2023 AskQC office hours
Note:
- See Current AskQC office hours for upcoming sessions.
- See AskQC office hour URLs for a list of all URLs shared during AskQC office hours.
November 2023: MARC Fields for Manuscripts and Archival Collections
Description
Have you ever wondered when to use field 535 or how to record a URI for a finding aid? How about providing a preferred citation for a manuscript? Kate James will provide information on these and other topics related to MARC bibliographic records for manuscripts and archival collections. Fields covered will include 340, 351, 524, 535, 545, 561, and 856.
October 2023: Meeting librarians where they are today: incorporating linked data into existing library workflows
Description
Librarians are at various stages of linked data adoption. From novice to expert and skeptic to true believer. OCLC's linked data will help bridge the gap for librarians still working to understand linked data and will also demonstrate value added to current and future library workflows. We will talk about our linked data vision as well as practical ways to apply linked data to library work today. We will also give a brief demo of our WorldCat Entities data and data editor, explaining how this linked data authority work can be immediately applied to current bibliographic cataloging workflows.
September 2023: Get Informed about Genre/Form Terms
Description
Kate James presented on genre/form terms, describing how these differ from subject headings and how to use the 655 field to record the terms, including how to specify the source of the term with examples from common thesauri such as LCGFT and AAT. She also explained the benefit of including genre/form information in a record.
Support material
- WebEx recording - September 12
- WebEx recording - September 21
- Presentation slides
- Member questions
August 2023: Rapid Harm Reduction with Locally Preferred Subjects in WorldCat Discovery
Description
Grace McGann will present on locally preferred subjects in WorldCat Discovery. This feature enables libraries to rapidly reduce harm in item description by defining local, inclusive subjects for display.
July 2023: Debiasing Dewey: Righting the past by rewriting the classification
Description
OCLC is working to address historic biases in the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and ensure its continuing relevance. Hear from senior editor Alex Kyrios and editor-in-residence Kathryn Becker about some of the work in recent years, especially on topics related to LGBTQ people.
June 2023: Cataloging Rare Materials Defensively
Description
The eighth and final “Cataloging Defensively” presentation is designed to provide background about how OCLC’s Duplicate Detection and Resolution (DDR) software deals with WorldCat bibliographic records created for rare and archival materials. The webinar will help catalogers use MARC 21 and the instructions in RDA to the best advantage in making sure that DDR performs appropriately when encountering a record that is legitimately unique according to the descriptive conventions.
May 2023: What's in a name?: Descriptive access points overview
Description
Bryan Baldus and Becky Dean presented a review of name and title descriptive access points, and how OCLC's controlling functionality works with each type of name.
April 2023: Data and algorithms and bibs, oh my!
Description
Laura Ramsey and Nathan Putnam present on OCLC’s latest work in the effort to harness machine learning and data science to improve WorldCat quality, with explanations and descriptions of OCLC’s existing data algorithms and experiments with Machine Learning (ML), specifically in reducing the number of duplicates in WorldCat.
March 2023: Languages, Non-Latin Scripts and Mysterious MARC 880 fields
Description
You asked for some tips on cataloging non-English language materials. We’ll provide information on coding and recording languages in MARC records, the fields and subfields to pay attention to for non-English cataloging, and special handling of non-Latin data. And we’ll talk about correct coding for language of cataloging, an element often coded incorrectly in WorldCat bibliographic records.
February 2023: Bibliographic Formats and Standards (BFAS), the early chapters
Description
You know BFAS (OCLC Bibliographic Formats and Standards) is great for looking up individual MARC field, but did you know there are 5 chapters before you even get to the MARC field section? Have you ever looked up a MARC field and wondered how it should be used? Or wondered where to ask for cataloging change requests? In this overview, Robin Six and Charlene Morrison will walk through the first 5 chapters which cover an introduction to BFAS, online cataloging, special cataloging guidelines, when to input a new record, and quality assurance.
Previous Virtual AskQC Office Hours presentations on specific areas of OCLC Bibliographic Formats and Standards
- February 2018 :: Cataloging defensively with edition statements (Ch 4)
- March 2018 :: Processing change requests (Ch 5)
- October 2018 :: Parallel record and language of cataloging (Ch 2.6)
- January 2019 :: When to input a new record (Ch 4)
- February 2019 :: Provider neutral cataloging (Ch 3.1)
- August 2019 :: OCLC cataloging policies: An overview of Bibliographic Formats and Standards
- June 2020 :: Updates on OCLC encoding levels (Fixed Field: ELvl)
- January 2020 :: Best practices for editing WorldCat bibliographic records (Ch 4 & 5)
- February 2020 :: Best practices for enriching WorldCat bibliographic records (Ch 4 & 5)
- April 2021 :: Local data in WorldCat records (Ch 3)
- August 2021 :: Medley of popular topics (Ch 1-5)
- March 2022 :: Bibliographic Formats & Standards chapter 3: A deep dive (Ch 3)
- April 2022 :: Editions annotated, collected, corrected, and expanded: The varieties and roles of Edition Statements (Ch 4)
- September 2022 :: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Editing Bibliographic Records (Ch 4 & 5)