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A great new way to start library automation

A low-cost answer to getting MARC records from the Internet

Should you do a do-it-yourself recon?

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This is one in a series of regular columns by Robert Rowen, an independent library automation consultant and President of Library Automation Management, Inc. His Web Site is libraryautomation.com

A: Librarians who have done it feel strongly on this subject. You won’t get many bland or neutral opinions.

Because we work with a lot of different libraries and a lot of different situations, I can say that one approach isn’t right for everyone. And although sending out the shelf list for recon may be the conventional wisdom, the idea of doing it in-house may have become more practical now that you can go on the Web and get your MARC records almost free. Especially for librarians whose shelf list is a mess or doesn’t exist, in-house might deserve consideration.

For one client, a school with both an upper and a lower school library, we made a list of some of the ups and downs of each approach:

In-house

An In-House Recon has these advantages:

Accuracy.

Eliminates preparing cards since it’s usually done directly from the book.

Can be combined with the weeding process.

No deadline to get cards prepared to send out.

Saves the direct outlay of many dollars.

An In-House Recon has these disadvantages:

Almost impossible if the librarian is alone or is fully occupied with students and/or other regular obligations during the typical working day.

Takes time. Not unusual to be spread out over a year or more.

If time is money, it may be an extravagant expenditure.

 

Out-of-house

An Out-of-house Recon has these advantages:

Data is available to be put into the Public Catalog as soon as returned from the Recon company.

Books are ready for circulation as soon as the "smart barcodes" are applied to the collection.

Often it is the more psychologically comforting approach.

An Out-of-house Recon has these disadvantages:

Usually the biggest single cost in Library Automation.

You have to weed before you start.

Takes a substantial amount of time to prepare the cards to send out (usually underestimated).

Companies who do Recons make mistakes (2 ½% error rate = 250 data records or barcodes with mistakes in a collection of 10,000.)

Smart barcodes sometimes create confusing situations for those trying to apply them.

It is noteworthy that the school we prepared this comparison for will go both ways: the lower school will send out their cards (circ cards, actually, with the LC # written on each) and the upper school will recon at least part of the collection in-house. Main reasons: lower school has too little staff time and the upper school needs a high hit rate on some atypical parts of the collection. But there are other reasons, too.

The emerging technologies like CD-ROM databases and Bookwhere (Z39.50), where we can now sit with an Internet connection and draw MARC records from the Web, suggest new methods. Even libraries that have already reconned can use these methods to handle missed and new items in on-going cataloging. In the next column, we’ll talk about those.

Robert Rowen
Library Automation Management, Inc.
101 Clark Street, 27C
Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201
(718) 834-1414
Our Web Site is: libraryautomation.com
Our E-Mail Address is mail@libraryautomation.com
Fax: (718) 222-4946

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