s also the question of deletes and the ongoing loading of records, but more of that in the next blog.