Reporting and Correcting Central Catalog Errors

March 7, 2008

Errors in central catalog bibliographic records can usually only be corrected by personnel from the institution that owns the record at central. Each institution has a contact person who is charged both with receiving error reports about records that institution owns and with sending error reports after determining the owning library. The full contact list for error reports is available at http://silver.ohiolink.edu/dms/errorlist.html.

In addition, these contact people are on a closed OhioLINK email list: errors@ohiolink.edu. This list is for exchanging information about problems that need to be corrected by many institutions, such as merged OCLC records. When you send a message to that list, it is helpful to include the 945 fields of the central site's bibliographic record because they list the contributing libraries. That signals who will need to take action. Information on the 945 fields can be found here.

The main exception to this rule for error reporting is Table of Contents (TOC) errors in 97x fields. Report TOC errors to me--Anne Gilliland. After April 11, 2008, report catalog errors to Meg Spernoga.

In general the sorts of problems that should be reported as errors are those that result in search and retrieval problems, such as:

• Incorrect filing indicators
• Misspellings which affect a search
• Authority errors C
• IP record in Central needs to be replaced

The owning library will need the following pieces of information in order to correct the problem:

• Central Site Record Number .b__________________
• OCLC Number
• Owning Library
• Author
• Title
• Description of the problem. (Attach documentation if necessary. )
• Contact information for the person reporting the problem.

A form for reporting errors is available at http://silver.ohiolink.edu/dms/errors.html. You may also just report errors in an email, incorporating all the relevant information needed.